The University of Arizona Press
April 12, 2024
Anthony Macías was interviewed by Arizona’s KJZZ radio station about his book Chicano-Chicana Americana. Macías is a scholar of twentieth-century cultural history and a professor in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California, Riverside. Read the full interview here.
In the interview, Macías said, “These bit part actors that steal their scenes and manage to carve out some kind of success. I try to convey to a general audience the cultural studies notion that that representation matters, that how you see people and how you perceive them, impacts the way that you treat them and and their chances for upper mobility in the American dream.”
About the book:
Chicano-Chicana Americana is a cultural history of Mexican Americans in film, television, and theater. Through biographical sketches of performers such as Anthony Quinn, Katy Jurado, Robert Beltran, and Lupe Ontiveros, this work asserts Mexican Americans’ proper place in the national narratives of our collective imaginary. Conveying a multicentered, polycultural America, this book shows us intriguing performers in bit parts who steal the scene and redefine what it means to be American.
