Abstract
A personal narrative about the dressed body of the Other, in a play with the multiple meanings of the terms and concepts involved in the manufacture of the “marielito” as assigned identity whose attributes are intricately linked to the way in which that othered body is outfitted, shrouded and clothed, both figuratively and metaphorically. In a hypothetical, one-sided dialog with the “marielito” figure of her childhood imaginary, the author stitches together a loose collection of imprints from early 1980s Miami, present-day reflections and retrospective impressions from her young adulthood—church clothing drives and donations, garment factory floors, news media images, styles, accessories, garments, branding, films, fear, moralism, family conflict—intertwining and interweaving these fragments to create the identitary patchwork of otherness that reveals the social underpinnings of stigmatization.