Acceso usuarios
Priscilla Peña Ovalle
One gets the impression that William Anthony Nericcio, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University, is an excellent, if highly-caffeinated, educator. Tex{t}-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of The “Mexican” in America, his first book, captures the excitement and vitality of intellectual discovery and growth as possible only in the most invigorating university classrooms. An urgent enthusiasm bleeds from Nericcio’s writing, resulting in a nearly hyper-textual collection of essay and image that colors outside the lines of academia. Nericcio produces a hybrid scholarship; he does not merely present and analyze his objects of study. Instead, Nericcio remixes popular icons and images, breaking them down by revising them to produce his own media messages. It is this level of ambitious engagement —getting his hands textually dirty, so to speak— that makes Tex{t}-Mex worthy of reflection. Tex{t}-Mex is simultaneously accessible and theoretical, popular and academic. While the book claims to “assess the impact of various image and narrative industries on Latinas/os in literature, art, and mass culture,” it does much more
