Latine Spanish and English language media has a long history in the United States. Early “greaser” and “spitfire” movies at the beginning of the twentieth century set the stage for the ways media technology and race, class, and gender representations are intertwined or what cultural studies scholars refer to as the cultural politics of Latine media. Representations of characters and narratives are not merely entertainment but powerful systems of storytelling that have often worked to justify structural politics that have framed Latine people as suspect or sexually excessive in various historical contexts. Although the largest production of Latine characters in film and radio in the early decades of the twentieth century correlated with the mass influx of Mexican migration during and after the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920, Spanish language newspapers circulated in the United States since the early nineteenth century.
The development of stories and characters, technological transformations, and power struggles over ownership of Spanish and English language newspapers, television, radio, cinema, among many others have been central to both self-empowerment and belonging for Latine communities in the United States. This seminar focused on questions of power, structural differences, and interventions in approaching Latine representation in media. Given our contemporary context when Latine communities are again in the spotlight of state policies on immigration as well as new family and gender constructions in school library books it is more important than ever for teachers in all grade levels to revisit questions of Latine representation in various media especially given the growing Latine student demographic nationwide. With that said, the seminar included discussions and readings on how Latine young people are utilizing social media to self-represent themselves and their concerns from being a “no sabo kid” to Bad Bunny’s musical imaginary of the Americas.
The conversations and discussions in this seminar produced inspiring and innovate curriculum units. Nancy Bonilla explores the complex process of identity formation for eighth-grade students navigating the "borderlands"—the challenging "in-between" space of balancing a heritage culture with mainstream American society with a focus on Cristina Henriquez’s The Book of Unknown Americans. Dan Croteau centralizes Gary Soto’s fictional novel Baseball in April to unpack the role media and Latine representations play in the lives of the characters with particular attention to gender roles and the media that surrounds not only the characters, but the student readers themselves. In her unit Melissa Dailey centers Laura Esquivel’s novel Like Water for Chocolate and the Mexican women’s voices during the Mexican Revolution and the narrative’s anchor of matriarchal genealogy and history. Eve Galanis focuses on Puerto Rico and colonialism in her unit that explores the complex history of the Puerto Rican diaspora in the Northeast with Boricua communities as active agents their own historical representations. Maria Medianero looks to Spanish language in music, food, and narratives as the foundation of her unit to highlight not only an appreciation for the language but to connect Spanish language to an empowered sense of identity. Vivian Perez-Plocharczyk’s unit reframes the theme of "home" as a central trope in Latine representation and instead of assuming its meaning approaches home as a heavily contested narrative space rather than as a static geographic location by staging a critical dialogue between Cristina Henríquez’s novel The Book of Unknown Americans and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical cinematic rendition of In the Heights. Noel Salvador Dominguez draws on novels including Juana Martinez-Neal’s Alma and How She Got Her Name, The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodson, and Junot Díaz‘s Islandborn, among others as culturally relevant heterogenous narratives that together form a framework for exploring the idea of belonging that Latine young people negotiate and transform. Katie Yates’ unit draws attention to Bad Bunny as a storyteller and a nonconforming representation of Puerto Rican identity whose musical media presence has drawn the world’s attention to Puerto Rico’s history of colonialism and commonwealth status in the United States. Taken together the curriculum units produced in this seminar emphasize that Latine representation in media is still a critical stage for cultural politics. As well, the lessons, assignments, and projects in these units take seriously Latine and other students in our contemporary K-12 education as agents in their own worldmaking.
