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 ..read more

If you liked American Fiction, you’ll love Andrew Boryga’s debut novel Victim, from Doubleday. It follows the career of Javier Perez, who learns at an early age thebenefits—and devastating consequences—of writing about one’s traumas and victimization.High school teachers encourage “Javi” to write about how tough things are for him, so he could get into college. It worked. At Cornell, he wrote stories about race on campus, and his personal experience with race. After graduation, his blossoming career asa writer was based on telling the gritty stories his editors found compelling. The problem wa ..read more

Writing Latinos, from Public Books, features interviews with Latino (a/x/e) authors discussing their books and how their writing contributes to the ever-changing conversation about the meanings of latinidad.   In our final episode of Season One, we talk with Ingrid Rojas Contreras about her book, The Man Who Could Move Clouds: A Memoir, published last year by Doubleday. The Man Who Could Move Clouds was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and National Book Critics Circle Award, and was named a best book of the year by Time, NPR, Boston Globe, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and ..read more

Writing Latinos, from Public Books, features interviews with Latino (a/x/e) authors discussing their books and how their writing contributes to the ever-changing conversation about the meanings of latinidad.   In this episode, Geraldo Cadava and Tasha Sandoval talk with Raquel Gutiérrez about their critically-acclaimed book, Brown Neon: Essays, published by Coffee House Press. Brown Neon won the 2023 Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction, and was a finalist for the 2023 Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Memoir/Biography and the 2023 Firecracker Award for Creative Nonf ..read more

Writing Latinos, from Public Books, features interviews with Latino (a/x/e) authors. We discuss their books and how their writing contributes to the ever-changing conversation about the meanings of latinidad.   We recently caught up with Héctor Tobar to discuss his new book, Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino”. Our conversation included mention of the pathbreaking historian Vicki Ruiz, to whom Tobar dedicated Our Migrant Souls, as well as discussions on the literary influence of James Baldwin, That was just the beginning the need for a revolution ..read more

Writing Latinos, from Public Books, features interviews with Latino (a/x/e) authors discussing their books and how their writing contributes to the ever-changing conversation about the meanings of latinidad.   In this episode, you’ll hear our interview with Alejandro Varela about his books The Town of Babylon and The People Who Report More Stress, both published by Astra House. The Town of Babylon was a finalist for the National Book Award, and The People Who Report More Stress will earn similar accolades. We discussed stress as a silent killer in Latinx communities, the challenges of int ..read more

Writing Latinos, from Public Books, features interviews with Latino (a/x/e) authors discussing their books and how their writing contributes to the ever-changing conversation about the meanings of latinidad. In this episode, you’ll hear our interview with Sarah Margarita Quesada about her new book The African Heritage of Caribbean and Latinx Literature, published by Cambridge University Press. We discussed how the writing of Caribbean and Latinx authors–especially Junot Díaz, Achy Obejas, Rudolfo Anaya, and Tomas Rivera–was shaped by their thinking about what Quesada describes as “Latin Africa ..read more

Writing Latinos, from Public Books, is a new podcast featuring interviews with Latino (a/x/e) authors discussing their books and how their writing contributes to the ever-changing conversation about the meanings of latinidad. For this episode, we caught up with Edgar Gomez on his memoir High-Risk Homosexual (Soft Skull, 2022). The conversation with Gomez was one of our most wide-ranging, flowing, and honest yet. We talk about machismo, cockfighting, reconciling with parents, the Pulse nightclub shooting, bilingualism in modern literature, and the “messiness” of latinidad. The New York Times ..read more

Writing Latinos, from Public Books, is a new podcast featuring interviews with Latino (a/x/e) authors discussing their books and how their writing contributes to the ever-changing conversation about the meanings of latinidad.   In this episode, Lorgia García Peña discusses her new book, Translating Blackness: Latinx Colonialities in Global Perspective (Duke University Press, 2022). For a long time, Afro-Latino scholars and community organizers have argued both for their greater belonging within Black and Latinx communities in the United States and recognition of their difference from them ..read more

Writing Latinos, from Public Books, is a new podcast featuring interviews with Latino (a/x/e) authors discussing their books and how their writing contributes to the ever-changing conversation about the meanings of latinidad. This episode features our conversation with Graciela Mochkofsky, author of The Prophet of the Andes: An Unlikely Journey to the Promised Land. Mochkofsky’s book is about the extraordinary life of Segundo Villanueva, a Peruvian prophet who grew a following of hundreds, ultimately leading their pilgrimage to Israel and conversion to Judaism. The Prophet ..read more