Crip Colony: Mestizaje, Us Imperialism, and the Queer Politics of Disability in the Philippines

Sony Coráñez Bolton

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Book cover for Crip Colony: Mestizaje, Us Imperialism, and the Queer Politics of Disability in the Philippines
Book cover for Crip Colony: Mestizaje, Us Imperialism, and the Queer Politics of Disability in the Philippines
Book cover for Crip Colony: Mestizaje, Us Imperialism, and the Queer Politics of Disability in the Philippines
Book cover for Crip Colony: Mestizaje, Us Imperialism, and the Queer Politics of Disability in the Philippines

Crip Colony: Mestizaje, Us Imperialism, and the Queer Politics of Disability in the Philippines

Crip Colony: Mestizaje, Us Imperialism, and the Queer Politics of Disability in the Philippines

Sony Coráñez Bolton

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Description

In Crip Colony, Sony Coráñez Bolton examines the racial politics of disability, mestizaje, and sexuality in the Philippines. Drawing on literature, poetry, colonial records, political essays, travel narratives, and visual culture, Coráñez Bolton traces how disability politics colluded with notions of Philippine mestizaje. He demonstrates that Filipino mestizo writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries used mestizaje as a racial ideology of ability that marked Indigenous inhabitants of the Philippines as lacking in civilization and in need of uplift and rehabilitation. Heteronormative, able-bodied, and able-minded mixed-race Filipinos offered a model and path for assimilation into the US empire. In this way, mestizaje allowed for supposedly superior mixed-race subjects to govern the archipelago in collusion with American imperialism. By bringing disability studies together with studies of colonialism and queer-of-color critique, Coráñez Bolton extends theorizations of mestizaje beyond the United States and Latin America while considering how Filipinx and Filipinx American thought fundamentally enhances understandings of the colonial body and the racial histories of disability.

About the Author

Sony Coráñez Bolton is Assistant Professor of Spanish, American studies, and Latinx and Latin American Studies at Amherst College.

Critical Reviews

"Sony Corañez Bolton's Crip Colony is a theoretically sophisticated contribution to the current surge in Filipinx American studies scholarship."

--Martin Joseph Ponce "Society for U.S. Intellectual History" (10/1/2023 12:00:00 AM)

"In this stunning theoretical and archival work, Sony Coráñez Bolton dives into the interstices of global colonial strategies and postcolonial projects by re-examining culturally significant Philippine images and narratives using the lenses of race, disability, and queerness. It is a monumental feat that begins with something small: a childhood memory of his mother using three languages-- Spanish, English, and Tagalog--that lets him map out his own positionality as a mestizo Filipinx American professor of Spanish."

--Anna Felicia C. Sanchez "Southeast Asian Studies" (9/1/2023 12:00:00 AM)

"Crip Colony accomplishes and articulates a critical remapping of the Philippines and other spaces. Advocating for Filipinx and Latinx bodies to refuse disabling imperial diagnoses, this book contributes to postcolonial, disability, and Filipinx studies and will influence related fields for years to come."

--Drew Trinidad "GLQ" (1/1/2024 12:00:00 AM)

Publishing Information

Publisher: Duke University Press
Pub date: 2023-02-17
Length: 224 pages

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