Radiophonic Feminisms
Radiophonic Feminisms
Latina Voices in the Digital Age of Broadcasting
How Latina voices in commercial radio and podcasting subvert cultural norms and bring feminism to the fore of their work.
What does Latina feminism sound like in popular culture? Drawing on case studies of commercial radio programs and podcasts hosted by Latinas and oriented toward Latinx listenership, Esther Díaz Martín explores how Latina voices create female-specific aural spaces that interrupt the misogynist status quo in US mainstream media.
Radiophonic Feminisms focuses on radio/podcasting as a medium in which women find methods for resisting oppressive gendered cultural imaginaries. Through their specific articulations—that is, the quality of their voices—their music choices, and the soundscapes they construct, Latina hosts since the early 1990s have offered feminist responses to a cultural moment marked by the demographic changes brought on by the political economy of migration and the social changes wrought by media in the digital age. Drawing attention to the invisible antisexist work of creating sound, and to its reception, Díaz Martín bridges the epistemic insights of Chicana feminist theory and sound studies, enriching and further decolonizing our thinking about auditory meaning making.
Anchored in Chicana feminist thought, Radiophonic Feminisms boldly engages the pioneering work of Latina radio hosts and podcasters by asking: ‘What does Latina feminism sound like?' It highlights the ingenious ways in which Latina podcast and radio show hosts—women who are often framed as resistant ‘hociconas’ or loudmouths—challenge the patriarchal violence to which they are regularly subjected. By focusing on the often-invisible labor of Latina radio hosts and podcasters in US Latinx sound, Díaz Martín ultimately recasts both Latina/x hosts and Latina/x listeners as actively engaged in feminist futures of their own making. Part Latina feminist manifesto, part brilliant scholarly analysis, Radiophonic Feminisms represents some of the most cutting-edge intellectual work in Latinx sound studies and Latina feminist studies today.
A much-needed and timely account of how Latina locutoras—from broadcasting to podcasting and in both Spanish and Spanglish—have nurtured our nepantlera mode of listening.
An impressive and sophisticated look at the lively and varied voice soundscapes that have emerged in Latina/Latinx podcasts in the US in recent years. Díaz Martín’s introspective, memoiristic writing makes for a rich exploration of important feminist and Latinx scholarship and, what’s more impressive, an example of the kind of writing that truly embodies important insights about authorship, knowledge, and knowledge production within communities of resistance. This will surely be a worthy contribution to the growing shelf of work on Latinx radio in the US.
Esther Díaz Martín is an assistant professor in the Department of Latin American and Latino Studies and the Gender and Women's Studies Program at the University of Illinois Chicago.
- List of Illustrations
- Note on Language
- Introduction: What Does Latina Feminism Sound Like?
- 1. Listening within Nepantla: A Chicana Methodology
- 2. Alicia Alarcón en Acción: Voicing Latino Working-Class Feminism on AM Talk Radio
- 3. Marlene Quinto, “La Vozalona”: Sounding Feminist Desmadre
- 4. Mamás, M(others), and Mamis: Convivencia in Latina Podcasting
- Afterword: Sound as a Point of Departure
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
