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No book until now has tied in two centuries of Mexican serial narratives—tales of glory, of fame, and of epic characters, grounded in oral folklore—with their subsequent retelling in comics, radio, and television soap operas. Wright’s multidisciplinary Serial Mexico delves into this storytelling tradition: examining the nostalgic tales reimagined in novelas, radionovelas, telenovelas and onwards, and examining the foundational figures who have been woven into society.
This panorama shows the Mexican experience of storytelling from the country’s early days until now, showcasing protagonists that mock authority, make light of hierarchy, and embrace the hybridity and mestizaje of Mexico. These tales reflect on and respond to crucial cultural concerns such as family, patriarchy, gender roles, racial mixing, urbanization, modernization, and political idealism. Serial Mexico thus examines how serialized storytelling’s melodrama and sensationalism reveals key political and cultural messaging.
In a detailed yet accessible style, Wright describes how these stories have continued to morph with current times’ concerns and social media. Will tropes and traditions carry on in new and reimagined serial storytelling forms? Only time will tell. Stay tuned for the next episode.
This panorama shows the Mexican experience of storytelling from the country’s early days until now, showcasing protagonists that mock authority, make light of hierarchy, and embrace the hybridity and mestizaje of Mexico. These tales reflect on and respond to crucial cultural concerns such as family, patriarchy, gender roles, racial mixing, urbanization, modernization, and political idealism. Serial Mexico thus examines how serialized storytelling’s melodrama and sensationalism reveals key political and cultural messaging.
In a detailed yet accessible style, Wright describes how these stories have continued to morph with current times’ concerns and social media. Will tropes and traditions carry on in new and reimagined serial storytelling forms? Only time will tell. Stay tuned for the next episode.
Introduction
1. Nation as Family in Mexico’s First Novel: Lizardi’s Periquillo (1816) as Pamphlets
2. Back to the Future: Mexico as Serial Hero in Riva Palacio’s Historical Novels (1868–1872)
3. Family Education through Mexico’s First Comic: Don Catarino y su apreciable familia (1920s–1960s)
4. Mexican Radionovelas’ Serial “Stay Tuned”: Announcing . . . ¡Chucho el Roto! (ca. 1965–1975)
5. History’s Eternal Return in Televisa’s Telenovelas: Martín Garatuza (1986) and El extraño retorno de Diana Salazar (1988–1989)
Continuará • To Be Continued
1. Nation as Family in Mexico’s First Novel: Lizardi’s Periquillo (1816) as Pamphlets
2. Back to the Future: Mexico as Serial Hero in Riva Palacio’s Historical Novels (1868–1872)
3. Family Education through Mexico’s First Comic: Don Catarino y su apreciable familia (1920s–1960s)
4. Mexican Radionovelas’ Serial “Stay Tuned”: Announcing . . . ¡Chucho el Roto! (ca. 1965–1975)
5. History’s Eternal Return in Televisa’s Telenovelas: Martín Garatuza (1986) and El extraño retorno de Diana Salazar (1988–1989)
Continuará • To Be Continued
Amy Wright is an associate professor of Hispanic studies at Saint Louis University.
"Once in a blue moon, a scholarly work drops that upends what we know in the humanities. Serial Mexico is this—and more. Gorgeous, lively prose serves up sophisticated, smart scholarship that radically reorients us toward Mexico's deep and rich transmedia history. Wright's edge-of-seat odyssey takes us far back into Mexico's history of storytelling, as well as all subsequent instances of cross-media proliferation and pollination. From astute analyses of early-nineteenth-century popular serialized stories to twentieth-century comics, radionovelas, and telenovelas, Wright does with Serial Mexico what Jenkins did with Convergence Culture, but with one colossal difference: Wright aptly anchors Transmedial Studies in the Global South."
—Frederick Luis Aldama, author of Mex-Ciné: Mexican Filmmaking, Production, and Consumption in the Twenty-first Century
"Propelled by its colorful subject matter and Wright’s artful analysis, Serial Mexico is a groundbreaking meditation on how Mexican mass media addresses memory, national identity, and formula storytelling. Packed with illustrations and forgotten cultural histories, this is a major contribution to Mexican and Latin American Studies."
—Christopher Conway, author of Heroes of the Borderlands: The Western in Mexican Film, Comics, and Music
"Serial Mexico belongs to a critical continuum, guided by Walter Benjamin's 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,' Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, and Doris Sommer's Foundational Fictions, that studies modern national identity. As befits this lineage, Serial Mexico concerns itself with family romance (and domestication) as national allegory."
—John A. Ochoa, author of The Uses of Failure in Mexican Literature and Identity
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