Laura Grappo's first book, Conjured Bodies: Queer Racialization in Contemporary Latinidad, is an innovative exploration of the ways that the ambiguities of Latino identity have broader implications for race politics in the United States. Grappo argues that Latinos are both excessively visible and easily erased, and that the vexed status of Latinos in US culture not only puts Latino subjects into positions of precarity but also can function to bolster whiteness and promote anti-Blackness. She also shows how gender and sexuality are active components of these processes.
The book comprises four chapters, an introduction, and a conclusion. In the introduction, Grappo situates herself in ongoing conversations within Latino studies about race, racialization, and Latinidad. In addition, she offers a theoretical justification for the notion of “conjuring,” or the ways the malleability of Latino identity and brownness get deployed and marshaled for purposes that impact Latinos and other racialized groups....
