The Latino Generation: Voices of the New America by Mario T. García (review)

Latino immigration is an ardently debated issue in the United States. Many scholars, politicians, and activists, however, have provided fruitful insights on the importance of Latino migration and its positive effect on America’s political, economic, cultural, and social systems. Mario T. García’s The Latino Generation: Voices of the New America provides an outstanding analysis of the new Latino Generation as a way to explain the significance of a new America that is developing. García’s objective is to challenge perceptions about the Latino population by using contemporary Latino voices and experiences. He focuses on thirteen oral histories of Latino college students in California to probe their social and cultural environs. García provides readers with an excellent description of how he defines Latinos, who are the children of new migrants of Caribbean, South American, Mexican, and Central American descent. The Latino Generation is an important monograph that provocatively complicates how a new Latino Generation has emerged and will continue to develop in California and the United States.

Pushing Latino Studies into a new methodological direction focused on globalization and internationalism, García explains that the new Latino Generation identifies itself as part of a broader racial and ethnic category, which is referred to as pan-Latino identification. Younger Latinos no longer self-identify in isolated ethnic or racial categories; rather, they are identifying themselves in a hybrid sense that embraces several Latino identities. Borrowing from literary theory, García further called this hybrid identification a post-nationalist identity. Moreover, pan-Latino identity is made possible primarily through new social media outlets that connect Latino communities around the globe. Media outlets such as television shows, especially news programs, and biculturalism, bilingualism, and electoral policies have influenced the growth of pan-Latino identity.

García’s scholarly work helps expand the field of Latino Studies in two ways. Aside from analyzing the impact of a new Latino Generation in the Southwest, he is able to explain how Latinos from all racial and ethnic backgrounds are connected to each other throughout the United States. For example, Mexican American populations are no longer found almost exclusively in the Southwest or Midwest, but now they have also migrated to the Northeast, where many Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Central Americans reside. Secondly, by using oral histories of Latinos in college, García is also providing a solid foundation for future research aimed at exploring the understudied experiences of Latinos in higher education.

The Latino Generation is well researched and should be well received for its analysis of a new generation of Latinos. This important study illuminates the issues that a new Latino generation must overcome in order to be successful in a nation where Latinos are constantly misunderstood. García’s study could have been strengthened if he had used interviews from students across the Southwest, especially Texas. Nevertheless, he does an exceptional job at balancing the voices of both men and women and providing rich autobiographies that are valuable to any scholar who privileges the voices of Latinos.