Spanish-language soap operas, known also as telenovelas, assist Mexican American girls in maintaining family ties across borders while helping them define their own U.S. identities, says Vicki Mayer, American Studies scholar at UC Davis.

"Many Mexican Americans use their favorite soap operas also as a means of exchanging information with their family members living in Mexico," says Mayer, author of the forthcoming Producing Dreams, Consuming Youth: Mexican Americans and Mass Media and a visiting assistant professor at UC Davis.

After studying Mexican Americans in San Antonio for four years, Mayer reveals in her book the perspectives of those who produce and consume mass media-including music, television, and newspapers.

Faraway relatives keep in close contact with the American teens to find out what is in store for favorite soap opera characters. In exchange, the girls inform their southern relatives on the latest Hollywood media, Mayer says.

Simultaneously, Mexican American girls use telenovelas as a way to relate as U.S. citizens to a country and a culture that they sometimes have never been exposed to firsthand, Mayer says.

"Many Latinas identify themselves with the traditional protagonist's struggle, as they confront the battle of not being accepted by either their American or Mexican peers," Mayer says.

For example, girls often related the exclusion that poorer or more indigenous Mexican characters faced in the telenovelas to the classism and racism that they face in the United States, Mayer says.