Writing Latinos

In this special episode of Writing Latinos, with the writer Justin Torres, we tried something new. Torres reads a short vignette —“Youth: The Palisades as a Backdrop,” by the Afro-Puerto Rican writer, Jesús Colón—and then we discuss it together. We had so much to talk about! Historical references. Readings of imagery. His message about gender, class, and race. “Youth” in the context of Colón’s other writings. The vignette as a powerfully evocative genre that Torres uses in his own writing. And what a treat to do this with Torres, a professor at UCLA and the author of two stunning novels: We the Animals, which was made into a feature film, and Blackouts, the winner of the National Book Award for Fiction.

Sebastián Arteaga y Salazar is the descendant of an elite Mexican family who studies at Yale and then enrolls in an MFA program at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He’s working on a failed history of Mexico—meaning his own failure to write his book, and the Mexican nation’s failures, especially in relation to the United States. Along the way, “Sebas” crosses many borders—between the United States and Mexico, of course, but also between elite and non-elite Mexicans and Latinos in the United States. This is the basic plot of Nicolás Medina Mora’s debut novel, América del Norte, which offers a beautifully written meditation on historical, cultural, and political relationships between the United States and Mexico. Sebas, like Medina, sees the subject of Latinidad from the perspective of a member of the Mexican elite who is more like other elites in the United States than like working class Mexicans and Mexican Americans on either side of the border. On this newest episode of Writing Latinos, we talk about all of it, including how Medina wrestles with “Latino” as a concept in a way that makes for great listening

Marie Arana has had a fascinating career as an editor and writer of both fiction and nonfiction. She is the author of the novels Cellophane and Lima Nights; a memoir called American Chica; a history of Latin America titled Silver, Sword, and Stone; and a stunning biography of Simón Bolívar, the so-called Liberator of Latin America. Arana was the editor of the Washington Post’s Book World and the inaugural literary director of the Library of Congress. We talk with her in this new episode of Writing Latinos about her newest book, LatinoLand: A Portrait of America’s Largest and Least Understood Minority. We discuss how, as a Peruvian American raised in places as different as Wyoming and New Jersey, her somewhat unique Latino experience (but aren’t they all?) shaped the questions she wanted to answer in LatinoLand. She explores such a wide variety of subjects—religion, politics, business, identity and more—and in a way that’s unorthodox compared with how other Latino authors have written about them. Come and listen to us talk about her life and writing and her thoughts about the inevitability of Latino unity.

As always, thanks for listening to Writing Latinos!

You probably remember the picture of himself, both thumbs up, that Donald Trump posted on social media with the caption, “Best Taco Bowl.” It was his ode to Mexican food on Cinco de Mayo 2016. The picture mocked relentlessly, and deservedly so. For Latinos, taco bowls aren’t really a thing. And even if they were, it’s doubtful that Trump Tower would serve the best of them. For Latinos, Cinco de Mayo is less of a thing than it is for other groups. But most importantly, Trump was celebrating Mexican food at the same time that, on the campaign trail, he was denigrating Mexican immigrants. Lori A. Flores’s new book, Awaiting Their Feast: Latinx Food Workers and Activism from World War II to COVID-19, effectively explores this tension between many Americans’ love for Mexican food and their simultaneous distaste for Mexican people.

Fortunately, Flores doesn’t make us relive the cringe of Trump’s post—as I’ve done here. Instead, she introduces us to the Latina and Latino food workers; Latina and Latino–owned restaurants; and American consumer’s taste for Latin American and Latino cuisine in New England, especially New York. I’m so glad to kick off Season 3 of Writing Latinos by talking with Flores about her new book. We discuss the popularity of tamales in New York during the 19th century, Latino workers’ demands for healthy food and food from their culture, the Mexican proprietor of a high-end Mexican restaurant, the laborers who assemble our Christmas wreaths, and the workers who harvest the mighty sea cucumber. All these subjects are original contributions to the field of Latino history, but they’re also just super interesting, as you’ll see when you listen. Flores is a professor of history at SUNY–Stony Brook. Awaiting Their Feast, published by the University of North Carolina Press, as part of their Latinx Histories series, is her second book. Enjoy!

For the final episode of Season 2 of Writing Latinos, we talked with Karla Cornejo
Villavicencio about her new novel, Catalina, published by One World. It is an engrossing
read about a young woman named Catalina, who lived in Ecuador as a small girl,
migrated to New York to live with her grandparents, attended Harvard University, and,
by the novel’s end, finds herself flirting with a career in writing and publishing. We talked
about the sorts of lessons we learn about Latin American history from our families and our professors,  Catalina’s encounter with different kinds of Latinos at Harvard, as well as her desire for fame and
stardom, and the differences between writing fiction and creative non-fiction, which was
the genre of Cornejo Villavicencio’s first book, The Undocumented Americans, a
finalist for a National Book Award. Thank you for listening to Season 2 and stay
tuned for an announcement about Season 3.

In this episode of Writing Latinos, we talk with the widely published, award-winning author, Jamie Figueroa, about her new memoir, Mother Island: A Daughter Claims Puerto Rico, published by Pantheon. As a child growing up in Ohio, Figueroa experienced an othering that made her feel like she needed to recover centuries of family history shaped by colonialism and diaspora. It was a journey that took her to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she teaches creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts, and to Puerto Rico, where her mother was born. Along the way, she recognizes the similarities and differences that brought her closer to and pushed her away from her mom, especially when it came to universal themes like love, longing, family, and acculturation. Figueroa’s second book, Mother Island is both beautiful and moving, and ultimately it is a book that we can all relate to. 

Luis Miranda migrated from Puerto Rico in the 1970s and has maintained deep connections
with the island ever since. He has worked for the mayor of New York City. He is a Latino
advocate and political consultant with decades of experience. He also happens to be the
father of an international celebrity. In this episode of Writing Latinos, we talk with him
about his new memoir, Relentless: My Story of the Latino Spirit That Is Transforming
America, published by Hachette Books. Our sprawling conversation touches on his ideas
about Latino politics in New York, his work with national Latino advocacy organizations,
Puerto Rico’s territorial status, his dedication to family above all, and how the meanings of
fatherhood both have and have not changed for him since one of his children became
famous. Oh, we also talked about what he wants his funeral to be like, including the
soundtrack he wants played on the occasion. You’ll have to listen to find out what it
is!

Melissa Mogollón is the author of a new novel called Oye, out this spring from Hogarth. Meaning “listen to me,” Oye is Luciana’s demand to be heard. And hear her we do, in her one-sided conversation with her older sister, Mari. Oye is a family drama for the ages, set in the time of Hurricane Irma, which struck Florida and much of the Southeast in 2017. The family runs from the hurricane, but long before the hurricane struck they’d been running from each other and from themselves. As Oye unfolds, we learn the family’s secrets and the sources of deep intergenerational traumas that nevertheless tie them together. Mogollón and I discuss all of it in a conversation about Oye, a book that anyone with a family—which is to say everyone—will relate to. Oye is Mogollón’s debut novel. Don’t miss it.

Cecilia Márquez joins us this week to talk about her new book, Making the Latino South: A History of Racial Formation, published by The University of North Carolina Press. Above all, we discussed the production of Latino identity in relation to Blackness. Márquez argues that, in the South, Latinos are either Black or non-Black—not Black or white, mind you, but Black or non-Black. It was an important distinction not only during the Jim Crow era, but also today given our ongoing debates about Latino racial identity. Márquez’s broad arguments come to life through fascinating characters and places like the South of the Border rest stop, just on the South Carolina side of the North/South Carolina divide. Beyond the subjects in Making the Latino South, we talk in general about some of the most important themes preoccupying Latino historians today. Márquez is the Hunt Family Assistant Professor of History at Duke University. She’s currently working on her next book, about the Latino Far Right in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.