Race and upward mobility: seeking, gatekeeping, and other class strategies in postwar America

Over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries, Mexican American and African American cultural productions have seen a proliferation of upward mobility narratives: plotlines that describe desires for financial solvency, middle-class status, and social incorporation.

Yet the terms 'middle class' and 'upward mobility' - often associated with assimilation, selling out, or political conservatism - can hold negative connotations in literary and cultural studies.

Surveying literature, film, and television from the 1940s to the 2000s, Elda María Román brings forth these narratives, untangling how they present the intertwined effects of capitalism and white supremacy.