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Maria García combines rigorous reporting with impassioned storytelling to honor Selena Quintanilla's life and legacy. She also explores the indelible mark she left on Latino identity and belonging, whether it’s fatherhood, big-butt politics, and the fraught relationship with whiteness and language. Anything for Selena has been named an Apple Podcasts Series Essential.

Anything For Selena

Maria Garcia was nine years old and living on the U.S.-Mexico border when Selena was murdered.

25 years later, Maria is on a quest to understand what it means to love, mourn and celebrate Selena. In this intimate, sometimes wrenching, cathartic journey, Maria explores what Selena’s legacy shows us about belonging in America — and Maria’s own place in the world.

Anything for Selena: A Podcast About Belonging

Growing up along the US-Mexico border, Maria Garcia felt torn between her two identities as Mexican and American. But then, something changed her life.

She discovered Selena Quintanilla—the Mexican-American pop icon who proved she didn’t have to choose.

In the premiere episode of Anything for Selena, host Maria Garcia explores how Selena helped Maria find her own place in the world.

Selena and Me

Maria knows that to truly understand Selena as a person and not just an icon, she needs to go to Corpus Christi. Maria’s quest takes her to Abraham Quintanilla, Selena Quintanilla’s notoriously guarded father. Maria confronts his complicated legacy and reflects on fatherhood in Latinx cultures.

Selena and Abraham

In her life, Selena was a symbol of hope. She became a role model for how Latinos could achieve the American dream and find acceptance. But a forgotten culture war following her death painted a different picture. In the 25 years since her murder, Selena’s image has taken on new meaning. In this episode, Maria traces how Selena became a symbol of solidarity and resistance.

Birth of a Symbol

Nearly 30 years ago, Sir-Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back (I Like Big Butts)” hit the airwaves to the delight and shock of listeners.

Today, the obsession with big butts is still strong with idols like Cardi B and Beyonce. It has also permeated white culture, with Kim Kardashian “breaking the internet” and butt selfie queen Jen Selter. Maria has a theory about how big butts went from taboo to obsession--and it involves Selena and Jennifer Lopez.

She uncovers that booty politics is ultimately about race and brings us to a long overdue conversation about anti-blackness within the Latinx community.

Big Butt Politics

Selena is often called the "Queen of Tejano music." In the 1990s, she brought this underdog genre to international heights. Tejano award shows were glitzy affairs and Tejano radio DJs were like rock stars in Texas and the Southwest. Even the New York Times called it the fastest-growing Latino genre in the country.

But when Selena died, Tejano went from boom to bust. The story of Tejano's decline isn't so simple, though. Maria discovers that it's a story of immigration, money and how two often-ignored groups were pitted against each other.

Tejano Tension

Selena Quintanilla may have built her career singing Spanish songs, but she didn’t grow up speaking Spanish at home. She learned Spanish in the public eye, and her mistakes became some of her most famous and endearing moments.

In this episode, Maria explores why Selena’s Spanglish seemed so revolutionary for its time, and yet so familiar to many fans who also struggled with the language of their heritage. The exploration takes us to an unexpected place.

Spanglish

A quarter century after her death, Selena is breaking the internet. Online, Selena’s image and music have taken on new life on social media and platforms that weren’t even imaginable when she was still alive. Selena devotees of all ages have turned to Instagram, TikTok and Youtube to restore and remix Selena’s memory.

In this episode, Maria explores how the internet has become a place where fans celebrate and remember Selena, as well as grapple with the void she left behind.

Selena and the Internet

After the premiere of Selena: The Series on Netflix, some fans claimed Selena had been "whitewashed" in the show.

In this episode, Maria analyzes why Selena's brownness is an essential part of her legacy and reflects on how the exploration of Selena's race led Maria to revelations about her own identity.

Selena and Race

In the series finale of Anything for Selena, Maria reflects on what her year-long examination into Selena’s legacy reveals about La Reina’s humanity.

Anything for Selena: A Podcast About Belonging

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