A feminist analysis of the Chicano family that sees it as a site of political struggle with patriarchal masculinity, nationalism, and homophobia

As both an idea and an institution, the family has been at the heart of Chicano/a cultural politics since the Mexican American civil rights movement emerged in the late 1960s. In Next of Kin, Richard T. Rodríguez explores the competing notions of la familia found in movement-inspired literature, film, video, music, painting, and other forms of cultural expression created by Chicano men. Drawing on cultural studies and feminist and queer theory, he examines representations of the family that reflect and support a patriarchal, heteronormative nationalism as well as those that reconfigure kinship to encompass alternative forms of belonging.

Describing how la familia came to be adopted as an organizing strategy for communitarian politics, Rodríguez looks at foundational texts including Rodolfo Gonzales’s well-known poem “I Am Joaquín,” the Chicano Liberation Youth Conference’s manifesto El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, and José Armas’s La Familia de La Raza. Rodríguez analyzes representations of the family in the films I Am Joaquín, Yo Soy Chicano, and Chicana; the Los Angeles public affairs television series ¡Ahora!; the experimental videos of the artist-activist Harry Gamboa Jr.; and the work of hip-hop artists such as Kid Frost and Chicano Brotherhood. He reflects on homophobia in Chicano nationalist thought, and examines how Chicano gay men have responded to it in works including Al Lujan’s video S&M in the Hood, the paintings of Eugene Rodríguez, and a poem by the late activist Rodrigo Reyes. Next of Kin is both a wide-ranging assessment of la familia’s symbolic power and a hopeful call for a more inclusive cultural politics.

"“[T]he publication of Rodríguez’s book is exceptionally timely given widespread prejudices many Chicanos–Chicanas are still facing. The book is engagingly written and will certainly be of great value for specialists in the Americas, queer and feminist theory, cultural studies, popular culture, kinship, and migration.”" - American Anthropologist

"“Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Next of Kin and would recommend it highly. I plan to include it the next time I teach a gender and migration course. I think it would work well for upper-division undergraduate as well as graduate students.”
" - International Journal of Sociology of the Family

"“The centrality of the family to Chicano culture is indisputable. One of Next of Kin’s merits lies in its push to expand the notion of exactly who makes up this family. The cultural studies approach, which allows for the analysis of various modes of cultural expression, explains the general absence of canonical literary texts, many of which prominently feature both biological and fictive representations of family. Rodríguez counters this by critically engaging a rich variety of cultural practices, all of great relevance to the reconfiguration of la familia Chicana.”
" - Camino Real