“College was a wake-up for me to the privilege and distinction of being a Latina,” said best-selling novelist Xochitl Gonzalez in a UCSB Arts & Lectures presentation on May 17 titled “Latinx Voices Are American Voices.”
Though this was her first visit to Santa Barbara, it was not The Atlantic’s Pulitzer Prize finalist’s first rodeo on the topics of representation and the importance of having a voice, and her rapid-fire exploration of the Latinx community’s history and contemporary experiences with popular culture made for a very compelling talk.
Reflecting on the 1974-1978 sitcom Chico and the Man and actor Freddie Prinze’s breakout starring role, and the fact that it took almost 30 years for another Latino man to star in a mainstream sitcom (George Lopez, who headlined The George Lopez Show from 2002-2007), Gonzalez said, “The truth is we Latinos have largely been cast as extras in the story of our American culture.”