“Latino Flavors”

Shifting from the previous chapter’s analysis of the contested construction of a Latinx ethnoracial category, Chapter 3 demonstrates how emblems of Latinx identity are made recognizable in everyday life. In particular, it focuses on the ways in which qualities attributed to objects, practices, and bodies are mapped onto one another in the contemporary fashioning of a Latinx US ethnoracial category. By analyzing interrelations among forms of emblematicity associated with a range of cultural concepts, from hairstyles, clothing, and language, to food, dance, and music, the chapter tracks the complex semiotic operations that connect the creation Latinx things to the embodiment of Latinx people. These processes allow actors within New Northwest High School to experience and enact Latinx identities. The chapter concludes by pointing to the close relationship between conceptions of Latinx identity and “Spanishness” as a cultural and linguistic quality, laying the groundwork for the second half of the book.