Nice Folky Things

Abstract

As a child of American immigrants, I often struggled with understanding my identity when it came to the lack of representation in the media that I consumed as a millennial second-generation Latin American. The stories that influenced the media and defined my generation lacked characters that looked like me and were largely inspired by stories from Western European and far removed from the stories that may have included people like me. By examining folk stories from countries of origin not often represented in mainstream American culture remediating them for a detached population - Nice Folky Things, explores the identity and culture of second-generation Americans through cross-cultural folk stories examination. This is an Auto-ethnographic study based on my own experiences as an American-born, second-generation Latin American who has, and still often feels, detached from my family’s heritage, and ostracized by my surrounding mainstream American Culture. Walking the line between contradiction, authenticity, and honoring heritage - this project is meant to be both an examination of my personal experiences, and authentic taste, as well as a larger examination of how media has, and can, re-shaped personal identity.