Your twenties come with a lot of learning experiences about jobs, heartbreak, accepting your own body, and finding the friendships that make it all worth it. And although we get plenty of those themes in TV shows ranging from Friends to Girls, when it comes to Latinx narratives, there’s a few added layers that might not pop up in shows with predominantly white casts — remembering to wire transfer your abuela money for her birthday, navigating beauty standards for Afro-Latinas, and putting up with your overbearing mom.
Luckily, these are all storylines explored by The Pineapple Diaries, a web series following a group of Latina BFFS in the predominantly Dominican area of Jamaica Plain in Boston. Created by Dominican-American writer, director, and actress Paloma Valenzuela in 2015, the comedy highlights leading lady Maite Lopez’s day-to-day life and the adventures that arise in her neighborhood. Each episode is punctuated with a powerful interlude that features a different character addressing anything from cat calling to childhood memories in the Caribbean.
With the first two seasons already on the web, the cast and crew are currently fundraising to produce a third season that sees Maite and her girls making their way into their thirties.
Given the recent cancellation of One Day at a Time (ODAAT) on Netflix, it’s a crucial time to give back to media dedicated to portraying a wider range of fully developed Latinx stories and relationships. The Pineapple Diaries is especially important in the way it addresses race and colorism within the Latinx community.
“I personally don’t see why a show about women or a show about Latinos would turn people off or make them feel like they can’t relate,” Valenzuela told WBUR in 2016. “My job as a writer is to make sure that these stories are authentic to us and to the characters, but are also relatable.”
By donating to The Pineapple Diaries campaign, you can do your part to keep supporting representative media that shows there is not just one Latinx identity or experience worth being told.