Product details
- ISBN 9780816557721
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 06 Oct 2026
- Publisher: University of Arizona Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Two Vatos Talk Pop Cultura brings a leading Latinx media studies scholar, Frederick Luis Aldama, together with an award-winning television writer and producer, Peter Murrieta, to examine how Latinx representation has evolved—and stagnated—across seven decades of American TV, film, and pop culture.
Born from the popular podcast Mighty Peter and Professor Latinx but written in a collective voice with breakout discussions shaped by specific experiences and insights—Aldama's theoretical acumen and Murrieta's industry war stories—the book exemplifies what the authors call the collective shaping of "borderlands epistemology." It analyzes shows while accounting for the behind-the-scenes industry battles such as those fought in writers' rooms.
Two Vatos Talk Pop Cultura aims to be an essential book for students and lay readers alike, shedding light on who shapes representation—and why it matters.
Frederick Luis Aldama is the Jacob & Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas, Austin, and founder of the Latinx Pop Lab. A multiple award–winning author and editor of over fifty books, he is an inductee of the Texas Institute of Letters and Ohio State University's Hall of Fame.
Peter Murrieta, the recipient of the Imagen Foundation's Norman Lear Writer's Award and Arizona State University's associate dean for Herberger Institute of Design and Arts–Los Angeles, as well as deputy director at ASU's Sidney Poitier New American Film School, is a multiple Emmy winner known for series like Netflix's Mr. Iglesias and Disney's Wizards of Waverly Place. Murrieta currently has a first-look deal with Universal and is developing an adaptation of the novel Blood and Gold: The Legend of Joaquin Murrieta, which he co-wrote with novelist Jeffrey J. Marriote.
