In Spanish-speaking countries the quotidian use of the word puta represents the latinized feminine excess that is shamed, stigmatized, and criminalized for aberrant sexuality. In English, puta translates to whore and can also stand in for sex worker, prostitute, slut, hooker, bitch, and or simply woman. In her book Puta Life: Seeing Latinas, Working Sex, Juana María Rodríguez resignifies the word puta to trace its linguistic possibilities. Using theories of stigmatization, affect, performance, and visuality, Rodríguez investigates how the stigma of “putahood” gets placed onto the flesh. For Rodríguez, visuality is a critical method by how social stigma is placed onto the body. In this book, Rodríguez demonstrates that the medium of photography has trained us to identify aberrant sexuality. All the chapters in the book deal with a visual archive and investigate how images of puta life are placed within “regimes of...

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