Writing Latinos

Today’s episode features Julián Delgado Lopera talking about his new novel, Pretend You’re Dead and I Carry You, just out from Liveright. It’s as vivid and funny as it is profound. We talk with Lopera about the depths of Colombia’s Magdalena River, the fluidity of language, and what he describes as “Travesti Lore” and the “sacred travesti gospel.” Set in Bogotá, Pretend You’re Dead and I Carry You has many hallmarks of Latin American literature—striking natural landscapes, religion, fútbol—but in Lopera’s novel these more traditional topics are suffused with sex and sexuality, ancestral trauma, and our universal desire to be loved. Lopera teaches creative writing at the City University of New York. His first book, Fiebre Tropical, published by Feminist Press, won several awards.rr

Today’s guest on Writing Latinos is Ada Ferrer. Her last book Cuba: An American History, won the Pulitzer Prize. Ferrer is out with a new book titled Keeper of My Kin: Memoir of an Immigrant Daughter, published by Scribner. It’s an intimate, devastating, beautifully written account of her family’s migration from Cuba to the United States, and how the Cuban Revolution both broke and made her family. It’s also a meditation on the craft of history itself. Geraldo Cadava reviewed it for The Atlantic. You can read it here: “How Cuban History Broke a Family.” After a long time teaching at NYU, Ferrer recently moved to Princeton, where she teaches history.

In this week’s episode of Writing Latinos, we talk with Mary E. Mendoza about her new book Deadly Divide: How Insects, Pathogens, and People Defied the US-Mexico Border, published by The University of North Carolina Press. Mendoza teaches history at The Pennsylvania State University. In Deadly Divide, she blurs the boundary between humans and animals, and borderlands history and environmental history. We talk about the similar ways that humans, ticks, cattle, and lice were racialized. I didn’t even know animals could have racial identities! We also discuss how the US and Mexican governments, and ranchers on both sides of the border, took the same approach to restricting immigration and stopping the spread of animal-borne diseases. This is the rare episode where listeners interested in Latino history and identity can also satisfy their inner science nerd. Thanks for listening!

In this week’s episode of Writing Latinos, we spoke with bestselling author Xochitl Gonzalez about her new novel, Last Night in Brooklyn, a magnificent book about gentrification, attachment to place, upward social and economic mobility, and what Gonzalez describes as the “insuperiority complex” many nonwhite Americans experience in predominantly white spaces. She wrote a 21st-century Great Gatsby set in a majority Black and Brown community in Brooklyn. Last Night in Brooklyn is Gonzalez’s third novel, following the widely acclaimed Anita de Monte Laughs Last and Olga Dies Dreaming. We had a blast talking with Gonzalez, and we hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did. Thanks for listening!

Our guest this week on Writing Latinos is Jaquira Díaz, discussing her new novel This Is the Only Kingdom, published by Algonquin Books. This Is the Only Kingdom was named one of the best books of 2025 by The New York Times and was long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. A professor of writing at Columbia University, Díaz is also the author of an award-winning memoir, Ordinary Girls. When we caught up with her, we talked about the intergenerational traumas caused by violence, displacement, racism, and homophobia. We also talked about salsa-fueled nights out-on-the-town and the many ways that music inspires her writing. You’ll want to listen to our episode, and then go read this fast-paced story that’s tough to put down. 

The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mirta Ojito, who has written two non-fiction books, has now written her first novel. Deeper Than the Ocean (published by Union Square & Co.) is a family drama that moves between Spain, Cuba, and the United States.

In this episode of Writing Latinos, we talk with Ojito about the meaning of “Spain” for Latinos and the desire to return. We also discuss mothers and daughters, the obligations of love, the sinking of the S.S. Valbanera, and our shared fear of swimming in open bodies of water. Thanks so much for listening!

In this latest episode of Writing Latinos, we talk with Álvaro Enrigue about the first-ever English translation of his novel Now I Surrender, published by Riverhead Books. Enrigue is the author of many other books, including the widely acclaimed You Dreamed of Empires, set in the immediate aftermath of the Spanish Conquest. Now I Surrender is also set mainly in the past, during the Apache Wars in Arizona that led to Geronimo’s capture. It was great to hear Enrigue’s thoughts about Geronimo’s legacy in Mexico, desert borderlands, road trips through the Southwest, and how Latino identity gets shaped through the experience of diaspora. Thank you for tuning in!

We’re back for season 4 of Writing Latinos! Our first guest is Jazmine Ulloa, a national political reporter for The New York Times who just published her first book. Titled El Paso: Five Families and One Hundred Years of Blood, Migration, Race, and Memory (from Dutton), it’s a moving portrayal of her hometown. The 2019 shooting by a self-described white supremacist at a Walmart in El Paso, which left more than 23 dead and 22 injured, haunts Ulloa’s narrative and is the point of departure for her exploration of the city’s history over the past 150 years. From the U.S.-Mexico War, to the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, to the charismatic healer Teresa Urrea—also known as La Santa de Cabóra—and to the anarchist Flores Magón brothers, Ulloa shows how El Paso has long been at the center of US and Mexican histories of immigration, race, capitalism, and empire. We talk about the tragedy at Walmart, how her family ended up in El Paso, and her views on the relationship between history and journalism.

Albert Camarillo is the Leon Sloss Jr. Memorial Professor, Emeritus, at Stanford University. He’s one of a small number of people who founded the academic field of Chicano/Latino history. He has also mentored so many of the historians who’ve written books that teach us much of what we know about the history of Latinos in the United States. Not least, he is the author of a new book himself, titled Compton In My Soul: A Life In Pursuit of Racial Equality, published by Stanford University Press, in which he recalls growing up in the Black and Brown suburb of Los Angeles, his experience as one of a very small number of Chicano students at UCLA, and his almost fifty years of teaching Chicano history at Stanford. In this episode of Writing Latinos—the season three finale!—we talk with him about the Trump administration’s attack on higher education, the recent trend in Latino history to focus on Black-Brown tension and the anti-blackness of Latinos, the writing of family history, and how our understanding of Latinos has changed since the beginning of his career.