Enjoy the Dance

February 20, 2017
The rapidity of change in American politics allows Cullinan to make her second Dancing novel (after Dance with Me) a period piece set in the distant historical era of the early 2010s, in a Minnesota considering the repeal of same-sex marriage while the nation is on the edge of marriage equality. Dance teacher Tomás Jimenez’s student, Duon Graves, winds up on Tomás’s doorstep after enduring homophobic abuse from his family. Tomás’s neighbor, closeted kindergarten teacher Spenser Harris, takes the boy in. Someone needs to give Duon a new home, and Spenser realizes that Tomás cannot risk exposing his undocumented parents, whom he supports while they raise his deadbeat sister’s children, to the scrutiny of the foster care system. Cullinan balances activism and escapism as she places Tomás and Spenser’s interracial love-conquers-all romance in a context full of real contemporary challenges, letting the reader indulge hopeful thoughts of the possibility of successful support networks for gay men and immigrants without straying too far into after-school special territory. However, her analogy between the freedom of dance and the freedom to allow happiness into one’s life often feels overblown.