Tacit Subjects

Tacit Subjects is a pioneering analysis of how gay immigrant men of color negotiate race, sexuality, and power in their daily lives. Drawing on ethnographic research with Dominicans in New York City, Carlos Ulises Decena explains that while the men who shared their life stories with him may self-identify as gay, they are not the liberated figures of traditional gay migration narratives. Decena contends that in migrating to Washington Heights, a Dominican enclave in New York, these men moved from one site to another within an increasingly transnational Dominican society. Many of them migrated and survived through the resources of their families and broader communities. Explicit acknowledgment or discussion of their homosexuality might rupture these crucial social and familial bonds. Yet some of Decena’s informants were sure that their sexuality was tacitly understood by their family members or others close to them. Analyzing their recollections about migration, settlement, masculinity, sex, and return trips to the Dominican Republic, Decena describes how the men at the center of Tacit Subjects contest, reproduce, and reformulate Dominican identity in New York. Their stories reveal how differences in class, race, and education shape their relations with fellow Dominicans. They also offer a view of “gay New York” that foregrounds the struggles for respect, belonging, and survival within a particular immigrant community.

“Tacit Subjects is a joy to read, an important piece of ethnographic scholarship, and a crucial node for a more enlightened and progressive understanding of queer lives lived on the edges of nations, histories, and cultures. Carlos Ulises Decena meticulously engages with, departs from, energizes, and reframes recent LBGTQ scholarship. He exhorts us to consider alternative modes of queer habitations ensconced in histories of racialized migration, colonial occupations, poverty, dictatorship, and humdrum existence in late-capitalist America.” —Martin Manalansan IV, author of Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora, “Without a doubt, Tacit Subjects is the most intelligent and coherent book on Latino homosexuality (and homosociality) that I have read in a very long time. It is a corrective to many readings of the Latina/o dynamic around disclosure, as well as the imperative of revelation that seems to mark most of the work in Anglo-American LGBTQ studies. It is a trenchant and powerful call for us to listen carefully to what others say and understand how their wisdom can teach us to abandon our preconceived notions of normativity.”—José Quiroga, author of Tropics of Desire: Interventions from Queer Latino America, “[T]his book provides a compelling look at the lives of samesex loving Dominican immigrant men. It is a powerful piece of work, which will be ofgreat interest to those in the fields of anthropology, cultural studies, sexuality/queer studies, globalisation and public health.”, “Overall, Tacit Subjects develops new theoretical terrains in sexuality, masculinity, and migration studies through its deep and personal engagement with the complex lives of a group of Dominican immigrant men living in New York City. It will therefore appeal to scholars across a range of disciplines, and I for one will be using it in my gender and sexuality courses as part of a sophisticated suite of texts exploring the movement, organization, and transformation of sexual desires and identities within and across Dominican borders.”, “A thoughtful discussion of the connections among linguistic practice, masculinity, and sexual sameness in the Santo Dominican diaspora. . . . Tacit Subjects shows why studies of the Dominican diaspora must pay attention to discursive practices. More than that, Decena’s work challenges the rest of us to mobilize narrative data in ways that give ethnographic subjects in any location adequate spaces to speak for themselves.” 

Carlos Ulises Decena is Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, and Latino and Hispanic Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.