Queer Latino Testimonio, Keith Haring, and Juanito Xtravaganza Hard Tails [Hardcover]

In the tradition of the Latin American testimonio, this is the story of Juan Rivera, a.k.a. Juanito Xtravaganza, a Latino runaway youth who ends up homeless in the streets of New York in the late 70s and becomes partner of the internationally famous 1980s Pop artist Keith Haring during some of the most frenetically productive years of his brief life, as told to the author and retold by him. A hybrid text - part testimonio, part linguistic and cultural analysis, and part art criticism - this is also a history of New York Latino neighborhoods during this period of devastating disinvestment and gentrification, as well as a personal, heart-felt meditation on the art of listening and the ethical limits of representing queer Latino lives.In the tradition of the Latin American testimonio, this is the story of Juan Rivera, a.k.a. Juanito Xtravaganza, a Latino runaway youth who ends up homeless in the streets of New York in the late 70s and becomes partner of the internationally famous 1980s Pop artist Keith Haring during some of the most frenetically productive years of his brief life, as told to the author and retold by him. A hybrid text - part testimonio, part linguistic and cultural analysis, and part art criticism - this is also a history of New York Latino neighborhoods during this period of devastating disinvestment and gentrification, as well as a personal, heart-felt meditation on the art of listening and the ethical limits of representing queer Latino lives.

'A story of the abject, an urban cultural history, and a literary meditation, Queer Latino Testimonio, Keith Haring, and Juanito Xtravaganza is a glorious assemblage of voices, images, rhythms, and sensualities of the turbulent last two decades of twentieth-century New York City. A stirring portrait of the upheavals, deaths, and hopeful futures of bodies under siege. A marvelous piece of scholarship!' - MARTIN F. MANALANSAN IV, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champl³5