Zorita in Miami: A Queer Southern History

Abstract: This article explores the life and career of the famed queer burlesque dancer who went by the stage name Zorita (née Ada Brockette; b. 1915, d. 2001), especially highlighting her many years in Miami, Florida, which coincided with major transformations in the city. It argues that Zorita’s time in Miami is a quintessential New South story that reveals the layered ways that changing concepts of gender and sexuality took shape through a prism of changing social, political, cultural, and economic forces. It shows the ways that Zorita navigated post-war urban, racial, ethnic, and Cold War anxieties in Miami. In doing so, it suggests the fragility and fraught nature of the city’s race relations, tourist-driven economy, relationship to US empire, and gender and sexual norms.