Marginal Latinidad: Afro-Latinas and U.S. film- This link opens in a new window
In Latino Studies, 2016, Vol.14 (3), p. 344-363
Afro-Latina/os, those that I argue here have a “marginal Latinidad,” are rarely included in what is imagined as the Latino/Hispanic population within the United States, as their mediated racialization can be difficult to read and sometimes intentionally ambiguous. Using actors Rosario Dawson, Zoe Saldana, and Gina Torres as case studies, this article asks: how are audiences reading these Afro-Latina actors’ race/ethnicity and what are the discourses informing these readings? Based on critical, textual, and reception analyses, I assert that Dawson, Saldana, and Torres’s ethnoracialization reflects their embodiment of “marginal Latinidad,” which is constructed in juxtaposition to normative Latino representation, influenced by the presence of blackness, rooted in narrative location and context, and, at times, signals ideological challenges to normative racial thinking in the United States.