Nosotros Somos La Comunidad Latina: Shaping the Alternative Imagined Latina Community Across Different Spaces

Abstract

Mainstream media such as the news, radio, TV shows and movies have long been used to stereotype and categorize minorities. These highly influential institutions repeat and uphold certain ideas and images about people of color. For example, Latino men are frequently criminalized and Latinas are overly sexualized through these venues. These stereotypical representations can be harmful as they push forward ideas that negatively represent the community and impact how outside community members view them. In my dissertation, “Nosotros Somos La Communidad Latino: Shaping the Imagined Latina Community Across Different Spaces,” I develop my idea of the alternative imagined community as a media space in which Latinx people represent themselves differently from mainstream media. It is important for minority groups to have alternative media communities where they can control their own textual production because oftentimes mainstream media applies one idea to the larger group. The overarching question of this dissertation is: How are Latinx people creating and maintaining an alternative imagined community?

I look at three material sites of production Latinx people use to define and help their community: zines, TikToks and memoirs. I selected these three sites because they each represent a different type of publication that Latinx people engage in when they seek to define themselves and the values of their community. Through these sites of production, I demonstrate how Latinx people are actively contributing to shaping their community instead of having the community defined for them via mainstream venues from which they are historically excluded.