Mediating Chicana/o Culture

Book excerpt: Mediating Chicana/o Culture: Multicultural American Vernacular covers an unconventional array of topics—from handkerchiefs, votives, and graffiti to food, fútbol, and the Internet—as well as cutting edge literature, cinema, photography, and more. In its cross-disciplinary approach, this collection makes an invaluable contribution to the scholarship on Chicana and Chicano culture and provides engaging readings for courses in race/ethnic studies, media studies, and American studies. Collected chapters critically interrogate the underlying tensions between personal expressions and public demonstrations in their on-going negotiation of Chicana and Chicano identity. Drawing on the revolutionary work of Gloria Anzaldúa, Tómas Ybarra-Frausto, Emma Pérez, Alfred Arteaga, Chela Sandoval, Julia Watson and Sidonie Smith, the Latina Feminist Group, among others, chapters in this collection closely read the processes that seem built into the actions and behaviors, the products, the art, the literature, and the discourse surrounding the search for identity in the rush of our diverse 21st-century existence. Mediating Chicana/o Culture lays bare the methods by which we define ourselves as individuals and as members of communities, examining not only the message, but also the medium and the methods of mediating identity and culture.