Queering and Transing the Great Lakes

Abstract

In “Queering and Transing the Great Lakes: Filipino/a Tomboy Masculinities and Manhoods across Waters,” I use a Filipino/a queer trans (transnational/transgender/transwaters) and postcolonial approach to examine Nice Rodriguez's semiautobiographical fiction in his/her collection of short stories, Throw It to the River (1993). Based in Toronto, Canada (on Lake Ontario), from 1988 to 2004, Rodriguez, a self-identified Filipino/a tomboy writer, addresses themes of migration, immigration, displacement, and class/poverty; the US-Marcos dictatorship; queer desire, love, sexuality; and tomboy masculinities and manhoods in his/her stories. By critically reading Rodriguez's stories, in this essay, I also theorize how the Great Lakes or Great Lakes region functions as a transnational water-based border zone or crosscurrents space in the “(Upper) Midwest” that links Filipino sites in the diaspora such as Duluth, Minnesota, and Toronto, as well as how these waters also connect with other waterscapes in the Philippines such as the Pasig River and Manila Bay.