Serial Mexico - (Critical Mexican Studies) by Amy E Wright

About the Book

What accounts for seriality's pervasiveness in the development of Mexican narrative, and how does the serial form define Mexican storytelling?

Book Synopsis

Honorable Mention, Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize, Modern Language Association, 2023
Honorable Mention, Premio al Mejor Libro en Humanidades, Latin American Studies Association-Mexico Section, 2025

No book until now has tied in two centuries of Mexican serial narratives--tales of glory, of fame, and of epic characters, grounded in oral folklore--with their subsequent retelling in comics, radio, and television soap operas. Wright's multidisciplinary Serial Mexico delves into this storytelling tradition: examining the nostalgic tales reimagined in novelas, radionovelas, telenovelas and onwards, and examining the foundational figures who have been woven into society.

This panorama shows the Mexican experience of storytelling from the country's early days until now, showcasing protagonists that mock authority, make light of hierarchy, and embrace the hybridity and mestizaje of Mexico. These tales reflect on and respond to crucial cultural concerns such as family, patriarchy, gender roles, racial mixing, urbanization, modernization, and political idealism. Serial Mexico thus examines how serialized storytelling's melodrama and sensationalism reveals key political and cultural messaging.

In a detailed yet accessible style, Wright describes how these stories have continued to morph with current times' concerns and social media. Will tropes and traditions carry on in new and reimagined serial storytelling forms? Only time will tell. Stay tuned for the next episode.

Review Quotes

"Once in a blue moon, a scholarly work drops that upends what we know in the humanities. Serial Mexico is this--and more. Gorgeous, lively prose serves up sophisticated, smart scholarship that radically reorients us toward Mexico's deep and rich transmedia history. Wright's edge-of-seat odyssey takes us far back into Mexico's history of storytelling, as well as all subsequent instances of cross-media proliferation and pollination. From astute analyses of early-nineteenth-century popular serialized stories to twentieth-century comics, radionovelas, and telenovelas, Wright does with Serial Mexico what Jenkins did with Convergence Culture, but with one colossal difference: Wright aptly anchors Transmedial Studies in the Global South."
--Frederick Luis Aldama, author of Mex-Ciné Mexican Filmmaking, Production, and Consumption in the Twenty-first Century

About the Author

Amy Wright is an associate professor of Hispanic studies at Saint Louis University.