Streaming Service: Golden Shovels Made For TV

by Sofía Aguilar

Streaming Services: golden shovels made for tv is an ode to the classic American pastime, the familiar moving mode of episodic and serial storytelling.

Genres: Poetry

20 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2021

About the author

Sofía Aguilar is a Chicana writer, editor, and library professional based on the traditional homelands of the Tongva and Chumash peoples, now known as Los Angeles, California. Her work has appeared in the L.A. Times, Refinery29 Somos, and New Orleans Review, among other publications. She is the author of zine and chapbook publications including STREAMING SERVICE: golden shovels made for tv (2021) and STREAMING SERVICE: season two (2022), both self-published; LOS ANGELES: the zine, co-edited with poet Paula Macena; and amor., published by Bottlecap Press in March 2025. Her debut children’s picture book Queer Latine Heroes: 25 Changemakers from Latin America and the U.S. from History and Today is forthcoming from Jessica Kingsley Publishers in September 2025.

Reviews

[Amerie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poignant, vulnerable, and visceral. Aguilar’s poetry is breathtaking.

[Marisa]

I am so impressed with how Aguilar has constructed the world of these poems. It's amazing how a story is told in the tension between the original "quote" and the new poem. As Aguilar explains in their author's note, to write these golden shovel poems, they took a line from a TV show, set each word in its own line on the page, and made these words the first or last word of each line of the new poem, constructing the new work around the original quote. The result is a fascinating conversation between poet and pop culture, as quote and poem reflect back on each other like an endless hall of mirrors.

[Elisabeth Zalepa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is gonna be a review for both her first book Streaming Service : golden shovels for tv and her second book Streaming Service : season two because I don’t see her second book here on Goodreads. First off I just wanna say that as a fellow Chicana myself I have read a lot of Chicana poetry in my day and now I can officially say that Sofía Aguilar is my favorite Chicana poet ever! In her first book some of my favorite poems were Sofí and Space Boy. Her second book is much longer so I have more favorites in that one like girl crush, I come to you from México, yellegy, girls girls girls and it’s too late. A lot of these poems made me really emotional especially the sapphic poems and it’s too late because they mirror my own lived experiences which I’ve written about in my own manuscript. I can see subtle influences from Sandra Cisneros and Olivia Rodrigo in her writing and I love that for her, though she definitely does have her own style and does great things with the golden shovel form! She is a very talented writer with very creative lines and imagery. Overall I am so glad to have found my favorite Chicana poet and can’t wait to see her develop her career even further as a writer!

[Shareen Murayama · Rating 5 out of 5]

A tribute to classic TV, golden shovels, lyrical heartbreaks and more!