Graduation Year
2020
Date of Submission
5-2020
Document Type
Campus Only Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
History
Reader 1
Sarah Sarzynski
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
2020 Luis A Salazar
Abstract
For Latino communities and immigrants in the United States, representation in Hollywood and other media sources has long included the reproduction of various stereotypes that divided them from white Americans. For artists like Gregory Nava and Sandra Cisneros, who centered the lives of Latino communities and immigrants in their work, they were deemed reliable because they both embraced their to the Latino community. For Nava, his connection was his upbringing near the southern border and his experience crossing back and forth often to visit family. For Cisneros, her connection was growing up in a primarily Latino community in Chicago. They both channeled their lived experiences as sources of inspiration in the development of their projects. Both Nava and Cisneros contributed to the meaningful expansion of representations of Latino in the U.S. media in the 1980s, around the same time that IRCA debates were taking place. Even so, this examination of Gregory Nava’s El Norte and Sandra Cisneros’ “The House on Mango Street” revealed the reproduction of various stereotypes of Latino communities and immigrants, suggesting a more complex division in media coverage than just one between white U.S. Americans and Latin Americans. Like Nava and Cisneros, Latin Americans were also responsible for recreating and reconfirming stereotypes of Latino communities and immigrants.
Recommended Citation
Salazar, Luis, "How Culture Influences Policy: Popular Representations of Latino Immigrants and the Immigration and Reform Act of 1986" (2020). CMC Senior Theses. 2431.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/2431
This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.
