Join the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality for a book salon discussion of "Love in the Drug War: Selling Sex and Finding Jesus on the Mexico-US Border" featuring:
• Sarah Luna (Assistant Professor in Women's Studies in the Department of Anthropology and the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, Tufts University), author
• Sneha Annavarapu (Teaching Fellow in the Social Sciences, University of Chicago), discussant;
• Benjamin Fogarty-Valenzuela (Postdoctoral Fellow at the UChicago Ethnography Incubator and the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation), discussant;
• Amy Krauss (Postdoctoral Instructor, Pozen Family Center for Human Rights, University of Chicago), discussant; and
• Kristen Schilt (Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Chicago), moderator
This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. If you need assistance to attend, please contact tbrazas@uchicago.edu.
About the Book
Sex, drugs, religion, and love are potent combinations in la zona, a regulated prostitution zone in the city of Reynosa, across the border from Hidalgo, Texas. During the years 2008 and 2009, a time of intense drug violence, Sarah Luna met and built relationships with two kinds of migrants, women who moved from rural Mexico to Reynosa to become sex workers and American missionaries who moved from the United States to forge a fellowship with those workers.
Luna examines the entanglements, both intimate and financial, that define their lives. Using the concept of obligar, she delves into the connections that tie sex workers to their families, their clients, their pimps, the missionaries, and the drug dealers—and to the guilt, power, and comfort of faith. Love in the Drug War scrutinizes not only la zona and the people who work to survive there, but also Reynosa itself—including the influences of the United States—adding nuance and new understanding to the current Mexico-US border crisis.
2021 LASA Mexico Social Sciences Book Prize, Mexico Section, Latin American Studies Association
2020 Ruth Benedict Book Prize, Association for Queer Anthropology, American Anthropological Association
2020 Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize, National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA)
Honorable Mention, Sara A. Whaley Book Prize, National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA)
About the author
Sarah Luna is the Kathryn A. McCarthy Assistant Professor in Women's Studies in the Department of Anthropology and the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Tufts University, with a focus on issues of sexual labor, migration, race, borderlands, and queer studies. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago. She is a former National Endowment for the Humanities Scholar (2015), and United States Department of Education Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Abroad Fellowship in Mexico (2009) recipient, among other honors.
Date: May 27, 2021
Time: 5:00 PM - 6:15 PM