Puerto Rican Latina Youth Coming Out to Talk About Sexuality and Identity

ABSTRACT

Public health efforts focused on Latina youth sexuality are most commonly framed by the syndemic of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, a narrow and often heteronormative focus that perpetuates silences that contribute to health inequities and overlooks the growing need for increased education, awareness, and support for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth. This article presents findings from the project Let’s Talk About Sex: Digital Storytelling for Puerto Rican Latina Youth, which used a culturally centered, narrative-based approach for analyzing participants’ own specifications of sexual values and practices. The strength of digital storytelling lies in its utility as an innovative tool for community-based and culturally situated research, as well as in its capacity to open up new spaces for health communication. Here we present two “coming out” case studies to illustrate the value of digital storytelling in supporting the development of meaningful and culturally relevant health promotion efforts for LGBTQ-identified Puerto Rican Latina youth across the life span.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback.

Funding

Research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under award number R21HD075081. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Notes

¹ Details on the larger study can be found in two other publications (Gubrium et al., forthcoming; Gubrium & Peterson, forthcoming).

² Pseudonyms are used for all participants.

Additional information

Funding

Research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under award number R21HD075081. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.