U.S. Latina/o identity is a complex and panethnic construction. One of the most enduring tropes surrounding Latina women in US culture is that of tropicalism, which by erasing ethnic specificity helps construct homogenous stereotypes such as bright colours, rhythmic music, and brown skin that are represented in visual texts. Tropicalization helps position the Latina body as oversexed as well as sexually available; all that is identified with seductive clothing, curvaceous hips and breasts, long brunette hair or extravagant jewellery. The article concerns Latina images in US media and popular culture and focuses on such stars as Jennifer Lopez and Salma Hayek in order to explore the gendered signifiers surrounding Latinidad and Latina iconicity. The female ethnicity is depicted as other through its categorization and marginalization in relation to dominant constructions of Whiteness and femininity. The article bridges the approaches of gender studies and Latina/o studies with recent research on hybridity and transnational identities.
The article concerns the hybrid phenomenon of Tex-Mex cuisine which evolved in the U.S.-Mexico borderland. The history of the U.S.-Mexican border area makes it one of the world’s great culinary regions where different migrations have created an area of rich cultural exchange between Native Americans and Spanish, and then Mexicans and Anglos. The term ‘Tex-Mex’ was previously used to describe anything that was half-Texan and half-Mexican and implied a long-term family presence within the current boundaries of Texas. Nowadays, the term designates the Texan variety of something Mexican; it can apply to music, fashion, language or cuisine. Tex-Mex foods are Americanised versions of Mexican cuisine describing a spicy combination of Spanish, Mexican and Native American cuisines that are mixed together and adapted to American tastes. Tex-Mex cuisine is an example of Mexicanidad that has entered American culture and is continually evolving.
The article examines the nostalgic landscape of Miami depicted in Susanna Daniel's debut novel Stiltsville (2010). The setting of the novel is the actual community named in the title of the book and it refers to a group of houses built on pilings about a mile offshore in Biscayne Bay. The analysis proceeds according to methodology presented by the literary theorist Hana Wirth-Nesher in her article titled "Impartial Maps: Reading and Writing Cities", published in Handbook of Urban Studies (2001), in which she identifies four aspects of cityscape in the representation of the city in narrative: the built, the 'natural', the human, and the verbal. The paper discusses the nostalgic construction of the past in the novel. Nostalgic notions of preserving the past have been linked with the concepts of cultural heritage and the preservation movement.
The 1990s marks the emergence of a phenomenon in which third generation white ethnic Americans began to reclaim their roots. That was also the decade when the revival of the Irish-American gangster in Hollywood started. This article analyses the ethnic portrayal of Irish-Americans in the gangster film genre from the period of 1990-2010. The films illustrate the process of the shaping of the Irish-American identity by both the American influences and the ethnic environment. Protagonists' actions are driven by tribal codes of behaviour, loyalty and revenge, all presented with the traditional Hibernian heritage and Catholic faith. The Irish-American characters who hope to define their own identity and assimilate into the American mainstream, soon find out that they cannot escape their ethnic background. Their identity crisis is rooted in inner conflict resulting from the betrayal of Irish heritage in the quest for social acceptance in the American society.
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