ABSTRACT
Cristy C. Road’s 2012 graphic memoir Spit and Passion contests queer and Latinx narratives as it implements the genre of life story within the larger counter-histories that are told by marginalized people. I argue that Road’s comic uses the trope of the closet and the style of the grotesque to explore interwoven issues of sexuality and ethnicity. I draw on José Esteban Muñoz’s disidentification theory and Juana Maria Rodríguez’s analysis of queer Latina gestures in my chapter. In the first section, I examine the metaphor of the closet as it is morphs into a physical setting. Road transforms the closet in the comic medium to show readers how and why it was necessary for queer adolescents growing up in a hostile, homophobic culture. In the second section, I contend the grotesque in comics can be a visual-verbal tool to reshape and resist oppressive ideologies in media and school.
