NewsTaco Podcast Network, Episode 2: Two Laredenses

By Victor Landa, NewsTaco

I catch up with my high school friend Billy Nericcio, now a Chicano literary theorist, cultural critic, American Literature scholar, and Professor of English andComparative Literature at San Diego State University. He’s also Currently Director of the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences program at SDSU. He wrote a book titled Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the “Mexican” in America that has to do with the representations of Mexican and Mexican-Americans in pop culture.

We talked about that, about growing up on the border with Mexico, Trump, millennials, media y mas.

I know you’ll enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed talking, catching up.

Suggested reading

A rogues’ gallery of Mexican bandits, bombshells, lotharios, and thieves saturates American popular culture. Remember Speedy Gonzalez? “Mexican Spitfire” Lupe Vélez? The Frito Bandito? Familiar and reassuring—at least to Anglos—these Mexican stereotypes are not a people but a text, a carefully woven, articulated, and consumer-ready commodity. In this original, provocative, and highly entertaining book, William Anthony Nericcio deconstructs Tex[t]-Mexicans in films, television, advertising, comic books, toys, literature, and even critical theory, revealing them to be less flesh-and-blood than “seductive hallucinations,” less reality than consumer products, a kind of “digital crack.”

Click on the image to buy.