Latinx TV in the twenty-first century /

The unremarkable title of this essay collection stands in contrast to its engaging contents, which feature an impressive, relevant, and accessible array of essays analyzing and critiquing the changing presence of Latinx people in a broad range of televisual texts, including streaming TV, social media, and online video platforms. Taken together, the studies in this collection focus on the world of the serial narrative, both behind and in front of the camera. Structuring the book's approach is the representational tension between TV content produced by what Aldama (humanities, Univ. of Texas, Austin) calls white oculi (the Television Industrial Complex) and brown oculi (Latinx TVLandia). The volume's most interesting moments come from critics who struggle with shows that they see as neither fully denigrating nor completely unproblematic in their representations of Latinidad. Also impressive is the sheer range of genres and the number of shows the book's contributors collectively cover. This variety and volume paradoxically undergird the collection's project of interrogating the ways that Latinx people have been decidedly invisible (or merely selectively visible) in US mass culture. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates through faculty. --Victoria A Elmwood, Loyola University New Orleans