Exploring the queer connections transnationally becomes difficult as state-sanctioned violence harms, hides, and freezes the queer body in space. Queer theorists such as Jasbir Puar and Joseph Massad have tracked the ways in which queer connections expand communities yet are interrupted by states that seek to repress LGBTQIA+ people. These scholars’ work analyze the queer outside of Western frameworks. They grapple with the imperial powers that translate and transfer homophobia and transphobia to places that have yet to experience and employ uniquely-Western violence.

In  Jennifer Tyburczy’s Queer Traffic: Sex, Panic, Free Trade, she continues this legacy of exploring Western violence by analyzing the free trade flows built by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Tracking what Tyburczy calls “sex on the move” requires a queer performance studies framework that centers bodies labeled as deviant or undesirable. To do this she uses sex to analyze free trade, finding power in “bottomhood.” With a focus on free trade practices in Mexico during the last two Institutional Revolutionary Party presidencies, this book centers transnational experiences with trafficking, and considers how queer people who defy normative conceptions of free trade through their movements contribute to Tyburczy’s notion of “queer traffic.”

Chapter One, “Porn Pirates,” examines the illicit reproduction of pirated and pornographic media in Mexico. Tyburczy begins her analysis of Mexico’s relationship to “pornways” by beginning in Tepito, Mexico City’s primary market for pirated CDs and pornography.  Through discussions about NAFTA regulations and the sex panic that impacted the movement of porn from the US to Mexico, this chapter focuses on people who began producing porn in Mexico and the bodies of the women in these videos that are interpreted as nonnormative. Tyburczy ultimately argues against the surveillance of these producers and actors. To contextualize her analysis of “pornways” through performance studies, she ends the chapter by looking at the piece Xipe Totec Punk. This section argues that Xipe Totec Punk calls out the colonial underpinnings of free trade agreements like NAFTA and continues to confront the violence that systems like this put on queer bodies by dictating who can perform queerness.

Chapter Two, “Importing Degradation,” explores the aftermath of the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA), NAFTA, and Canadian Customs’ confiscation and destruction of queer, trans, and black print material sent to queer, feminist, and leftist bookshops. This section of the book combines interviews with organizers who fought these actions with archival work conducted at the ArQuives and Sexual Representation Collection at the Bonham Centre. Tyburczy argues that Canada took these actions due to fears of US cultural dominance. The chapter ends with an analysis of a performance analysis “When The State Says ‘No One Likes Fat Girls.’” This section points out how fat bodies are stuck between the junk food industry and personal responsibility, and demonstrates how Bülle, the artist behind the performance, crips the obesity epidemic and challenges the systems that limit fat sexuality.

In chapter Three, “Sex, Drugs, and Intellectual Property Law,” Tyburczy looks at how NAFTA’s IP provision influenced narratives around antiretroviral scarcity. To contextualize this topic, the chapter describes performance art pieces shown in museums in Mexico that critique the necropolitical nature of IP law, the politicization of antiretrovirals, and tell the stories of people who need antiretroviral medications. The chapter ends with a performance analysis of Lechedevirgen Trimegisto’s México exhumado. Tyburczy’s look at this piece points out that Trimegisto is attempting to queer the people who have perpetuated the negative impacts of IP laws. Chapter Four, “Dancing Punta on NAFTA Time,” redefines what activism can look like by analyzing the quotidian acts of queer migrants in Tijuana. More specifically, Tyburczy is looking at the performance of punta, an Afro-Latinx, Afro-Indigenous, Garifuna dance style. Through this analysis and ethnographic interviews, this chapter demonstrates how LGBTQ+ migrants steal NAFTA time as a form of resistance. The performance used at the end of this chapter, NAFTAlina: The Musical, uses imagery of the gimp to critique the desire of free trade by eroticizing the pain that comes from it. 

The epilogue returns to Tyburczy’s “queer traffic.” She asserts one final time that “queer traffic” should be used to challenge the systems that bear down on the performances of marginalized people. This section continues to call into question the usage of the word “traffic” as it can often erase the reasons why migration or movement are necessary. 

Queer Traffic opens up room for further conversations about the ways performances of queerness in transnational contexts challenge systems of control and violence. While I think that this work does an impressive job of utilizing previous scholarship to ground its theoretical findings, I often had a difficult time finding the throughline of each chapter. More specifically, I think that returning to “bottomhood,

 “queer traffic,” and sex as analytic tools could make the case study sections in each chapter stronger. Despite this, the book makes a significant and timely contribution to queer studies, performance studies, and border studies as queer migrants are subject to increased amounts of violence at the border and beyond. It will be of interest to scholars in American studies, cultural studies, and transnational studies, offering a crucial framework for understanding free trade agreements’ impact on sexuality across borders.