Quinceañeras: Latinidades and Girlhood in Popular Culture

From dramas to reality TV to advertising, quinceañeras are familiar across mainstream media in the United States. The celebration event for fifteen-year-old girls has evolved over time and today is immersed in gender politics and consumer culture while speaking to Latina/o/x assertions of culture, belonging, tradition, and assimilation.

Jillian M. Báez, Diana Leon-Boys, and Angharad N. Valdivia edit a collection that draws on the expanding field of girlhood studies to examine the increasing visibility of the event and the figure of the quinceañera herself in pop culture. The contributors focus on quinceañeras as a trope for English-language media’s treatment of Latina girlhoods and Latinx cultures but also examine how use of the quinceañera charts deepening openness and inclusivity within Latinx culture.

Timely and thought-provoking, Quinceañeras provides an interdisciplinary exploration of a celebration and its central figure within studies of Latina/o/x identity, race, class, gender, and sexuality.

Contributors: Sonya M. Alemán, Jillian M. Báez, Ariana A. Cano, Dolores Inés Casillas, Mari Castañeda, Michael Anthony DeAnda, Kelly Ferguson, Litzy Galarza, Rachel González-Martin, Jillian Hernandez, Karla Larrañaga, Diana Leon-Boys, Stephanie Melissa Pérez, Angharad N. Valdivia, and Claudia Evans-Zepeda