Selena Live! The Last Concert is a live album by Mexican-American singer Selena. It was recorded on February 26, 1995, at the Houston Astrodome and was televised live on Univision. The album was posthumously released by EMI Latin on March 27, 2001. The singer shared the concert with Tejano singer Emilio Navaira and performed to 66,994 people, which broke the previous attendance record held by Selena the previous year. The concert was critically acclaimed for outperforming ticket sales by country music singers Vince Gill, Reba McEntire, and George Strait. Selena's performance at the Astrodome became her final televised concert before she was shot and killed on March 31, 1995.
Latino poetry is a branch of American poetry written by poets born or living in the United States who are of Latin American origin or descent and whose roots are tied to the Americas and their languages, cultures, and geography.
Frederick Luis Aldama is an American author, editor, and academic. He is the Jacob & Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and founder and director of the Latinx Pop Lab at the University of Texas, Austin. At UT Austin is also affiliate faculty in Latino Media Arts & Studies and LGBTQ Studies. He continues to hold the title Distinguished University Professor as Adjunct Professor at The Ohio State University. He teaches courses on Latinx pop culture, especially focused on the areas of comics, tv, film, animation, and video games in the departments of English and Radio-Television-Film at UT Austin. At the Ohio State University he was Distinguished University Professor, Arts & Humanities Distinguished Professor of English, University Distinguished Scholar, and Alumni Distinguished Teacher as well as recipient of the Rodica C. Botoman Award for Distinguished Teaching and Mentoring and the Susan M. Hartmann Mentoring and Leadership Award. He was also founder and director of the award-winning LASER/Latinx Space for Enrichment Research and founder and co-director of the Humanities & Cognitive Sciences High School Summer Institute. In has been inducted into the National Academy of Teachers, National Cartoonist Society, the Texas Institute of Letters, the Ohio State University's Office of Diversity & Inclusion Hall of Fame, and as board of directors for The Academy of American Poets. He sits on the boards for American Library Association Graphic Novel and Comics Round Table, BreakBread Literacy Project, and Ad Astra Media. He is founder and director of UT Austin's BIPOC POP: Comics, Gaming & Animation Arts Expo & Symposium.
The University of Arkansas Press is a university press that is part of the University of Arkansas and has been a member of the Association of University Presses since 1984. Its mission is to publish peer-reviewed books and academic journals. It was established in 1980 by Willard B. Gatewood Jr. and Miller Williams and is housed in the McIlroy House in Fayetteville. Notable authors include civil-rights activist Daisy Bates, US president Jimmy Carter, former US poet laureate Billy Collins, and National Book Award–winner Ellen Gilchrist.
Las Reinas del Pueblo is a compilation album by American Tejano music singer Selena and Mexican banda singer Graciela Beltrán. Posthumously released on April 4, 1995, by EMI Latin in the wake of Selena's death on March 31, 1995, the decision to produce a compilation album featuring Beltrán emerged after her tribute to the singer at a Houston, Texas memorial. The title was inspired by Mexican newspapers that referred to Selena as "an artist of the people" during a 1992 press tour in the nation and subsequently dubbed her "La Reina del Pueblo" in the aftermath of her death. Las Reinas del Pueblo encompasses six tracks by Selena and six by Beltrán, encapsulating their respective tenures with EMI Latin. Las Reinas del Pueblo peaked at number four on the US Billboard Top Latin Albums and Regional Mexican Albums chart, both behind other Selena releases. The recording peaked at number 147 on the US Billboard 200 chart and at number ten on the Spanish Albums Chart. Beltrán's participation in the album yielded substantial promotional and sales enhancements.
"Como la Flor" is a song that was recorded by American singer Selena for her third studio album Entre a Mi Mundo (1992). It was written by A. B. Quintanilla and Pete Astudillo. The song was written by A. B. who was inspired by a family selling illuminated plastic flowers at a concert in Sacramento, California, in 1982. A decade later, A. B. was seized with an infectious melody and abruptly dashed out of the shower in a hotel room in Bryan, Texas, to recreate it on a keyboard with Astudillo. He completed the music in just 20 minutes, while Astudillo took another hour to complete the lyrics. "Como la Flor" is an up-tempo, Tejano cumbia torch song that blends tropical cumbia rhythms with hints of reggae and pop music. Its lyrics describe the feelings of a female protagonist addressing her former lover, who abandoned her for another partner. The narrator is uncertain of her ability to love again, while at the same time, wishing her former partner and his new lover the best.
"Si Una Vez" is a song recorded by American recording artist Selena for her fourth studio album, Amor Prohibido (1994). It was written by Pete Astudillo and produced by Selena's brother-producer A.B. Quintanilla. "Si Una Vez" is a mariachi fusion song and draws influence from cumbia and Latin dance music. Lyrically, Selena questions why she ever fell in love with an abusive partner, saying she will never repeat her mistakes. The lyrics suggest unrequited love and female empowerment.
Andrés Montoya was a Chicano poet.
Carmen Giménez is an American poet, writer, and editor.
Selenidad: Selena, Latinos, and the Performance of Memory is a work of academic literature written by scholar Deborah Paredez and published through Duke University Press in 2009. Paradez names the reactions made by Latinos in the United States following the shooting death of Selena on March 31, 1995, as "Selenidad". The book explores the effects on Latinos following Selena's death. It also explores her impact and contributions to music and fashion.
Latinidad is a Spanish-language term that refers to the various attributes shared by Latin American people and their descendants without reducing those similarities to any single essential trait. It was first adopted within US Latino studies by the sociologist Felix Padilla in his 1985 study of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Chicago, and has since been used by a wide range of scholars as a way to speak of Latino communities and cultural practices outside a strictly Latin American context. As a social construct, latinidad references "a particular geopolitical experience but it also contains within it the complexities and contradictions of immigration, (post)(neo)colonialism, race, color, legal status, class, nation, language and the politics of location." As a theoretical concept latinidad is a useful way to discuss amalgamations of Latin American cultures and communities outside of any singular national frame. Latinidad also names the result of forging a shared cultural identity out of disparate elements in order to wield political and social power through pan-Latino solidarity. Rather than be defined as any singular phenomenon, understandings of Latinidad are contingent on place-specific social relations.
Ruben Quesada, Ph.D., is an American poet and critic. He was born and raised in Los Angeles, California.
Ire'ne Lara Silva is a Chicana feminist poet and writer from Austin, Texas. Her parents were migrant farmworkers. She has published numerous works of poetry and her short story collection won the 2013 Premio Aztlán Literary Prize. A central theme of her work is Indigenous survival and perseverance despite colonization: "let's empower ourselves with that knowledge."
Laurie Ann Guerrero is a Chicana poet from San Antonio, Texas. She was the poet laureate of San Antonio from 2014 to 2016 and the Poet Laureate of Texas from 2016 to 2017. In the fall semester of 2017, she became the first writer-in-residence at Texas A&M University San Antonio and a "fully immersed faculty member. She will teach a contemporary American woman poets course, host numerous University writing workshops and mentor students while working on her next writing project."
Gloria Amescua is a Latina and Tejana writer from Austin, Texas. Her most recent book is CHILD OF THE FLOWER-SONG PEOPLE: LUZ JIMÉNEZ, DAUGHTER OF THE NAHUA, a picture book biography illustrated by Duncan Tonatiuh and published by Abrams books for Young Readers, 2021. Her enjoyment of writing stories and poems as a child prompted her to publish many poems, manuscripts, and chapbooks throughout her life. After receiving her B.A. and Masters of Education from University of Texas at Austin, she went on to win first place at the 2013 Austin International Poetry Festival Contest and the Austin Poetry Society Award. She is now a workshop presenter for youth and adults, and is an active alumna of Hedgebrook's Writers-in-Residence program. Amescua is most known for her poetry chapbook entitled "Windchimes" and "What Remains." She won Lee and Low's Honor Award (2016) for her picture book manuscript in verse originally titled: Luz Jiménez, No Ordinary Girl. She now resides in Austin and continues to earn awards for her culturally vibrant poetry and prominence in the Texas Latinx community.
CantoMundo is an American literary organization founded in 2009 to support Latino poets and poetry. It hosts an annual poetry workshop dedicated to the creation, documentation, and critical analysis of Latinx poetry.
Rosebud Ben-oni is a Latina-Jewish American poet and writer. She is the author of several collections of poetry, including If This Is the Age We End Discovery, which was a Finalist for the 2021 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry and received a Starred Review from Booklist as an "astonishing work for adventurous readers intrigued by science and literature...Ben-Oni draws on the odd properties of supersymmetry to create a dexterous collection of electric lyrics that defies conventions of science and syllabics alike." She has received literarure fellowships and grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, CantoMundo, Café Royal Cultural Foundation, City Artists Corps and Queens Council on the Arts. In May 2022, Paramount commissioned her video essay “My Judaism is a Wild unPlace" for a campaign for Jewish Heritage Month, which appeared on Paramount Network, MTV Networks, The Smithsonian Channel, VH1 and many others.
Elizabeth Acevedo is a Dominican-American poet and author. In September 2022, the Poetry Foundation named her the year's Young People's Poet Laureate.
Jasminne Mendez is an Afro-Latino American author, poet, playwright, performer and educator. She is a co-founder and the program director for Tintero Projects. She is co-host on the poetry and writing podcast series, InkWell, a collaboration between Tintero Projects and Inprint Houston. Mendez is a CantoMundo Fellow, a Kenyon Review Writer's Workshop Peter Taylor Fellow and a Macondo and Voices of our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA) alumni.
Vanessa Angélica Villarreal is a bilingual American poet, essayist, and cultural critic of Mexican descent, whose work focuses on first-generation immigrant experience, pop culture, hybrid experimental and visual poetry, and transnational feminist documentary poetics.
