Anastasia Valecce – författare

Neorrealismo y cine en Cuba: Historia y discurso entorno a la primera polémica de la Revolución, 1951–1962 [Neorealism and Cinema in Cuba: History and Discourse on the First Polemic of the Revolution, 1951–1962] examines the aesthetic history and relations between Cuban film production and Italian Neorealism. The historical framework begins in 1951 before the triumph of the Cuban Revolution and ends in 1962, a year that marks a rupture between Cuban filmmakers and the Italian neorealist aesthetic. The main collaborations happened between Cuban directors Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Julio García Espinosa and Italian neorealist filmmaker Cesare Zavattini. The circumstances that led to the end of the relationship between Zavattini and the Cuban filmmakers are connected to the film El joven rebelde [The Young Rebel], directed by García Espinosa and screened for the first time in 1961. The rupture centered on creative and ideological differences regarding the way in which the protagonist was to be portrayed in the movie. This seemingly minor disagreement had considerably larger repercussions, the end result of which was that García Espinosa and Gutiérrez Alea, as well as the rest of the Cuban filmmakers who worked within the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC) after 1959, were driven to find their own creative strategies to craft a national film production. However, the Cuban filmmakers would not have found the necessary grammar to rewrite their own revolutionary cinema without the rupture with Zavattini. This new cinematographic language could not have existed without the various pauses and the distances that characterized the Cuban relationship with Neorealism. In other words, the fragmentary interchange between García Espinosa, Gutierrez Alea, and Zavattini created new spaces in which the Cubans could find creative opportunities to express their own cinematic vision.

Spotlighting the rebellious performances and artistic works of Afro-queer women in Puerto RicoIn Disobedient Women, Anastasia Valecce centers the voices and aesthetics of four contemporary Afro-queer Puerto Rican artists—Gisela Rosario Ramos (Macha Colón), Awilda Rodríguez Lora, Helen Ceballos, and Awilda Sterling-Duprey. Valecce shows how these women have used performance, visual art, and activism to resist colonial, racial, and gender oppression on the archipelago.Puerto Rico’s colonial relationship with the United States persists, reinforced by recent austerity measures imposed by the US, infrastructure collapse, and the devastation of Hurricanes Irma and Maria. Within this context, Afro-queer women face heightened vulnerability under intersecting systems of colonialism, patriarchy, and heteronormativity. Valecce explores how the four artists in this book challenge dominant narratives of nationhood, family, and identity while opening space for new forms of collective resistance, queer kinship, and Afro-Caribbean embodiment.Addressing urgent themes such as imperialism, displacement, gender violence, and cultural erasure, Valecce demonstrates how these artists transform crisis into resistance and how their creative practices are both deeply personal and radically political. Through embodied disobedience, they offer tools for collective survival and envision futures amid neglect and historical trauma. This book offers a powerful archive of rebellion, care, and creativity.

How artists and culture workers mobilize aesthetics, embodiment, and care to reimagine worlds across the Hispanic Caribbean and its diasporasThis book explores how Afro-queer artists, writers, performers, filmmakers, and activists across the Hispanic Caribbean and its diasporas use culture as a space of resistance, imagination, and community-building. Bringing together critical analysis alongside creative works of different forms and media, Dissident Identities examines how questions of race, gender, sexuality, embodiment, and belonging are negotiated through visual art, film, performance, music, poetry, and digital media.Spanning Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, and diasporic communities, the book highlights cultural producers whose work challenges dominant narratives about identity while offering new ways of thinking about freedom, care, memory, and social transformation. Contributors analyze topics ranging from Afro-diasporic spirituality and decolonial feminist art to multimodal performance, urban music, and activism through digital visual culture. Together, these chapters reveal how Afro-queer cultural production functions not only as artistic expression but also as a powerful form of political intervention.

Spotlighting the rebellious performances and artistic works of Afro-queer women in Puerto RicoIn Disobedient Women, Anastasia Valecce centers the voices and aesthetics of four contemporary Afro-queer Puerto Rican artists—Gisela Rosario Ramos (Macha Colón), Awilda Rodríguez Lora, Helen Ceballos, and Awilda Sterling-Duprey. Valecce shows how these women have used performance, visual art, and activism to resist colonial, racial, and gender oppression on the archipelago.Puerto Rico’s colonial relationship with the United States persists, reinforced by recent austerity measures imposed by the US, infrastructure collapse, and the devastation of Hurricanes Irma and Maria. Within this context, Afro-queer women face heightened vulnerability under intersecting systems of colonialism, patriarchy, and heteronormativity. Valecce explores how the four artists in this book challenge dominant narratives of nationhood, family, and identity while opening space for new forms of collective resistance, queer kinship, and Afro-Caribbean embodiment.Addressing urgent themes such as imperialism, displacement, gender violence, and cultural erasure, Valecce demonstrates how these artists transform crisis into resistance and how their creative practices are both deeply personal and radically political. Through embodied disobedience, they offer tools for collective survival and envision futures amid neglect and historical trauma. This book offers a powerful archive of rebellion, care, and creativity.