One poem that stuck with me after I read it was Cherr\u00ede Moraga\u2019s The Slow Dance, <\/i>which itself is a part of the larger text: Loving in the War Years<\/i>. It starts off placing us in the head of our perspective character, presumably Moraga, watching two other people, Elena and Susan, dance. She is envious of the two, describing how they navigate the dance floor and each other\u2019s bodies with ease.<\/p>\n
She enters the dance floor, remembering how her mother described how a \u201creal man\u201d holds a woman. Moraga writes, \u201cI am my mother\u2019s lover. The partner she\u2019s been waiting for. I can handle whatever you got hidden. I can provide for you,\u201d (Line 28-29). <\/i>This highlights this sense of heteronormativity, which is almost explicit in the poem. You are either a provider or you’re not. In simple heteronormative terms, you\u2019re either the man or the woman of the relationship.<\/p>\n
She searches for Elena, stating, \u201cI am ready for you now, I want age. Knowledge,\u201d (Line 34), but she finds her still dancing with Susan. Moraga writes, \u201cI am used to being an observer. I am used to not getting what I want. I am used to imagining what it must be like,\u201d (Lines 43-45)<\/p>\n
To me, this poem isn\u2019t like a lot of the other ones which we\u2019ve read, which seem to ease in to being about queerness. I read this poem as a kind of sequel to those poems, as it begins explicitly queer but does not end there. Moraga is desperate for, as she puts it, age and knowledge. In terms of Saeed Jones, she wants to know where she goes after she punches a hole to daylight. We see her place herself into regressive heteronormative dynamics in order to cope, and in the end she doesn\u2019t get what she wants. Being openly queer is not treated like a victory, here it is just another reality. Here, the struggle of being queer is ongoing, and not simply something that ends at daylight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One poem that stuck with me after I read it was Cherr\u00ede Moraga\u2019s The Slow Dance, which itself is a part of the larger text: Loving in the War Years. It starts off placing us in the head of our perspective character, presumably Moraga, watching two other people, Elena and Susan, dance. She is envious … Continue reading Slow Dancing Through Queerness<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5716,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[344663],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2025"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5716"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1436"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1437,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions\/1437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}