Still ‘queer for Uncle Sam’?: Anita’s Latina diva citizenship in West Side Story, revisited – an interview with Deborah Paredez1

Abstract

This article, written as a conversation between performance studies scholars Deborah Paredez and Jack Isaac Pryor, revisits Paredez’s influential article, ‘“Queer for Uncle Sam”?: Anita’s Latina diva citizenship in West Side Story’, previously published in Latino Studies. While the 2014 essay explored why West Side Story captures audiences – especially Latinx ones – in spite of its racist and misogynist underpinnings, and why and how it endures as an influential cultural text in the American social imaginary, this interview asks what of Paredez’s original argument feels true and resonant nearly a decade after the original article was published, 65 years since the original film was released, and in light of its 2021 remake starring Ariana DeBose and featuring Rita Moreno in a secondary role. Of particular interest throughout is the figure of Anita/Moreno as ‘diva’ and the identificatory pleasures that she elicits across time and space, and the role that Stephen Sondheim’s contributions to this musical play in the reception process.