Selena schema: sharing space through stories about Selena Quintanilla Pérez

Abstract

27 years after her murder, Selena Quintanilla Pérez, “The Queen of Tejano Music,” remains a prominent icon among Latinx communities in the U.S. and beyond. Deborah Paredez coined the term “Selenidad” to represent the continual acts of remembering Selena that open spaces for Latinxs to process, reimagine, and revolutionize “Latinidad”. Drawing from this vast corpus of memories, my article analyzes recent narratives about Selena. These artifacts of Selenidad include “Selena: The Series” (Netflix, 2020-2021), the podcast “Anything for Selena” (2021) hosted by María García, and Melissa Lozada-Oliva’s “novel in verse,” “Dreaming of You” (2021). Applying Paredez’s seminal theories and expanding my previous research on consuming Selena through makeup, I closely examine the narrative components of these newest stories that continue creating a shared cultural schema among her fans.