This article aims to study the national identity in Mayra Santos-Febres’ first novel Sirena Selena vestida de pena(2000), an important topic in the current Puerto Rican cultural debate. Specifically focusing upon the figure of the transvestite, this Afro-Puerto Rican author represents the body not only as a cultural metaphor of Puerto Rican national identity, but also how the subjectivity is constructed and enacted with relation to categories of gender identity.
Through the transnational queered body characterized as the simulacrum, disguise, parody and deviation, this novel undoes the concept of identity as a closed categorization and finds a space not regulated by the heteronormative demands of the nation-state or patriarchal society. In this way the dissident bodies(drags, and transvestites) in this novel contribute to explore a contact zone where the transitivity and ambiguity are defining features of the new national identities of Puerto Rico in 21th century.