UC Davis

This paper traces an analysis of Latinx scholars who engage with Latinx identity as one that is transitioning from noun to action to understand how Latinidad is being taken up by young Latinx creators (YLC). An analysis of the podcast, Loose Accents, hosted by Danyeli Rodriguez Del Orbe who shares her experience as an Afro-Dominicana raised in Bronx, NY and living in South Central LA, and Ernesto Rocha who speaks from his experience as a queer undocumented Mexican man from LA. They share their lived experiences on how they have and continue to express their individual identity and culture, even under the homogenizing umbrella of Latinx identity. This research centers the activism of these YLC who use the form of a podcast as a prime example of creative coalition, Loose Accents provides a place of being and more importantly a way of learning and expressing Latinidad. This creative space is rooted in understanding and celebrating difference and interconnectedness. By using counter-story telling they make room for themselves and their guests to acknowledge their strategies of resistance against a fixed and imposed identity. Loose Accents serves as an analytical form of knowledge production that challenges Latinidad and homogenous notions of identity while validating the lived experience of individuals who are categorized under this term, or at times excluded from it. Through the form of a podcast Loose Accents establishes a decolonized communal space that provides us the tools to handle tensions and contradictions under an identity that is always shifting.