Selena Quintanilla Research Paper

Selena (1997)

Selena Quintanilla-Perez, was a Mexican American singer who became a phenomenon of Latin music. She won a lot of awards, including a Grammy and she is known as the "Queen of Tex- Mex”. In the 90’s Selena faced two labels, which made a bit difficult to succeed in the United States and in the Tex-Mex music; The first one, she was Mexican American and the second one, she was a woman. In spite that labels she knew how to break them and nowadays she is a legend. This film basically, is about the very short life of Selena (Jennifer Lopez); it tells her personal life, her career as an artist and her tragic death. Selena’s talent was discovered accidentally by her own father, Abraham Quintanilla (Edward James Olmos), at the age of 10,

Also we can see her rapid rise in the music industry and her death, which occurred in 1995 when she was just 23 years old, she was killed by her biggest fan: the president of her fan club and personal secretary, Yolanda Saldivar

In one scene, when her father is teaching her how to sing the song “Reloj no marques las horas”, is notable that she is having troubles with her pronunciation of the letter R, in Spanish, and she was not even interest in learning Spanish, she only wanted to go outside and play with her friends. So when she grew up, it took her a lot of practice, to be able to sing in Spanish, but she did it and she did it very well, but on spanish interviews she had no fluency. This is a very common issue in the Chicano community, a lot of kids do not know speak Spanish because English is the only language that they developed at school and in their daily basis. Campbell describes the absence of a mother language in upcoming generations as a form of assimilation. “By and large in the United States, it is the pressure of the American culture that forces Mexicans or Latinos to ultimately make English their first language,” Campbell says. (Garcia, 2013). So I agree with this, children in order to be accepted in the culture of the country they are living they choose to speak only English, to feel part of the