Mediated Dominicanidad
Dominicans and US Media

Keara K. Goin (Author)

9780253074881

Hardback, published 19 January 2026

232 pages, 38 b&w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.666 kg

"Keara Goin constructs a well-structured and vigorously researched argument about the ways in which Dominican identities are always already transnational. . . . Combining cultural studies, media and reception studies with the scholarship on how Dominicans and US Americans construct race . . . this book is much-needed, and will hopefully inspire future research as well. As one of the blackest populations in Latin America and the Caribbean, Dominicans, both island-based and in the diaspora, present a critical case study for conversations around Afro-latinidad."—Jennifer Domino Rudolph, author of Baseball as Mediated Latinidad: Race, Masculinity, Nationalism, and Performances of Identity

Dominicans are the fastest growing Latino/a group in the United States and have long been ignored by scholars and popular culture. Using US media as a lens to interpret the identity negotiation practices among Dominican Americans and Dominicans living in the US, Mediated Dominicanidad repositions Dominicans from the margins of American society and culture to its center, exploring the relationships between Dominican Americans and American media.
Dominicanidad, or "Dominican-ness," in television and film and on the internet is negotiated through its usage within and production of these media, but our understanding of it remains in flux. Part ethnography and part critical cultural analysis, Mediated Dominicanidad gives voice to those who experience a fluctuating identity. Author Keara K. Goin discusses celebrities like Zoe Saldaña and Alex Rodriguez, television shows like Orange is the New Black, movies like In the Heights, and filmmakers like Tabaré Blanchard. In doing so, she centers US media as integral to the negotiation of dominicanidad, intervenes in Latina/o media studies with a critical exploration of the representation and discourses contributing to intense negotiations of identification about Dominicans and Dominican Americans, and reveals an intimate and contested relationship between Blackness and latinidad based on how they are entrenched with dominicanidad.
Addressing a population often disregarded and marginalized, Mediated Dominicanidad is a thoughtful study that can be used to unpack identity negotiation processes within the US more broadly.

Acknowledgments
A Note on Terminology
Introduction
Part I: Rethinking the Dominican Relationship to Blackness
1. Theorizing dominicanidad
Part II: (In)Authentic dominicanidad
2. Dominican Celebrity Studies
3. Televisual dominicanidad and MTV's Washington Heights
Part III: Latinidades and Hyphenated Identities
4. Competing latinidades: Orange Is the New Black and Engagement with Latinx Specificity
5. Producing dominicanidad: Así Somos/The Way We Are
Conclusion: "Mi raza es dominicana": Dominicanidad as a Unique Lens for Approaching U.S. Racial Hegemony
References
Index