{"id":2116,"date":"2021-12-02T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-02T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/?p=2116"},"modified":"2022-11-13T17:38:28","modified_gmt":"2022-11-13T17:38:28","slug":"dreaming-of-you-a-journey-into-celebrity-and-what-it-means-to-disappear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/2021\/12\/02\/dreaming-of-you-a-journey-into-celebrity-and-what-it-means-to-disappear\/","title":{"rendered":"Dreaming of You: A Journey Into Celebrity and What It Means to Disappear"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Allison Armijo \/\/ Blog Writer<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have you ever brought your idol back from the dead? Have you ever wanted to? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Melissa Lozada-Oliva is a Guatemalan and Colombian American author. Winning the 2015 National Poetry Slam for her poem, \u201cLike Totally Whatever,\u201d Lozada-Oliva continues to explore themes of identity in her work. She is the author of peluda<\/em>, a chapbook published in 2017 about Latina identity as it approaches hair, identity, and the feeling of wanting to belong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her most recent work, Dreaming of You<\/em>, is a novel-in-verse about a young girl, named after herself as Melissa, bringing her idol, world-renowned Tejano popstar Selena back from the dead. As a novel-in-verse, the work features both poems and prose, beginning by introducing the audience to the \u201ccast,\u201d which includes Yolanda Saldivar (the president of Selena\u2019s fan club and her murderer), Mami (Selena\u2019s mother), Papi\/Abraham Quintanilla (Selena\u2019s father), Selena Quintanilla-Perez, Las Chismosas (the chorus), You (the reader, \u201cas the consumer and the consumed\u201d), and the author herself, Melissa Lozada-Oliva, who writes in her character description, \u201cIt\u2019s been me, it\u2019s always been me. The whole time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story is divided into six parts, each section delineating the various repercussions of resurrecting Selena. From an underground celebrity dance party powered by Wi-Fi to a case of stolen identity, Lozada-Oliva tells the story of Selena as she lives again, watching herself\u2014as Melissa\u2014disappear in the process. In this way, the novel travels into the world of stardom as it appears to someone on the outside, interrogating questions of celebrity, identity, and what it means to disappear\u2014especially when you involve the internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Lozada-Oliva, the internet represents a ubiquitous platform to revitalize something once lost. Nothing is lost on the internet, nothing disappears. However, while the internet can be a place of preservation, it is also a constantly evolving space\u2014something that attempts to move stagnation, otherwise known as death, into movement. In this way, Melissa imposes herself on Selena, revitalizing the Tejano popstar to celebrate her life, even if it means Melissa\u2019s death.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Yolanda Saldivar, the president of Selena\u2019s fan club and her murderer, is Lozada-Oliva\u2019s attempt to reconcile the past, as she humanizes Yolanda through various passages from Yolanda\u2019s point of view. Yolanda\u2019s role in the story is described in the poem, \u201cYolanda Leaves a Note,\u201d which describes the note Yolanda leaves for Melissa, before she disappears to try and find (resurrected) Selena. She writes, \u201cYou can\u2019t immortalize everybody. \/ You can\u2019t just bring people back to life. \/ I killed her, okay. \/ I killed her just to see myself better. \/ But what are you doing here, \/ with your eyes?\u201d Yolanda forces Melissa to ask herself: How are you different from me? After all, resurrecting Selena only guarantees her eventual death. Yolanda asks Melissa: What makes you different from me? Both characters\u2014Melissa and Yolanda\u2014killed Selena. They both did it for love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this way, Lozada-Oliva writes about Selena just as much as her murderer, asking if acting in service of love is enough justification. Perhaps, this question is answered, as Melissa disappears throughout the story. However, maybe it\u2019s the opposite. Could Melissa\u2019s disappearance be a transition rather than a departure? A transition into a different type of preservation, one that forces her to confront her actions and see herself, if maybe for the first time? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have you ever brought your idol back from the dead? Have you ever wanted to? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Lozada-Oliva writes, she ironically approaches the idea of celebrity as a way to disappear, rather than become more visible. This paradox is the guiding force behind Melissa\u2019s actions, as her attempts to humanize people, while well-intentioned, eventually go awry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Upon reflection, there could be many takeaways from this novel. You can read it as a harbinger: \u201cbe careful what you wish for,\u201d or you can see it as a way to walk in other peoples\u2019 shoes, understand them as human beings instead of archetypes. It is interesting to consider these questions considering Lozada-Oliva\u2019s own celebrity status, as she is a prominent young author and poet. Maybe she writes as a warning for the dangers of bringing back the dead. Or maybe, she writes to warn people about the dangers of exalting celebrities, disassociating them from any semblance of humanity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf I say your name now and you \/ turn your head and you do not recognize me \/ then fuck. I don\u2019t know. \/ Then I am dreaming.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Allison Armijo \/\/ Blog Writer Have you ever brought your idol back from the dead? Have you ever wanted to?  Melissa Lozada-Oliva is a Guatemalan and Colombian American author. Winning…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1818,"featured_media":2118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-about-reading","category-about-writing","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1818"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2116"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2270,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2116\/revisions\/2270"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}