The popular fifteenth birthday celebration has been celebrated in the Americas for at least 200 years, and studied by Chicana scholars and folklorists for at least fifty years. But no prior scholarly approach to the tradition compares with Rachel Valentina González’s brilliant analysis. In choosing to use twenty-first-century tools of analysis and to push the goal of folklore scholarship with her book, Quinceañera Style: Social Belonging and Latinx Consumer Identities, González is adding not only to the scholarship of the tradition, but also to the ways we can approach traditional cultural practices. Readers may perhaps find an answer to the question often asked by outsiders in terms of why Latinx families choose to spend hard-earned money, and may even go into debt, to host a seemingly extravagant and costly affair honoring their daughter’s coming of age. But more than likely, they will come away with a deeper understanding of the dynamics in their community and in the larger world of the immigrant community in the United States that impel such celebrations, and with an appreciation of the complex and often contradictory positions the tradition occupies in the Latinx community.
In addition to using what she identifies as a merger of Latinx folkloristics and cultural studies methodologies, González brings to the forefront an ethnography of the ephemeral by locating her analysis beyond the site-specific fiesta, widening the scope, as it were, and including online sites and communities, crossing borders (literal and figurative), and offering a space for a myriad of voices to speak. These voices belong to the honorees, yes, but most importantly also to the numerous satellite actors around the celebration, such as shop owners, expo organizers and attendees, dance choreographers, and artists, to name a few. Moreover, these voices are situated across the United States, in Austin, Texas, Des Moines, Iowa, Kansas City, Mexico City, and San Francisco, among other locations. Thus, the geographical sites, along with the virtual online websites, provide a multi-site grounding that further complicates and elucidates the tradition and its place in the community. Issuing forth from the central point—the tradition—these axes of analysis provide ample room for an informed and wide-ranging discussion that leads to insights beyond the obvious ones of consumerism, ritual performance, and coming-of-age rites of passage.
In Quinceañera Style, González sets out to “parse out the varying elements of the celebration to better understand the materials being used to rebrand and repurpose Latina spectacle.” Additionally, beyond “consumer rite,” as she names the pre-celebration activity, González seeks to “illustrate the layers of social politics involved as the quinceañera becomes a metonym for larger shifts in Latinx life in the United States.” It is this objective that I find the most useful and innovative, as González elegantly weaves together popular culture and critical race theories along with contemporary studies on spectacle and performance. I celebrate her use of the Anzalduan concept of amasamiento (kneading) to see the “work of quinceañeras as representations of a new generation of Latinx youth in which precarity and risk are transfigured into a recalibrated socioracial imaginary where their lives have value.” Another concept that I find usefully employed is that idea of engaño, or betrayal, particularly in the discussion of subterfuge and performance in Mexico City by the queer trans performance artivist, Lía.
González’s arguments are sound and firmly grounded in exhaustive scholarship that engages ideas from various disciplines including Latinx Studies, anthropology, and folklore studies. While undergraduates may find the language and theories difficult to understand, graduate students and scholars will relish the deft use of complex ideas applied to the tradition in innovative ways. I suspect that Quinceañera Style will quickly find a place on Latinx Studies graduate students’ reading lists and perhaps as required reading for certain Chicanx or Latinx folklore studies classes; but I recommend it for students and scholars beyond these predictable locations, for it offers a methodology and analysis that speaks beyond the object of study in the particular cultural community.
I do have a couple of issues with the book, but these are beyond the author’s control. My quibble lies with the publisher, as it appears that the copyediting was done by someone whose command of Spanish is minimal. Several errors are jarring, especially in chapter 5, in the analysis of Mexico City performance artivist Lía’s use of the quinceañera in her piece “Mis XXY Años” to explore trans and queer elements. While I can understand that perhaps Lía is playing with gender markers and using “una cuerpa” instead of un cuerpo for this purpose, it is not clear that is the case in “Habitar un espacio que es lejano, que es muy lejano a mío (sic),” especially when the translation does not indicate any reason for not making it the grammatical “al mio.” Another inconsequential but perplexing publishing error is the use of the chapter 1 title as a running head on the recto of the book throughout, instead of using the current chapter titles as is customary. The verso is correct with the first part of the book title; perhaps they got the subtitle wrong. As publishers more and more adapt the printed text for photocopying and digital formats, it would make more sense to follow the established rules and include the book title and subtitle on the verso side and the chapter titles on the recto side.
Overall, Quinceañera 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. Readers will either agree or disagree that within the “presumed respectability” of the celebration, a rebellious spirit resides; they will invariably arrive at their own conclusions. González lays out a path for them that recognizes the coloniality and genealogy of social hierarchies as powerful shapers of cultural production. In more ways than one, Quinceañera Style articulates the underlying reasons why families would spend beyond their means to honor their daughter’s transition from childhood to adulthood.
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[Review length: 990 words • Review posted on June 4, 2020]