A month before Selena Quintanilla was murdered, she entered the Houston Astrodome for her first and final televised concert on a horse-drawn carriage. Dressed in a sparkly purple jumpsuit, she waved at the crowd, smiling, as a piano riffed the first few notes of I Will Survive. Selena stepped onto the stage ceremoniously and began one of the most momentous concerts in Tejano history, belting out a medley of songs by Gloria Gaynor, Donna Summer and other disco legends.

Performing hits by American artists was Selenas way of telling the world she wouldnt be put in a box. Sure, she could fuck up a Tejano song better than anyone (it was, in the end, the genre she was confined to), but she was also doubling down on her blended identity in a country that struggled to understand how one person could be equal parts Latina and American.

In anticipation for the posthumous album her estate is set to release on Aug. 26, it seems appropriate to reexamine Selenas curious popularity among Gen Z. Were of a generation that was never alive when Selena was, but have nonetheless made her ubiquitous on platforms such as TikTok from a Selena impersonator walking through the suburbs to a post of a little girl dressed in a purple jumpsuit , viciously pummeling a piata in the likeness of Yolanda Saldvar, the person who killed Selena. Twenty-seven years after her death, whats our unmitigated reverence of Selena really about?

During my TikTok investigation, I met Nessa Diosdado, a 25-year-old who grew up in rural East Texas and runs a popular page where she teaches young people about Mexican-American music. Nessa told me that growing up in a predominantly white town, she hated being Mexican and when she was young. Her only real role model was Selena. Her mom, who was a diehard fan of Tejano music and had actually attended a Selena in concert, would blast her music every weekend while she cleaned the house.

Nessa also remembered watching the biopic and hearing the actor who played Abraham, Selenas father, complain that their family was too Mexican for the Americans, but also too American for the Mexicans.

Its been engraved in our heads, for those of us who have watched it, she said. That sentiment of being left out by all sides, of being simultaneously neither and both is the key to Selenas allure for many young people today, including myself.

The latest U.S. census found that the Latino population grew by at least 23% in the past decade, which means there are more and more people like Nessa who navigate a Hispanic identity that is neither fully American nor rooted in a Latin American country. So much of the labor of being a hyphenated American lies in the struggle of proving that we belong equally to both ends of that hyphen. Then, theres the existential fear of being excluded by both. Selena seemed to navigate this identity maze seamlessly; when the news anchor Cristina Saralegui corrected her for fumbling a Spanish word and teased her for her Tex-Mex accent, Selena took the comment in stride. You understood me, didnt you? she asked Saralegui, laughing.

[Selena] made something so derided into something charming, even endearing, said Mexican-American journalist Maria Garcia in an episode of her podcast, Anything for Selena. That moment is emblematic of how secure the singer seemed to be in her identity and how unwilling she was to be ridiculed for it.

Going to school in suburban Texas, I disavowed my first name, Jess, and begged my parents in hushed whispers not to speak in Spanish whenever they picked me up from Elementary School. For one, I look pretty Asian and people would ask me why I spoke Spanish when I didnt look Latino. Second, this was the George W. Bush era, and I would hear news anchors and classmates talk about people like us infiltrating the southern border.

Things have changed drastically with the mainstream success of reggaeton and an internet culture that actually celebrates Latinidad (this TikTok sound is emblematic of this shift). But this is where things get complicated: Although I am ecstatic for the visibility of artists like Bad Bunny, few people would ever question whether hes Latino enough. Hes not really concerned with proving to Americans that he is American, either. He seems perfectly comfortable in his identity which is so powerful and very needed but hes also someone who was born and raised in Puerto Rico and is firmly rooted in his Puerto Ricanness. His particular identity still leaves out some of us who walk through the world with an angst of feeling like others arent letting us fully claim our Latinidad.