‘Gentefied’ Is for All the Latinx Kids Who Never Fit In
I’m a Brown woman adopted by a White family — and the new Netflix show helped me realize I am Latina enough
When I first heard about the Netflix show Gentefied, a bilingual comedy produced by America Ferrera of Ugly Betty fame, I clicked that Add button so fast I almost dropped my phone.
Created by two Latinx writers, Marvin Lemus and Linda Yvette Chávez, Gentefied focuses on three cousins who come together to try and keep their grandfather’s popular taco shop in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, from succumbing to neighborhood gentrification. The trailer immediately pulls you in with comedic flair, but it’s the cast that made me add the show to my Netflix queue. It’s the only American show other than One Day at a Time that I’ve seen on my Netflix suggested page that focuses on a brilliant cast made up of Latinx folks like me. But even more importantly, the show’s Morales family gave me the opportunity to see through the eyes of a typical Latinx family — especially because I’m a Colombian woman adopted by a White family.
I grew up in the suburbs of New York surrounded by mostly White people. The food, music, and clothing seen on Gentefied is vastly different from the array of pasta and chicken parm my adopted Italian family raised me…
