Singer Selena Quintanilla-Perez's life was short but dynamic. She began her career at the age of five, and was murdered just a month short of her twenty-fourth birthday. Raised in the bicultural world of south Texas, she brought a flamboyant new face to Tejano, the Tex-Mex fusion music she performed, and, more significantly, she brought a new kind of pride and ambition to the young Latina women who were her fans. Though her future as an entertainer and businesswoman will forever remain a question mark, her death itself gave Anglo-American society a new perspective on the 28 million of their fellow citizens who comprise the Latino community of the United States.

Selena

Selena was born on April 16, 1971, in Corpus Christi, Texas. Her father, Abraham, a musician and restaurateur, put together a family band, playing the traditional Tejano music of the Texas borderland. By the time she was...