“This is a book written from the heart. Read it, learn, and feel. I vote for Richard T. Rodríguez, a subject close to my heart.” - Holly Johnson, artist and singer of the band Frankie Goes to Hollywood
“Breathtaking and medicinal, this is one of those surprise books that you didn’t know you needed until you read it. And after reading it (in one glorious, page-turning sitting!) there is a feeling of being fuller. It enables a heartful recall of the abundant creativity of people past and present who did everything to make minoritarian misfit sensibility and practice. In its luminosity and special vibe, A Kiss across the Ocean gives readers the tools to wonder with precision about intuitive pulls to sounds and their surrounds. This book is a powerful force for good.” - Alexandra T. Vazquez, author of The Florida Room
"This at-once scholarly and personal book is a moving tribute to the escapism and comfort that music can give to the most marginalized members of society: Rodríguez provides well-researched analysis of the influences on and of post-punk bands, in realms from racial politics to ethnic cultural dynamics, and also writes of his own experiences as a young fan searching for belonging. Rodríguez’s book successfully balances an intellectual understanding of the cultural ramifications of post-punk music with poignant and alluring background stories, appealing to scholars and fans alike." - Lisa Henry, Library Journal
"In this part-memoir, part-ethnography of England and SoCal in the 1980s, author Rodríguez, a professor of media and cultural studies and English at UC Riverside, investigates what binds these two seemingly disparate cultures. Starting with his own tween-age fandom of Boy George and the Culture Club, Rodríguez plumbs the depths of the passionate, sometimes tainted love affair between British post-punks and the Latinos who worship at their altar." - Suzy Exposito, Los Angeles Times
"This book is a love letter to and memoir of the post punk and goth scene in the 1980s, written by a queer Latino author who was there, and about the connection between his two cultures: the one he was born into, and the one he chose." - San Francisco Bay Times
"Extremely well written and researched the book is a fantastic exploration into the wider reaches of UK post-punk and compulsive reading for those with an interest in subculture studies and the post-punk scene itself." - Lee Powell, Vive Le Rock
"Rodríguez could’ve easily ripped into a press corps that still largely thinks Latinos only listen to Spanish-language music backed by either accordions or congas. He does critique them but limits the bile in favor of a warm, poignant memoir-analysis, which he writes is 'animated by a deep investigative labor propelled by fannish investment.'" - Gustavo Arellano, Los Angeles Times
"An intriguing study of how music builds connections between different communities, and how pop desire translates over time and space."
- Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone
"The book is a mosaic—which is to say, Rodríguez isn’t trying to explain why the British musicians were influenced by the U.S. Latinidad, perhaps an impossible task. The mosaic includes his own experiences as a fan in Southern California, both while growing up and as a still-enthusiastic middle-aged man. And his enthusiasms are infectious. . . . Just as fans of American folk music had their understanding of the music permanently placed in a new and larger context after reading Greil Marcus’s Invisible Republic . . . so would fans of British goth rock and dance pop (and, why not, post-punk) have a similar experience with A Kiss Across the Ocean." - Jim Woster, Razorcake
"Ultimately, Rodriguez’s book is a tribute to the music that not only provided a soundtrack to his teenage years but also enabled him to navigate his way through the thorny questions of identity." - Gilbert Garcia, San Antonio Express-News
"Tender, wry, delicate, and rich, A Kiss across the Ocean is a love letter to the theatrically potent musical and visual gestures of the artists and bands of the British postpunk scene that made a difference in the mid-1980s and continue to do so today, even when people may have forgotten some of the bands’ names." - Caridad Svich, Theatre Survey
"In seven short chapters, the author’s intertwining of autobiography and a deeply researched history is a winning approach for articulating the equally intertwined friendships, influence and politics of British post-punk and Latin American cultures." - Maria Elena Buszek, Punk & Post-Punk
"The personal and political merge into the folds of a narrative that recounts a personal journey of Richard T. Rodriguez, a Latino/x Professor of Media and Cultural Studies and English, fully immersing in idea-strewn pop music with punk antecedents. Rodriguez also exudes an evocative commitment to pushing boundaries —the work does not heap contempt on the cultural appropriation committed by white musicians but instead attempts to elucidate their well-meaning hybridity: the give and take of cultures; the listening, sharing, borrowing, and becoming; the shared intimacies and reciprocities, however fleeting and imperfect." - David A. Ensminger, Society for U.S. Intellectual History
"Beyond listening to the recordings and seeing the discussed artists in performance, Rodriguez's meetings or brushes with these artists, as when he sees Siouxsie and Budgie in a fetish club, makes this text all the more special. He interviews Blue Rondo member Christos Telos while teaching abroad, does breakfast with Holly Johnson, and gets multiple texts signed by and a photo with Marc Almond. With the tribute bands the focus of the final chapter, one sees vindication. Latinx fans were no longer simply in the audience, but in the case of Strangelove's Freddie Morales as Dave Gahan, onstage. Touching from a distance, closer all the time." - Scott R. Stalcup, Journal of American Culture
"The book is valuable in furthering a grasp of the deeply nuanced cultural hybridity, orientation and style sensibilities that have informed U.S. Latinx life from its very beginnings, and how this community has in turn been pivotal in determining artistic output beyond our borders and into the mainstream. . . . , Rodriguez opens up vistas from personal experience and lifelong research to chart dizzying connections across fandom, fantasy and friendships, showing influences from Latinos on both U.S. coasts on recording artists who received and processed Latinx culture in tandem with their trans-Atlantic careers." - Benjamin Ortiz, New Lines Magazine
“A Kiss Across the Ocean makes an important contribution to US Latina/o/x transnational cultural studies.” - Melissa M. Hidalgo, Journal of Popular Music Studies
"With A Kiss across the Ocean, Rodríguez has offered scholars and fans alike a complex and heartfelt portrait of contemporary US Latinidad, cultural exchange, and queer aesthetic liberation. Written with rigor and soul, with the sounds of thrumming bass lines, searing vocal melodies, and whirling synthesizers laced into each page, the book preserves a sense of mystery about musical life without resorting to mystification, honors the affects of a good show while holding them up to the light. A Kiss across the Ocean is a beacon for anyone interested in the musical and cultural legacies of British post-punk and US Latinx cultural production, as well as a model for scholars interested in the ways our lived experiences can push our language and our theorizing—in the ways, that is, that our feelings, memories, and arguments touch." - Jonathan Leal, American Literary History
"Rodríguez potently describes the affective interactions and affinities of the transatlantic touch, allowing us to attend to these aleatory, imperceptible, complex, and difficult-to-explain phenomena. The effect of the touch on the recipient can be palpable and decisive, despite spatial, ethnic, and cultural differences." - Richard A. Grijalva, Aztlán
