Hello people, you know me, I know you. I am Carmelita Tropicana.

I say Loisaida is the place to be. It is multicultural, multinational, multigenerational, mucho multi.
And like myself , you've got to be multilingual.

I am very good with the tongue.

As a writer she has distinguished herself since 1985, when she was selected to participate in Intars musical Theatre Labs under the direction of Graciela Daniele and George Ferrencz. She has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts for Performance Art, as well as for screenwriting and playwriting. She has received a CINTAS Foundation fellowship for her literary work, as well as a 2001 writing fellowship from The Mark Taper Forum, a 2002 writing fellowship from the Cuban Arts Foundation, and in 2003 the Plumed Warrior writing award from LLEGO, a National Latin Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Organization.

In 2000, Beacon Press published I, Carmelita Tropicana: Performing Between Cultures, a Lambda Award nominee for theatre. In the opening quote in this article, Alina is speaking as her Latin-bombshell persona, Carmelita. Troyano has sampled the 'exotic other' archetype of Carmen Miranda, and put a queer, radical aesthetic spin to her. Hardly the palatable fantasy of the easy-conquered, not-too-bright Carmen.

This is a book that made me laugh out loud. It is part “diary”, part monologue, part cultural commentary by one Carmelita Tropicana, a.k.a. Alina Troyano. Troyano is a Cuban lesbian performance artist whose work skewers racial, cultural, and sexual stereotypes. Carmelita is my new patron saint.

In the preface there is a reference to Troyano's use of 'innuendo, bilingual puns, double entendre, burlesque, parody, political farce, biographical revisionism, and an irreverent appropriation and collaging of popular culture' She draws text from popular movies, past stereotypical icons, and popular music. While the style is irreverent, her themes are hardly light. In placing expropriated material in another context, it becomes reinvented, with layers of new meaning and ultimately a critique of the original manifestation itself.