Selena, Crossing Over

“It’s like watching a cop show right in your own front yard.”
— Allison Shantz, who viewed the police standoff with Selena’s accused killer from a balcony of the Corpus Christi Days Inn, quoted in the Corpus Christi Caller-Times

“Selena looked like the majority of us and she was beautiful … Selena gave Mexican-Americans a tremendous amount of pride because she brought our music and community a great deal of recognition.”

— Tatcho Mindiola Jr., director of UH’s Mexican-American Studies program, in the Houston Chronicle

“… I never heard of her …”
— Initial reaction of more than one white or black Houstonian to the local media coverage of Selena’s death

“I don’t believe she’s really in there.”
— Middle-aged mourner at Selena’s closed-casket wake to a Houston TV reporter. Later, Selena’s family would open the casket.

“Why would anybody want to buy that kind of shirt?”
— Eddie Quintanilla, Selena’s uncle, quoted in the Chronicle on the T-shirts with a picture of Selena in her casket being sold on the street in front of her home

“… three of us ate her fingers.”
–“Satirist” Howard Stern, cannibalizing Selena

“What this man has done is outrageous. What this man has done is inhuman.”
— City Councilman Ben Reyes, on Howard Stern

“I started to listen to her music when she sang about the carcacha (an old car falling apart).”

— Elsa Vasquez, 57, of Corpus Christi, in the Austin Statesman-American

“Goodbye Selena/We Loved Your Music/You Are Beautiful …”
— Message on a piece of yellow ribbon tied on the bumper of an early-model station wagon spotted on a Houston street

“I wish Selena had a gun.”
— State Representative Ron Wilson, House sponsor of the “right to carry” bill