Out of the Closet and Into the Kitchen: Negotiating Exclusion through dis/comfort food in plays by Janis Astor del Valle

• In Event: From Cafés to Conflagrations: Re/Mapping NuyoRico Beyond Los Barrios

Abstract

In autobiographical plays and performances including I’ll Be Home Para el Navidad, Trans Plantations, and Straight and other Jackets para Mí, Nuyorican playwright Janis Astor del Valle dramatizes her struggle to penetrate the layers of intolerance she experiences as a light-skinned, lesbian Boricua. Both intentional and accidental attempts to pass as straight and white ignite complex intersections of national, sexual, and racial identities. Dinner tables and kitchen counters offer symbolic sites for negotiation of lesbian Latinidad within homes and homelands, with food behaving as a traditional marker of cultural identity and familial harmony. Straddling homophobic neighborhoods in Puerto Rico, Connecticut, and the South Bronx, del Valle’s casts of characters produce a confluence of conflicting identities. Meals, recipes, and holiday feasts help to set the scene (or, table) for a trajectory of cultural exclusions that object to her light skin, her girlfriend’s dark skin, and their queerness.

Author

• Kimberly Ramirez, City University of New York