Framily: Queer Kinship as a Way of Life
by Karen Jaime
5.5 x 8.5
ISBN 978-1-962365-09-3
Framily: Queer Kinship as a Way of Life is Karen Jaime’s multi-genre text combining personal reflections, interviews conducted with former co-workers and “framily” members, creative writing, critical prose, and photographs as both interrogation and testimony of the portmanteau “framily,” or friends + family. Building on Michel Foucault’s essay on homosexual male friendships “Friendship as a Way of Life,” Jaime turns to the life-sustaining queer kinships that emerge specifically for masculine-presenting people assigned female at birth who work in lesbian and queer nightlife venues. Rooted in Jaime’s years of experience working as a security/doorperson/bouncer at lesbian and queer bars/clubs in New York City, Jaime’s autoethnographic approach focuses on the relationships forged between people who perform what she terms the “not pretty labor” — the door people outside of bars/clubs and the barbacks inside, as opposed to the more visible/celebrated labor of DJs, dancers, or bartenders. Throughout, Jaime argues that the term “framily,” rather than Armistead Maupin’s conceit of “chosen family,” better captures such affective connections rooted in a shared desire for kinship and a shared commitment to communitarian survival, both within, outside of, and beyond nightlife spaces.
Karen Jaime (she/her/hers) is Associate Professor of Performing and Media Arts and Latina/o Studies at Cornell University. An award-winning scholar, professor, and author, Jaime’s research
interests lie at the intersection of performance studies, Latina/o/x studies, comparative ethnic studies, queer of color critique, and minoritarian aesthetics. In particular, Jaime’s work hinges on a broad theoretical inquiry into the rendering and consequential function of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality in performance, specifically as performance relates to queer minoritarian communities on stage, on screen, and in the everyday. Jaime is also an accomplished spoken word/performance artist who served as the host/curator of the Friday Night Poetry Slam at the world-renowned Nuyorican Poets Cafe (2003-2005). As a scholar artist, Jaime employs an interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary methodological approach grounded in the dialogic relationship between theory and practice as evidenced by her first monograph, The Queer Nuyorican: Racialized Sexualities and Aesthetics in Loisaida (NYU Press, 2021). In The Queer Nuyorican, Jaime argues for a reexamination of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe as a historically queer space, both in terms of sexualities and performance practices. Jaime’s writing has been published, or is forthcoming, in Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, e-Misférica, Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, ASAP/J, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, Performance Matters and in QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking. She has also co-edited an anthology celebrating the life and legacy of Nuyorican Poets Cafe co-founder, Miguel Algarín entitled Memorias de Miguel: The Hard Work of Love (https://memorias-de-miguel.hemispheric.org/). As a poet, her writing is included in The Best of Panic! En Vivo From the East Village, Flicker and Spark: A Queer Anthology of Spoken Word and Poetry, in a special issue of Sinister Wisdom: A Multicultural Lesbian Literary and Art Journal, “Out Latina Lesbians,” and in the anthology Latinas: Struggles and Protest in 21st Century USA.