The University of Arizona Press
Genealogies of Joy
The Pleasure of Latinx Literature
What does it mean to center joy in a world that insists on Latinx suffering? Genealogies of Joy: The Pleasure of Latinx Literature argues that joy is not a luxury or distraction but a radical, sustaining force woven through Latinx literature and culture. From humor and food to protest, friendship, sexuality, and aging, the essays gathered here reveal joy as an embodied, communal practice—one that refuses racialized shame and imagines liberatory futures.
Organized into three sections—Memory, Method, and Maps—the volume traces a genealogy of joy across time and space. Contributors explore how writers such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Julia de Burgos, Erika Sánchez, Javier Zamora, Myriam Gurba, Aidan Thomas, and Sandra Cisneros transform grief into resilience, invert dominant narratives, and reclaim pleasure as political praxis. Whether through irreverent laughter, queer desire, culinary memory, or vulnerable resistance, Latinx authors insist that pleasure and politics are bound together.
Engaging affect theory, Black joy scholarship, borderlands studies, and archival studies, this collection asserts that Latinx joy resists the quantification and commodification of late-stage capitalism. At once rigorous and celebratory, Genealogies of Joy invites readers to recognize joy as a human right and a vital source of connection, creativity, and collective flourishing.
Contributors
Soffía Blystra
Norma Cantú
Margaret Cantú-Sánchez
Karina Diaz
Stephanie Fetta
Elena Foulis
Eva Maria Geicht
Leigh Johnson
Mark J. Mascia
Regina Marie Mills
Erin Murrah-Mandril
Jeannine Ortega
Nancy Ríos
Rey M. Rodríguez
Rosarito Rodríguez-González
Alexandra Rodríguez Sabogal
Karen Roybal
Bianca S. Rubalcava
Suzanne Uzzilia
Natalia Villanueva-Nieves
Melina Vizcaíno-Alemán
“Genealogies of Joy profoundly reframes joy as a central experience in Latinx literature and communities. Building on the paradigm of resistance in Latinx studies, it uncovers a transformative narrative about the familial, communal, and embodied joys that permeate Latinx life. During politically volatile times, this collection is timely and powerful.”—Larissa M. Mercado-López, co-editor of Voices of Resistance: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Chican@ Children’s Literature
“This collection boldly affirms that joy is an integral force animating Latine literature. To consider Latine literature through each of these chapters es siempre un placer, as each of the them analyzes and honors community, connection, and the undeniable vitality of Latine people.”—Amanda Ellis, author of Letras y Limpias: Decolonial Medicine and Holistic Healing in Mexican American Literature
