"A lively ethnography that brilliantly reveals how Filipino gay immigrants manipulate symbols and meanings in order to survive and even flourish within the racial, ethnic, class, and gendered spaces of America and a globalizing world. "Global Divas" is a must-read for all those interested in the intersections of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and immigration status."--Yen Le Espiritu, author of "Home Bound: Filipino American Lives across Cultures, Communities, and Countries"

Preface vii
Introduction: Points of Departure 1
1 The Borders Between Bakla and Gay 21
2 Speaking in Transit: Queer Language and Translated Lives 45
3 "Out There": The Topography of Race and Desire in the Global City 62
4 The Biyuti and Drama of everyday Life 89
5 "To Play with the World": The Pageantry of Identities 126
6 Tita Aida: Intimate Geographies of Suffering 152
Conclusion: Locating the Diasporic Deviant/Diva 184
Notes 193
An Elusive Glossary 199
Works Cited 205
Index 219

Martin F. Manalansan IV is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the editor of Cultural Compass: Ethnographic Explorations of Asian America and coeditor of Queer Globalizations: Citizenship and the Afterlife of Colonialism.