Reading like a Queer

p 240:
This insistence on the indelible working of the homo/heterosexual defi nition within seemingly remote structures of meaning, such as the binary oppositions of knowledge/ignorance or domestic/foreign, has become a cornerstone of queer theory, supporting a wide body of deconstructive work that queers nominally un(homo)sexual concepts from resolutely anti-normative positions. That work reveals the insidious pervasiveness—but also the exploitable fragility and illogic—of heteronormativity and the overdetermined elaboration of sexual discourse. As Elizabeth Freeman eloquently describes it, “To ‘queer’ something is at once to make its most pleasurable aspects gorgeously excessive, even to the point of causing its institutional work to fail, and to operate it against its most oppressive political results.”


p 257:
...Moraga's confessions are actually shrouded in shame more than in solemn, deliberated transgression.... Significantly, this propensity for confessing and for the shame left in its wake does not, as one might expect, lead to a weakening of the narrative or to the idea that she is debilitated by angst. Rather than portray shame as dysfunctional--as something that must be overcome or healed--Moraga suggests that it can be recuperated and, in fact..can be empowering.


Queer Loving
Queering the Color Line
Scientific Racism and the Emergence of the Homosexual Body
Queer Fictions of Race

Cherrie Moraga's Going Brown
Last Generation
Waiting in the Wings