‘Brilliantly argued and meticulously researched, Rachel Hynson's Laboring for the State represents a breakthrough in understanding how Cuba's Communist state established direct connections between the grand patriarchal project of national salvation and the intimate lives of citizens. Her analysis of the rehabilitation of sexual transgressors such as pimps, prostitutes as well as average citizens who questioned the merits and values of Communist-led redemption is as unique and refreshing as it is fascinating and convincing.'
Lillian Guerra, University of Florida
‘Laboring for the State elevates the literature on the early years after the 1959 Cuban revolution to a new level of sophistication and complexity. Based on a rich tapestry of sources, Hynson uncovers the ‘unintended consequence' of previously understudied revolutionary campaigns. Significantly, Hynson provides a genuine intersectional analysis of Cuban history that never forgets or downplays that the island's push toward European heterosexual gender norms – the New Family – often came at the expense of black and mulato bodies.'
Devyn Spence Benson, Davidson College
‘Rachel Hynson's Laboring for the State is essential reading for anyone interested in how Cuba's revolutionary state established hegemony. In rich and engaging detail, Hynson tracks the state's systematic intervention into even the most intimate levels of society. We learn how conservative visions of the nuclear family, women's reproductive roles, and sexual deviance were central to the attempts to regulate and control citizens. This is an important and impressive book that will reshape how we think about revolutionary Cuba's origins.'
Lorraine Bayard de Volo, University of Colorado, Boulder
Hynson’s “granular history of the evolution of state policy toward the Cuban family makes it impossible to ignore the historical roots of what the government sees as ‘problems’ today. Hynson’s deconstruction of propaganda and rumors and reconstruction of the likely truth is a valuable project in a country whose government so highly values history, and where disputes over what really happened take on monumental political importance. Drawing on varied and fascinating sources, Hynson has written a social history of the first twelve years of revolutionary Cuba, and explained to her audience how those years shaped Cuba today. Students of the revolution in Cuba and social upheaval elsewhere would do well to follow her impressive example.” Click here for full review.
Anasa Hicks for H-LatAm
“Methodologically, Hynson pushes beyond previous scholarship’s tendency to rely on leaders’ discourse. Hynson focuses instead on the law and other state practices, which lets her revise existing assumptions. For example, an earlier wave of scholars often pointed to leaders’ speeches (and the rise of boarding schools) as evidence that, by the mid-1960s, state leaders began to see the family as an impediment to socialist consolidation. But Hynson shows that the state’s campaign to encourage legal marriage continued intermittently throughout the decade. Indeed, the campaign focused on the provinces considered most ‘rebellious,’ suggesting that the state saw nuclear families as stabilizing rather than a bulwark against socialism.”
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Michelle Chase for Hispanic American Historical Review
“Rachel Hynson provides an engaging and well-structured examination of postrevolutionary policies in Cuba that emphasized the nuclear family and put Cubans’ labor at the service of the state. Hynson focuses on the concept of the ‘New Family’: a legally married couple with a male breadwinner working in state-approved employment outside of the home and a wife whose reproduction followed state directives (2).” Click here for full review.
Nicole Pacino for The Americas
“In Laboring for the State, readers gain a fascinating insight into the historical unfolding of Cuban socialist morality as a series of ideologically driven ‘social engineering’ programs foisted on the Cuban population from the late 1950s to 1970s.” Click here for full review.
Ricardo Pérez for Bulletin of Latin American Research
“Hynson’s study… provocatively centers struggles over family organization as a means to analyze processes of state formation and people’s everyday choices. In this way it offers an important contribution to the historiography of the Cuban Revolution and how revolution intersects with ideas about gender, family, and women.” Click here for full review.
Emily Snyder for Latin American Research Review
“Hynson’s analysis is most revealing when she explores not only how and why the revolutionary government attempted to reinforce state authority through the New Family, but also when and where those projects took place. Here we come to understand the full breadth and depth of social and economic control the state hoped, and ultimately failed, to achieve.”
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Tiffany Sippial for New West Indian Guide (Netherlands)
“Hynson… elaborat[es] a suggestive reinterpretation of sexuality and the question of gender in the formulation of a supposedly socialist state that aspired to overcome the bourgeois and capitalist model.”
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Vicent Sanz Rozalén for International Review of Social History (Netherlands)
“Laboring for the State muestra, y esa es una de sus virtudes, cómo y en qué sentidos las concepciones de género fueron un frente de lucha tanto para el Estado como para un pueblo que recibió, resistió, transformó y resignificó el proyecto moral de los poderes políticos. Pero la autora va más allá y se pregunta qué dice ese dato de las necesidades productivas, de consenso y de control político del poder institucionalizado, entonces en formación.” Click here for full review.
Ailynn Torres Santana for Cuban Studies
"...Laboring for the State represents a game-changing contribution in the field, utterly transforming what questions can be asked and what answers can be found." Click here for full review.
Lillian Guerra for Journal of Women's History