Bo o k Re v i e w Latino/a Popular Culture Michelle Habell-Palla´n and Mary Romero (eds.) New York University Press, New York, 2002 280 pp. Paperback ISBN: 0-8147-3625-4 Velvet Barrios: Popular Culture & Chicano/a Sexualities Alicia Gaspar de Alba (ed.) Foreword by Toma´s Ybarra-Frausto Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2002 326 pp. Paperback ISBN: 1-4039-6097-6 It was perhaps inevitable: the bastard child (Latino/a popular culture studies) of a marginalized field (Latino/a Studies) has produced a pair of anthologies. Having spent the last several years justifying the academic validity of my regular purchases of People en Espan˜ol to friends, colleagues, and students alike, I was thrilled by the appearance of these two publications. I suspect that the growing numbers of Latino/a Studies instructors who are not specialists yet nonetheless are being asked to teach courses in this rapidly expanding field will feel the same. In theory, Velvet Barrios (VB) and Latino/a Popular Culture (LPC) appear rather similar: both are interdisciplinary anthologies that examine a wide array of Latino/a popular cultural expressions, from music to theater to film to sport. To their credit, both anthologies also incorporate an impressive range of scholars, combining more established names with the lesser-known. How-
ever, this is where the practice of similitude ends: both in organization and in content, VB is designed for the more advanced student of Chicano/a popular culture, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Queer Studies, while LPC (as its title clearly denotes) is a more general text aimed at novices in the field. As Habell-Palla´n and Romero state in their introduction, LPC is intended to serve as a teaching text, and is directed towards those students at the undergraduate and graduate levels engaging in an initial exploration of Latino/a popular culture. The volume’s aim is to ‘‘examine the ways in which American popular culture has been defining ‘Latina’ and ‘Latino’ during this millennial transition period’’ (2), as it simultaneously contests a monolithic Latino/a identity with an ‘‘authentic’’ popular culture solely developed as mass media. Emphatically pan-Latino and transnational in its scope, the anthology cuts a wide geographic swath with its subject matter, in keeping with more recent scholarship of note in Latino/a Studies. LPC’s format, however, is less ground-breaking, as the text is divided into four major sections based on genre: media/ culture, music, theater and art, and sports. These groupings are ostensibly designed to render the interdisciplinary text more userfriendly to scholars approaching it from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Like much of the material dedicated to the subject of Latino/a popular culture written in the last several years, the introduction begins with a consideration of Ricky Martin and what the editors call the ‘‘politics of image’’
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as employed by the dominant US culture. While undoubtedly imbued with a rich, multi-layered subtext, I am somewhat concerned that the repeated use of Martin’s image as the point of departure in Latino/a popular culture studies unwittingly reinscribes the discrete time tables that we aim to contest in our work. To some this may seem like a minor point; however, given the power of the mainstream mass media to render Latinos invisible in the pre-‘‘Boom’’ era of popular culture, while simultaneously (as Romero and Habell-Palla´n themselves suggest) perpetuating the belief in mass media-based popular culture as the sole source of Latino popular culture, we might wish to re-examine our repeated usage of Martin as an iconic figure. And while as a whole the anthology provides novices with a solid entry into the field, a few individual essays – specifically later chapters by William A. Nericcio and Juan Velasco – lack the historical context necessary for less knowledgeable readers. Nevertheless, LPC contains numerous essays of note, among them key chapters from two of the most significant Latino/a popular culture monographs of recent years, Arlene Da´vila’s Latinos, Inc. (2001) and Raquel Z. Rivera’s New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone (2003). Other pieces, such as Ana Patricia Rodrı´guez’s skillful reading of Panamanian salsero Rube´n Blades and his music, in addition to Melissa A. Fitch’s nuanced analysis of gender-bending in the work of ChileanAmerican playwright Guillermo Reyes, offer adept analyses of artists and communities not often included in the current Latino/a popular culture canon. More heavily indebted to the prevailing theoretical frameworks of the day, as a volume VB engages in more risks, both in terms of its organizational schema and its
assertions. Indeed, the very selection of materials included in the anthology provides readers with a sense of what Gaspar de Alba considers ‘‘popular’’ in the first place. Ultimately, VB is more expansive in its definition of the popular, including various literary texts among its selections, which some may find problematic. With a nod to the legacy of el Movimiento and rasquachismo, Gaspar de Alba centers the anthology on the study of sex and gender. Arguing for a vision of Chicano/a culture as alter-Native (as opposed to sub-) culture, she proceeds to outline the architectural design of the Mexican/borderlands solar, a row of rooms situated around a central patio or sunny area. Thus, the solar, and the Chicano/a values of home, family, and community that it embodies, forms the anthology’s central organizing principal, complete with a ‘‘large walk-in closet’’(occupied by the anthology itself) dedicated to the category of gender and sexuality. Gaspar de Alba further extends the potent metaphor, as she explains how each of the essays included represents an article of clothing hanging in this closet, each falling into one or more genres of popular culture, each simultaneously occupying one or more different rooms in the solar. Including reprints of classic essays (such as Arturo’s Madrid piece on the ‘‘Authentic Pachuco’’) as well as more experimental submissions (such as Deena J. Gonza´lez’ work on ‘‘Lupe’s Song’’), VB often focuses on familiar Chicano/a cultural icons such as la Llorona, la Virgen de Guadalupe, la Malinche, and the aforementioned pachuco. The readings offered by the scholars here, however, are more often than not unfamiliar, and therein lies much of the interest in the volume. A truly multi-disciplinary endeavor, VB incorporates ethnographies in particular
Book Review
M a r ı´ a E l e n a C e p e d a
to great effect, as Karen Mary Davalos and Denise Michelle Sandoval offer adept analyses of the quincean˜era and low rider traditions, respectively. Many essays, such as Richard T. Rodrı´guez’s key work on family and nationalism in Chicano rap and hip-hop, function well when assigned to students in tandem with readings on similar topics in LPC. Highlighting – or perhaps in response to – the increased interest in the formal study of Latino/a popular culture, these are timely texts. As we might deduce from the positive
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------319 response to earlier monographs on Latino/a popular culture, anthologies like Latino/a Popular Culture and Velvet Barrios fill a much-needed pedagogical and theoretical gap; hopefully they will encourage further explorations into lesser studied areas of Latino/a popular culture as well as comparative work. Perhaps this may even lead to the institutionalization of the field y but not too much. Marı´a Elena Cepeda Williams College, MA
Latino Studies (2005) 3, 317–319. doi:10.1057/palgrave.lst.8600143
