Rather than comment on a singular passage, I would like to expand on a character. Renata/Ren, who is introduced in “You’re the Only Friend I Need” and reappears in Loca, encapsulates how race, gender, sexuality, and more compound to form a singular human identity, as explained by Eli Clare:
“Gender reaches into disability; disability wraps around class; class strains against abuse; abuse snarls into sexuality; sexuality folds on top of race…everything finally piling into a single human body. To write about any aspect of identity, any aspect of the body, means writing about this entire maze.” (Eli Clare)
Alejandro Heredia’s work delves into this quotation, presenting a range of characters that display this “maze” of identity, attempting to discern what exactly makes them who they are. Most importantly, they want to concretely know who they are to –and in– themselves.
In the case of Ren, there are seemingly two people within one body: the majority of the time, Ren outwardly presents as a man, only “transforming” into a woman in certain spaces. It is even said that she “is a different person” at the night parties, demonstrating the coexistence of two dual identities (Loca). This also highlights how, as we’ve discussed, not all aspects of one’s identity are expressed at a given moment. Under the cloak of night, Ren is free to be Renata, a privilege that is otherwise inaccessible –because it is physically unsafe– in the machismo culture of the DR (which has an entire section of vocabulary intended to alienate, mock, and project hatred onto queer identities). This racial aspect, coupled with the political climate of the world at large in the 90’s (and prior), greatly impacts Ren/Renata’s ability to authentically express their gender identity and sexuality, a dilemma that also impacts Yadiel (who is a development of Fabio in Loca). Without revealing the plot, these two characters confront and navigate the threat of their identities in an effort to authentically live their whole identities: race, gender, sexuality, and more combined in one body, living their truth.
In Loca, Heredia does not just write about these bodies and the complexity of the identities that inhabit them, he writes about what it means to navigate these identity facets within ourselves, the struggle it can be to reconcile all of the aspects into a clear picture, and the uncertainty that can plague much of the journey of self-discovery (to avoid spoilers, there is a specific quotation in Loca that I will tag after we read it for class).