In this unit, students will be asked to explore the impact that both mainstream media and Latinx media have on the formation of the teenage characters identity in Gary Soto’s novel Baseball in April. Soto’s work is an anthology of short stories set in Fresno, California, in the 1980s focusing on significant coming of age events of the Mexican American protagonists. These activities include first crushes, first dates, the influence of social status on identity, independence from family, struggles with body image, and academic versus athletic ability. Often, these events are linked to the character’s gender identity.
Throughout the text, the stories deal with a variety of issues facing the characters as it relates to media. Some characters see media as access to a model of what it means to be a teenager while others struggle with their perceived failures to live up to those images in media. Some characters embrace the connection to consumerism that is related to media in the 1980s associating material items with social status and happiness. Stories also tend to show the beginning stages of the social problems associated with anxiety that are developing at the time and explode into the modern world.
Media in these texts vary from mainstream music and film of time (i.e. Prince and The Karate Kid) to more Mexican American influenced media (Los Lobos and La Bamba). The consumption of media is related to the issues that the young protagonists face throughout the stories. In reviewing the above teenage concerns, these are timeless issues that are not limited to the worldview of teenagers in the 1980s, but also to students in today’s world. While some of my students identify as Latinx, others identify as black, white, Arab, and Indian, among many other racial and ethnic identities. While students today seem less influenced by the media types of the 1980s, today’s media, mostly social media and the Internet, have a significant impact on their identity formation.
In this unit, students will explore the role that media has in shaping their identity focusing on their gender, their role in their family, their role in the academic setting, and their general sense of who they are and who they want to be.
