[2] Báez is best known for her performance texts Dominicanish, Comrade, Bliss Ain't Playing and Levente no.
[5] In her writing about her bi-cultural experiences, Báez chooses to view the different countries she has migrated to and from and the concept of borders as something different from just physical locations.
More than limiting me, it is that space of creation.”[6] This view of borders represents Báez’s transcendence of physical location; it is a common theme in her work and is something that allows her to discuss identity in a unique way.
Báez's works are related to the communities that she belongs, mainly a penta-ocean that she swims up, down and around: her migrant-womanhood-working class-black-heart centric self.
Swimming in all possibilities texturas melodias en encuentros posibles[7]A review of Comrade, Bliss ain't Playing describes the work as "an intimate journey dressed up with a beautiful vulnerability"[8] Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Díaz has said of Báez:
Josefina Báez has been breaking open hearts and re-ordering minds for more years than I care to count.
[9]Báez uses her writing and performance to make several comments on race and identity, embracing her blackness and her Dominican heritage.
[12] Despite living in New York City, a racially and culturally diverse setting, Báez and other immigrants still feel the struggle everyday of not being accepted.
The concept of transnational barrios and the adaptation to new sociocultural environments is explored in her work, A 1 2 3 Portrait of a Legend, in which a Ciguapa, a mythical creature from Dominican Republic folklore, migrates to New York City.
[16] However, as argued by Emilia Maria Duran-Almarza, an associate Professor at the Universidad de Oviedo, “In the process of adapting to the hectic urban life, Ciguapa undergoes a sociocultural metamorphosis that involves a radical change… in the nature of her divinity.
No longer a goddess, and pulled by what the narrative voice identifies as an inescapable assimilation force, her feet take human form…”.
Ay Ombe Retreats have already been held at: Dominicanish premiered in 1999 in New York and Báez has presented it all over the US and internationally.
This technique exposes stereotypes, discrimination, and internalized psychological issues of straddling linguistic and cultural spaces.
[24] In her own words, “It is in these interstices of language where one can uncouple identity from fixed, discrete categories, and rather consider the multitude of elements at play in the formation of an individual.”[25] As she retells her experience of learning English, she moves her mouth and body in unique ways, while her feet remain still.
"[27] Báez comes back to this statement later in the work explaining how after some time in America, she developed such great English syntax and vocabulary that her teachers were shocked.
Báez talks about the constant movement that many immigrants feel in their lives in an interview in which she asserts, “So my home, then, is el ni’e.
[22] In her performance of Dominicanish, she uses examples of daily activities as ways to resist a culture that is trying to erase her colored body.
The performance, which went under the title "OM is 10" was followed by an academic symposium "Dialogue Dominicanish" organized and co-ordinated by Esther Hernandez (Brown University).
There is a part where Báez expresses her happiness of being newly married, which quickly transitions to her frustration of being expected to live up to gendered housewife duties as she angrily performs acts of domesticity.