So much happened at the start of this year at the MLA convention that I couldn’t talk about it all in just one blog post. In addition to receiving an award for Serial Mexico, which was honored with an MLA Katherine Singer Kovács Honorable Mention, I had the opportunity to present a paper that felt particularly resonant with our current cultural moment in universities. My talk, titled “Sanity or Sickness in the Soaps: Illness as Superpower in Diana Salazar’s Strange Return, 1988 & 2024,” explored how one of Mexico’s most iconic telenovelas—and its recent streaming remake—grapples with the layered intersections of trauma, female power, and student mental health.
Originally aired in 1988–89, El extraño retorno de Diana Salazar told the story of a young student plagued by haunting visions—ultimately revealed to be memories from a past life. A reincarnated victim of the Inquisition, Diana’s descent into “madness” becomes a journey into self-knowledge. Fast-forward to 2024, and the ViX+ remake brings the story into a new era, preserving the esoteric allure of the original while leaning more explicitly into psychological discourse: therapy, medication, ancestral healing, and the messy process of recovery.
What both versions dramatize so compellingly is a shift from stigmatized “illness” to empowered identity. Whether in 17th-century Zacatecas or modern-day Mexico City, Diana’s telekinetic “episodes”—once signs of instability—become metaphorical superpowers through which she reclaims her agency. The neobaroque layers of the narrative (visions, resurrections, witch trials, and gaslighting therapists) offer a strangely cathartic meditation on intergenerational trauma and the persistence of patriarchal violence. Though Diana had “graduated” in the re-make from student to OB-GYN doctor, the questions of mental health struggles resonate with today’s university students.
As I discussed in my presentation, Diana’s dual timelines offer fertile ground for classroom use. In both versions, she navigates rejection, isolation, and betrayal—hallmarks of many contemporary student experiences with mental health. In Diana, we find a cultural mirror, one that reflects not just pain, but the transformative power of self-understanding. After all, as Diana herself illustrates, the line between sanity and superpower depends largely on who’s telling the story.
My essay will be published in a forthcoming special section of Hispania on “Health and Well-being in the Spanish and Portuguese Humanities,” which promises to spotlight innovative, multidisciplinary approaches to these issues in language and cultural studies classrooms. In teaching Diana Salazar, I’ve seen firsthand how telenovelas—a form often dismissed as frivolous—can become a powerful space for learning, empathy, and collective reflection. Check out the upcoming expansion on these ideas in Hispania.
Read more about my time at the MLA convention here.
