Saturday, August 12, 2006

Latin@s are pissed off on LJ. Also, I like Dirty Girls Social Club. I like how she put in the issues of black Latin@s, domestic violence, political Latin@s, Latin@s who have lived in New Mexico before some of those punk ass white folk stepped off the boat, lesbians, and minority representation in the media into the chick lit genre. I mean, there's no reason a chicklit book needs to be devoid of politics or serious issues, in fact, I think the genre allows women to talk about serious issues on the sly- as Bridget Jones had the epinany that she doesn't think she needs calories to live, as in the Ivy Chronicles, Ivy Ames discovers that one can put their kids in public school and all hell will not break lose(also there's a small bit about how private schools don't want kids that are too diverse- the black admissions director(whose mother was a maid) says that Colin Powell's kid would be ok, but not the son of a maid(although he is a genius) or in the arguably chicklit novel I Wish I had a Red Dress, there is a lot of discourse about woman of color feminism, and also, the problems of negoiating space.

Now, if they had published these books as serious novels, these issues wouldn't be in front of such a large audience. They wouldn't want to be 'class warriors', or 'reverse racist' or 'femininazis who want to destroy the black family'. But put a few cartoons on the cover, put some blurbs about how it's a sassy beach read or whatever on the back, and any seriousness can be waved away with a calm hand.

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