Selenidad: Selena, Latinos, and the Performance of Memory is a work of academic literature written by scholar Deborah Paredez and published through Duke University Press in 2009.
In Selenidad, Paradez explores Selena's impact on cultural changes in the United States in the 1990s and the emergence of Latino awareness during a period of anti-immigration reform.
Paradez finds parallels to these reactions and the awareness following the Jurarez murders of young women that occurred near the United States-Mexico border.
They identified with Selena's body, never-dyed hair, working-class ethics and aesthetics, and her humble upbringing, qualities of a performer that were unique and remained unchanged throughout her career.
It became a way to create new forms of identity that rejected the hegemonic dominant standard ideologies of American society of what was to be a "beautiful, feminine Latina in the United States in the 1990s."
Paradez takes a look at Selena's song "Como la Flor" and its outreach to the queer community in representing their struggle and challenges to overcome marginalization.
Selena's death was a way for queer performers to portrait realness, survival, resiliency, racism and all other tragedies faced on daily basis.
It also provides Latina lesbians with feminist, girl empowerment ideals that have helped acknowledge the struggles against the traditional patriarchy social norms in the Latino culture.
[1] Jeff Salamon of Austin American Statesman found the book to be scholarly on Selena's life, calling her relevancy "fascinating".
Ovalle finds that Paradez provides "her readers the same productive performance: this invigorating example of interdisciplinary Latina/o scholarship goes beyond Selena and models a methodological and theoretical technique that embraces and enunciates the melancholy, joy, and intellectual integrity of its subject(s).
[8] Paradez was invited as part of a panel at the Selena Auditorium in Corpus Christi, discussing the singer's impact on Latinos and women in the United States.