Overview

Quinceanera celebrations, which recognize a girl's transition to young womanhood at age fifteen, are practiced in Latinx communities throughout the Americas. But in the consumer-driven United States, the ritual has evolved from a largely religious ceremony to an elaborate party where social status takes center stage. Examining the many facets of this contemporary debut experience, Quinceanera Style reports on ethnographic fieldwork in California, Texas, the Midwest, and Mexico City to reveal a complex, compelling story. Along the way, we meet a self-identified transwoman who uses the quinceanera as an intellectual space in her activist performance art. We explore the economic empowerment of women who own barrio boutiques specializing in the quinceanera's many accessories and made-in-China gowns. And, of course, we meet teens themselves, including a vlogger whose quince-planning tips have made her an online sensation. Disrupting assumptions, such as the belief that Latino communities in the United States can't desire upward mobility without abandoning ethnoracial cultural legacies, Quinceanera Style also underscores the performative nature of class and the process of constructing a self in the public, digital sphere.

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9781477319697

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Reviews

No prior scholarly approach to [the quinceanera] compares with Rachel Valentina Gonzalez's brilliant analysis...Quinceanera Style delivers on its promise to bring out an analysis for the twenty-first century of an established yet ever-evolving tradition in the Americas...In more ways than one, Quinceanera Style articulates the underlying reasons why families would spend beyond their means to honor their daughter's transition from childhood to adulthood. * Journal of Folklore Research *

A richly nuanced study. * New Books in Folklore * No prior scholarly approach to [the quinceanera] compares with Rachel Valentina Gonzalez's brilliant analysis...Quinceanera Style delivers on its promise to bring out an analysis for the twenty-first century of an established yet ever-evolving tradition in the Americas...In more ways than one, Quinceanera Style articulates the underlying reasons why families would spend beyond their means to honor their daughter's transition from childhood to adulthood. * Journal of Folklore Research *

Author Information

Rachel Valentina GonzÁlez is an assistant professor of Mexican American and Latina/o studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She was a Woodrow Wilson Early Career Fellow and is the coeditor of Race and Cultural Practice in Popular Culture.

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