Revolutionary and Lesbian: Negotiating Sexual Citizenship in Cuba 375
ically enjoyed limited sexual citizenship in the nation/state/society
built by the popular revolutionary government despite their participa-
tion in its construction. By proudly identifying as both lesbian and
revolutionary, Barbara’s life story narrative challenges the heterosexist
expectations of power and authority and the dominant discourse
which has historically constructed gay and revolutionary identities as
contradictory.Revolutionary AND Lesbian: Creating , conveying and
negotiating individual and collective identitiesLife stories express our sense of self: who we are and how we got that
way. They are also one very important means by which we communi-
cate this sense of self and negotiate it with others. Further, we use
these stories to claim or negotiate group membership and to demon-
strate that we are in fact worthy members of those groups, under-
standing and properly following their moral standards. [Linde, 1993:3]
In her work on life stories, Linde explains that pronouns are “a
central linguistic resource for establishing the self ” (1993:112). By
paying close attention to the use of syntax in the life story narrative,
we can learn more about how the speaker claims and negotiates citi-
zenship in the national community, seeking to be recognized as a
“good revolutionary,” while simultaneously identifying as a lesbian, a
member of a sexual minority often excluded from enjoying full citi-
zenship.
Voice System.
My analysis of the voices utilized by the speaker in her life story narra-
tive shows that the speaker switches between voices that demonstrate
her simultaneous identification as both a lesbian and a revolutionary.
She uses the collective first-person pronoun “we” to include herself in
a larger group of sexual minorities who, despite the ways in which
they are made invisible and discriminated against by the Revolution/
state, continue to identify with the Revolution and fight for inclusion