Inclusive Screenwriting for Film and Television

9The Explicit and Specific Politics of Vida

DOI: 10.4324/9781003170310-12

Vida (Starz, 2018–2020) is a half-hour, character-focused drama that tells the story of the Hernandez sisters, two Mexican-American women who return to east Los Angeles after a long absence to attend their mother’s funeral. Over the course of three seasons, the sisters reckon with their grief, complicated and evolving family history, and identity as Latinas and members of the Boyle Heights community where they grew up. For eldest sister Emma (Mishel Prada), the return to her childhood home is complicated by the fact that her mother, the show’s namesake Vidalia, sent her away as a teen to live with her grandmother in Texas for kissing a girl and writing about her queer ...