UCLA

This thesis explores the queer dimensions of the posthumous career of the late Tejana singer, Selena Quintanilla-P�rez, to better understand how her commercial legacy shaped disparate and unequal modes of cultural, political and economic belonging for the Latina/o LGBTQ community. Drawing from a queer, legal framework of U.S. citizenship, as well as Latina/o performance and media scholarship, I contend that the production and consumption of “Selena commodities” provides a window into both shifting and stagnant representations of queer Latina/o identity within both U.S. popular culture and Latin American entertainment. For a population of new sexual subject-citizens, Selena’s commercial legacy is used as a transcultural strategy to expand gender formations, express sexual fluidity and demand inclusion to public space. This thesis quantifies this alternative expression of belonging as queer Latinx cultural citizenship; a radical, embodied strategy of disidentification that emphasizes the connections between cultural and commercial visibility with the affirmation of cultural, racial, gendered and sexual difference from normative ideals and political enfranchisement. Yet this strategy towards representation does not always function equally across genders. By centering the legal, commercial and artistic dimensions of Selena’s queer legacy, this thesis demonstrates how Selena commodities offer an incomplete platform from which to articulate queer Latinx cultural citizenship.