Winner of the Emily Toth Award for Best Single Work in Women's Studies, Popular Culture Association
Co-winner of the Elli Kongas Maranda Prize, Women's Section of the American Folklore Society (AFS)

A dynamic study of social negotiation and consumerism in the coming-of-age quinceanera celebration and the impact of normalizing spectacles of luxury.

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.

About the Author
Rachel Valentina Gonzalez 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.

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 *
Quinceanera Style provides a unique and thorough analysis of quinceaneras unlike any currently available...Based on extensive research and employing different methods, such as representational analysis and ethnography, this text has the potential for vast transnational and interdisciplinary reach...the book makes significant scholarly interventions and successfully offers girlhood, media, gender, folklore, and Latinx studies scholars means of expanding understandings of quinceaneras through an intersectional lens. * Women's Studies in Communication *
Rachel Valentina Gonzalez has written the anticipated twenty-first-century analysis of quinceanera practices...It is a long-overdue book and one for every scholar of folklore and Latinx cultural studies...Quinceanera Style is a powerful vehicle for understanding the hypervisibility and invisibility of Latinx residents in US public space and how class performance further initiates belonging and exclusion. It is recommended for graduate students and scholars interested in rethinking heritage studies, ethnic studies, American studies, and humanities analyses of consumption, digital realms, and marketing. * Journal of American Folklore *



Book Information
ISBN 9781477319697
Author Rachel Valentina Gonzalez
Format Paperback
Page Count 232
Imprint University of Texas Press
Publisher University of Texas Press
Weight(grams) 340g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 20mm