Disobedient Women

Spotlighting the rebellious performances and artistic works of Afro-queer women in Puerto Rico

In Disobedient Women, Anastasia Valecce centers the voices and aesthetics of four contemporary Afro-queer Puerto Rican artists—Gisela Rosario Ramos (Macha Colón), Awilda Rodríguez Lora, Helen Ceballos, and Awilda Sterling-Duprey. Valecce shows how these women have used performance, visual art, and activism to resist colonial, racial, and gender oppression on the archipelago.

Puerto Rico’s colonial relationship with the United States persists, reinforced by recent austerity measures imposed by the US, infrastructure collapse, and the devastation of Hurricanes Irma and María. Within this context, Afro-queer women face heightened vulnerability under intersecting systems of colonialism, patriarchy, and heteronormativity. Valecce explores how the four artists in this book challenge dominant narratives of nationhood, family, and identity while opening space for new forms of collective resistance, queer kinship, and Afro-Caribbean embodiment.

Addressing urgent themes such as imperialism, displacement, gender violence, and cultural erasure, Valecce demonstrates how these artists transform crisis into resistance and how their creative practices are both deeply personal and radically political. Through embodied disobedience, they offer tools for collective survival and envision futures amid neglect and historical trauma. This book offers a powerful archive of rebellion, care, and creativity.