Entangled Sidewalks: Queer Street Vendors in Los Angeles

This article is based on my own experiences in the field and the stories of queer Latina immigrant vendors collected from 2004 to 2014. I argue that through an onto-epistemological relational framework, we can further elucidate how entangled social worlds provide new ways of understanding the world we live in. I propose reading the materiality and embodied street vending practices as not separate from, but constitutive with, ideologies about sexuality, gender, and nationality that shape, restrict, and reproduce informal street vending practices in Latino barrios. Particularly, I analyze the embodied entanglements of culturally conservative ideologies about sexuality within immigrant Latino communities across borders, individual experiences with transmigration journeys, and context of reception in Los Angeles.