Gabriel Cruz is an assistant professor of media studies in the department of mass communication at North Carolina Central University. His book, Latinidad, Identity Formation, and the Mass Media Landscape: Constructing Pocho Villa, helps readers understand how Latinidad has been constructed through various forms of media. The book covers Latine representation within the news, television, film, video games, and superhero stories to provide a broad perspective on the myriad ways in which Latinidad has been deployed across a variety of narrative types.

Dr. Cruz also incorporates stories from his own life as a Latino that grew up in the rural South in predominantly white spaces to connect abstract concepts, theories, and scholarship to lived experience. Furthermore, the book pays special attention to where Latinidad is conspicuously absent. More than an introductory text for those that are unfamiliar with the subject matter, it is a timely and useful text for helping audiences make sense of the institutional and social discrimination currently facing Latines as the current administration persecutes them as a core element of its mass deportation program.