Latina Teens, Migration, and Popular Culture

The Author: Lucila Vargas is Associate Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her Ph.D. in international communication from the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Social Uses and Radio Practices (1995) and editor of Women Faculty of Color in the White Classroom (Peter Lang, 2002).

«This is a gracefully written and wonderfully illuminating study of young transnational Latinas’ media uses, living outside the main U.S. centers of Latinidad. Lucila Vargas deploys theoretical insight skillfully but critically, using Fernando Ortiz, Edward Said, Linda Martín Alcoff, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Judith Butler. Throughout, however, the voices of the teens are respectfully placed at center stage. This is a mature and searching report on changes and dilemmas in communication and ‘race’ in the contemporary USA.» (John D.H. Downing, Director, Global Media Research Center, Southern Illinois University Carbondale)«Lucila Vargas presents a sensitive and reflexive portrait of the Latina migration experience via a transnational media literacy project. Her sophisticated use of poststructural theories of identity as a performance, combined with critical race theory and current research on the psychological development of migrants and teens, makes this a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the humanities and social sciences. The analysis Vargas culls from working with her teenage girl subjects sets an action-research agenda for studying immigration and belonging in the contexts of hegemonic media representations, painful migration memories, and the lived realities in the New Latino South.» (Vicki Mayer, Tulane University)