Presents innovative scholarship on Latina/o visibility in contemporary mainstream media Latina/os have seen increased visibility in the media in the past several years, especially in feature-length films, network television programs, and various digital platforms. The Gender of Latinidad: Uses and Abuses of Hybridity explores Latina/o visibility—analyzing presence, production, and interpretation throughout various media. An important contribution to the emerging field of Latina/o Media Studies, this unique volume brings together political economy and cultural studies to consider the limitations of cultural politics and explore current issues relevant to Latina/o cultural inclusion. Author Angharad N. Valdivia addresses the concept of hybridity and applies it to contemporary Latinidad, in which hybrid Latina/os lead hybrid lives and consume hybrid media. The text explores strategies for gendered visibility in a range of popular culture media, using the concept of hybridity to connect Latina/o Studies to Feminist Media Studies, Gender Studies, and Ethnic Studies. Throughout the text, the author discusses the inclusion Latina/o scholars and audiences seek and considers if such inclusion is even achievable. Offering intersectional exploration of Latinidad in mainstream media, this volume: Explores the trope of the spitfire in the context of popular media Brings Disney Studies into Latina/o Studies Discusses the dynamic inclusion of Latinidad in awards ceremonies Assesses the implicit utopias of Latina/o representation Presents the only major academic treatment of Charo Presenting an original perspective on Latina/os in media, The Gender of Latinidad: Uses and Abuses of Hybridity is an ideal text for students and scholars in areas including Gender Studies, Ethnic Studies, and general Media and Feminist Media Studies.

The author documents the ways in which identity formation and representation within the gay Latinidad population impacts gender and cultural studies today.

Presents innovative scholarship on Latina/o visibility in contemporary mainstream media Latina/os have seen increased visibility in the media in the past several years, especially in feature-length films, network television programs, and various digital platforms. The Gender of Latinidad: Uses and Abuses of Hybridity explores Latina/o visibility—analyzing presence, production, and interpretation throughout various media. An important contribution to the emerging field of Latina/o Media Studies, this unique volume brings together political economy and cultural studies to consider the limitations of cultural politics and explore current issues relevant to Latina/o cultural inclusion. Author Angharad N. Valdivia addresses the concept of hybridity and applies it to contemporary Latinidad, in which hybrid Latina/os lead hybrid lives and consume hybrid media. The text explores strategies for gendered visibility in a range of popular culture media, using the concept of hybridity to connect Latina/o Studies to Feminist Media Studies, Gender Studies, and Ethnic Studies. Throughout the text, the author discusses the inclusion Latina/o scholars and audiences seek and considers if such inclusion is even achievable. Offering intersectional exploration of Latinidad in mainstream media, this volume: Explores the trope of the spitfire in the context of popular media Brings Disney Studies into Latina/o Studies Discusses the dynamic inclusion of Latinidad in awards ceremonies Assesses the implicit utopias of Latina/o representation Presents the only major academic treatment of Charo Presenting an original perspective on Latina/os in media, The Gender of Latinidad: Uses and Abuses of Hybridity is an ideal text for students and scholars in areas including Gender Studies, Ethnic Studies, and general Media and Feminist Media Studies.

Longstanding Mexican and Puerto Rican populations have helped make people of mixed nationalities—MexiGuatamalans, CubanRicans, and others—an important part of Chicago's Latina/o scene. Intermarriage between Guatemalans, Colombians, and Cubans have further diversified this community-within-a-community. Yet we seldom consider the lives and works of these Intralatino/as when we discuss Latino/as in the United States.In Negotiating Latinidad, a cross-section of Chicago's second-generation Intralatino/as offer their experiences of negotiating between and among the national communities embedded in their families. Frances R. Aparicio's rich interviews reveal Intralatino/as proud of their multiplicity and particularly skilled at understanding difference and boundaries. Their narratives explore both the ongoing complexities of family life and the challenges of fitting into our larger society, in particular the struggle to claim a space—and a sense of belonging—in a Latina/o America that remains highly segmented in scholarship. The result is an emotionally powerful, theoretically rigorous exploration of culture, hybridity, and transnationalism that points the way forward for future scholarship on Intralatino/a identity.

Through explorations of six cases taken from various Latino ethnic groups, this book advances our understanding about meanings of Latino manhood and masculinities. The studies range from theatre and literature to men's activism and sports, showing how masculinities are embodied and performed.

In Los Angeles, night after night, the city's salsa clubs become social arenas where hierarchies of gender, race, and class, and of nationality, citizenship, and belonging are enacted on and off the dance floor. In an ethnography filled with dramatic narratives, Cindy García describes how local salseras/os gain social status by performing an exoticized L.A.–style salsa that distances them from club practices associated with Mexicanness. Many Latinos in Los Angeles try to avoid "dancing like a Mexican," attempting to rid their dancing of techniques that might suggest that they are migrants, poor, working-class, Mexican, or undocumented. In L.A. salsa clubs, social belonging and mobility depend on subtleties of technique and movement. With a well-timed dance-floor exit or the lift of a properly tweezed eyebrow, a dancer signals affiliation not only with a distinctive salsa style but also with a particular conceptualization of latinidad.

The author documents the ways in which identity formation and representation within the gay Latinidad population impacts gender and cultural studies today.