DIVERSIÓN
POSTMILLENNIAL POP
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Diversión: Play and Popular Culture in Cuban America
Albert Sergio Laguna
Diversión
Play and Popular Culture in Cuban America
Albert Sergio Laguna
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York
© 2017 by New York University
All rights reserved
References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Laguna, Albert Sergio.
Title: Diversión : play and popular culture in Cuban America / Albert Sergio Laguna.
Description: New York : NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2017. | Series: Postmillential pop | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016052430 | ISBN 9781479836017 (cl : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781479846146 (pb : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Cuban Americans—Social life and customs. | Cuban Americans—Florida—Miami—Social life and customs. | Popular culture—Florida—Miami. | Popular culture—United States.
Classification: LCC E184.C97 L34 2017 | DDC 305.868/7291073—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016052430
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books.
Manufactured in the United States of America
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Also available as an ebook
For Alberto Laguna, Minerva Laguna, Maylene Laguna,
and Sandra Hernández
and in loving memory of
Oscar Laguna
CONTENTS
1. Un Tipo Típico: Alvarez Guedes Takes the Stage
4. The Transnational Life of Diversión
5. Digital Diversión: Feeling Cuban Online
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing these acknowledgments has been an opportunity to look back at all it took to get this book done. Although I can provide only the short version of all the people I’d like to recognize, my deepest gratitude dwells between the commas.
Where else can I begin but Jersey? At Montclair State University, Jim Nash, Sharon Lewis, and Leslie Wilson stepped up to support this interesting idea I had about getting my PhD in English. It is at Montclair where I met Patrick Deer, my first advisor in the English department who would later become a good friend and a kind of grad-student life coach when we met again at New York University. Patrick introduced me to Ana Dopico whose “Cubanologies” class opened my eyes to intellectual possibilities that I didn’t know existed. If not for those happy coincidences, things would have turned out much differently. Patrick and Ana, gracias por todo. Ana’s critical introduction to cubanía would soon lead me to the door of José Muñoz, who took for granted that he’d be on my exam and dissertation committees. José is the inspiration for this book, not only because of his work on choteo but also in how he embodied a kind of critical Cuban jodedera that I continue to aspire to. To walk into his office overlooking Broadway and see this man not from Miami, Los Angeles, or New York City but from Hialeah—agua, fango, y factoría—meant everything to me. I like to think that he would have thoroughly enjoyed this book. Back in the English department, Phil Harper helped keep me on course. Tom Augst, Juan Flores (QEPD), Elaine Freedgood, Crystal Parikh, and Mary Louise Pratt schooled me at critical moments.
The César Chávez Predoctoral Fellowship at Dartmouth College gave me the time and funding to write, but more importantly, allowed me to develop my work in conversation with Valerie Dickerson, Lourdes Gutiérrez Nájera, Patricia Herrera, Israel Reyes, Silvia Spitta, and Kendra Taira Field. Jobs at Wesleyan University and Columbia College Chicago surrounded me with fantastic colleagues who showed me the ropes as