Genealogies of Joy

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