Description: Winner, 2016 ALA-Choice Outstanding Academic Title Hedrick illuminates how discourses of Americanization, ethnicity, gender, class, and commodification shape the genre of "chica lit," popular fiction written by Latina authors with Latina characters. Looking at chica lit's market-driven representations of difference, poverty, and Americanization, Hedrick shows how this writing functions within the larger arena of struggles over popular representation of Latinas and Chicanas.
Review Quotes: Hedrick argues that chica lit novels negotiate a fine line between selling ethnicity and not seeming too ethnic or threateningly so; the lesson of chica lit is assimilable Americanness to which being Latina merely adds flavor without presenting conflict or critique.-- "Marta Caminero-Santangelo, University of Kansas"