Home in Vida and Gentefied

Abstract

The process of gente-fication, or Latinx-led urban revitalization in workingclass barrios, has recently gained widespread attention and is at the heart of the popular US television series Vida (2018–20) and Gentefied (2020–22). Both programs serve as windows into contemporary Latinx struggles over belonging, “home,” and identity against the backdrop of multicultural neoliberalism and multicultural whiteness in the United States. We examine how change in the fictional Latinx neighborhoods in Vida and Gentefied highlights the precarity of home for Latinxs in the United States, even as Latinx representation has achieved new heights across social life. Vida and Gentefied specifically depict home as threatened by processes of gentrification and gente-fication. Even though the home is in distress, it continues to offer Latinx protagonists safety, love, and belonging through a heterogeneous network of individuals, experiences, and memories. In their attempt to stabilize home, Latinx protagonists find autonomy and a home that heals, but in contrasting the popular conceptualization of gente-fication as a gentler, more culturally sensitive form of gentrification emphasizing racial and economic uplift for barrio residents, we argue that Vida and Gentefied utilize gente-fication as a narrative tool that rests Latinx belonging on tenets of assimilation.