Latino/a Popular Culture » (1st Edition)

Michelle Habell-Pallán is assistant professor in the department of American ethnic studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. She is the co-editor with Mary Romero of Latino/a Popular Culture (NYU Press, 2002).

Mary Romero is Professor of Justice Studies at Arizona University and a Carnegie Scholar with the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Her books include Challenging Fronteras: Structuring Latina and Latino Lives in the U.S..

Cover artwork by Diane Gamboa. Credit-Click here

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.

Library Journal

A collection of 16 thought-provoking essays centered on media, music, theater, art, and sports, this multidisciplinary and multiethnic project stresses "the need to amplify the investigation of Latino popular culture within a larger context of the Americas." Challenging the perception of Latinization in culture, the contributors, mostly scholars from the humanities and social sciences (Arlene D villa, Luz Calvo, and Ana Patricia Rodriguez, to name a few), almost without exception follow the theme of identity among Latin groups typified in the opening essay on Latino portrayals on Spanish-language television. MTV International is the topic of a disturbing piece on music videos and social activism led by a border band. The phenomenon of Mexican American boxer Oscar de la Hoya is the subject of an essay on the Latino rejection of a cultural icon thought to be too Anglicized for many in the Los Angeles barrios. More focused on the influences of North American Latino culture than the recent Latin American Popular Culture: An Introduction, this collection deserves a space on shelves in all academic libraries. Boyd Childress, Auburn Univ. Lib., NY Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.