Latino/A Popular Culture - by Michelle Habell-Pallan & Mary Romero (Paperback)

About the Book

While the presence of Latinos and Latinas in mainstream news and in popular culture in the United States buttresses the much-heralded Latin Explosion, the images themselves are often contradictory. Latino/a Popular Culture brings together scholars from the humanities and social sciences to analyze representations of Latinidad in a diversity of genres.

Book Synopsis

Scholars from the humanities and social sciences analyze representations of Latinidad in a diversity of genres

Latinos have become the largest ethnic minority group in the United States. While the presence of Latinos and Latinas in mainstream news and in popular culture in the United States buttresses the much-heralded Latin Explosion, the images themselves are often contradictory.

In Latino/a Popular Culture, Habell-Pallán and Romero have brought together scholars from the humanities and social sciences to analyze representations of Latinidad in a diversity of genres--media, culture, music, film, theatre, art, and sports--that are emerging across the nation in relation to Chicanas, Chicanos, mestizos, Puerto Ricans, Caribbeans, Central Americans and South Americans, and Latinos in Canada.

Contributors include Adrian Burgos, Jr., Luz Calvo, Arlene Dávila, Melissa A. Fitch, Michelle Habell-Pallán, Tanya Katerí Hernández, Josh Kun, Frances Negron-Muntaner, William A. Nericcio, Raquel Z. Rivera, Ana Patricia Rodríguez, Gregory Rodriguez, Mary Romero, Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez, Christopher A. Shinn, Deborah R. Vargas, and Juan Velasco.
Cover artwork "Layering the Decades" by Diane Gamboa, 2002, mixed media on paper, 11 X 8.5". Copyright 2001, Diane Gamboa. Printed with permission.

Review Quotes

"Latino/a Popular Culture greatly contributes to the genres of both cultural studies and Latino studies. The editors exhort undergraduate and graduate students to continue looking at Latino/a popular coluture as "as site of invention, critique and pleasure" (p.16) since much work still needs to be done in this area."-- "Harvard Educational Review"

"The book provides an insight into the current struggles that Latinos who live in the norhern hemisphere face."-- "MELUS"

"With stunning, eloquent, and insightful essays Latina and Latino Popular Culture offers the best guide to the cultural production of the largest group of people of color in the United States. The essays broaden both our knowledge of Latino/a cultural production and challenge the traditional paradigms of cultural and ethnic studies doing so through accessible, historically informed approaches."--Mary Pat Brady, Cornell University