Growing up in Latin America: Child and Youth Agency in Contemporary Popular Culture

(Hardback)

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Growing up in Latin America contributes to the growing body of scholarship on the representation of children and minors in contemporary Latin American literature and film. This volume looks closely at the question of agency and the role of minors as active participants in the complex historical processes of the Latin American continent during the 20th and 21st centuries, both as national citizens and as transnational migrants. Questions of gender, migration, violence, post-coloniality, and precarity are central to the analysis of childhood and youth narratives in this collection of essays.

Reviews

Any child in a Latin American family knows the importance of oral tradition: adventures that mothers, fathers, grandparents, and caregivers had when they were young interweave into the fabric of the next generation's knowledge of space, place, rules, resistance, and relationships. For Latin American and Latinx people, the legacy of memory found in the story is a central component of agency and growing up, which is rightfully at the forefront of Growing up in Latin America: Child and Youth Agency in Contemporary Popular Culture.

Growing up in Latin America compiles an excellent collection of essays addressing the pressing question of children and adolescents' agency in Latin American novels, fictional films and documentaries. Together, the essays provide a cohesive and robust platform to understand the multiple and contrasting paths in which the representation of minors is not just a reflection of adults' anxieties but also an effective approach to recognize those minors as active and critical members of society.

Author Bio

Marco Ramrez Rojas is associate professor of Spanish at City University of New York, Lehman College.

Pilar Osorio Lora is associate professor in the Communication Department at Colegio de Estudios Superiores de Administraci.