📢
Axios Latino is the newsletter that summarizes the key news for Latino communities in the hemisphere every Tuesday and Thursday.
You can subscribe by clicking
here
.
1. The theme to highlight: A very good literary year
Experimenting in narrative styles to tell stories of migration and that question the American dream: This year, the innovation paid off for several Latino writers whose works were among the best sellers and best of 2022 lists.
Big picture
: The US publishing boom for these authors follows decades in which publishers with mostly white, non-Hispanic workers used to tell Latino writers their stories were "not commercial," novelist Angie Cruz tells Axios Latino .
That has changed in recent years in large part thanks to movements like #ownvoices and #WeNeedDiverseAuthors, which are calling on the industry to better represent diverse demographics.
And especially after the controversy over a book about how Mexican migrants suffer... written by a white woman who is not Mexican and has not lived in Mexico.
More Details
: Recent best-selling books include
Cruz's
How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water .
The reception [to these books] allows people to begin to imagine us as an integral part of the American literary and identity conversation."
angie cross novelist
The novel tells the life of Cara Romero, a Dominican immigrant in New York, through her sessions with a labor counselor and how she fills out the official documents of that process.
Cruz says she wanted to show how unnecessarily complex that paperwork can often be for those living undocumented or in mixed-status households.
Olga Dies Dreaming
by Xochitl Gonzalez mixes different literary genres — comedy, romance,
political
thriller — to talk about two
Nuyorican
brothers in the wake of Hurricane Maria, and also details Puerto Rican history.
The author told Axios Latino that she partly wanted to introduce the latter as a "Trojan horse" to a mass audience that would otherwise know little about "island colonization."
Among the best sellers are the memoirs of the Salvadoran poet Javier Zamora, encapsulated in
Solito.
There he recounts his experience on the trip that he made alone as a child to the United States, but unlike many memories that are recalled as an adult, in this case everything is written from Zamora's perspective at the age of 9.
Other works that stood out this year and were well received by sales and critics are Cleyvis Natera's
Neruda on the Park
, about a family facing gentrification;
and
The Man Who Moved the Clouds,
by the Colombian Ingrid Rojas Contreras.
In her own words
: "What I love about this particular year in Latino literature is that there is so much variety in terms of countries of origin, writing styles, and genres," says Gonzalez.
"The more that continues to happen and the more it is broadcast to the rest of pop culture [...] the more all those wonderful Latino books can help paint a picture of how varied our experiences are as a community," he adds.
Bottom line:
The success of these works further shows that Latino creators can be experimental without fear of rejection from major publishing houses, according to the authors.
Xochitl Gonzalez (left) and Angie CruzPhotos by Mayra Castillo and Erika Morillo, courtesy of Flatiron Books
"I think with this broad reception that we've had, the opportunities will expand, especially for
Latinx
authors , to innovate more in writing, theater or television," says Cruz, and that "allows people to start to imagine us as an integral part of America's Literary and Identity Conversation".
Cruz adds that for this it is important that those who have a craving to read do buy these works or borrow them from their library or review them on sites like Goodreads.
To watch
out for : The Spanish translations of Cruz and González's novels will go on sale in 2023. Both authors also already have contracts to publish more books.
And the wave will not stop, as several literary releases by Latino authors are planned for this 2023.
Among them, the first adult novel by Afro-Dominican Elizabeth Acevedo, titled
Family Lore
.
Acevedo has already proven to be a bestseller in the YA (young adult) genre.
2. Recounting border violence
The US-Mexico border areas have long been a region of myth and romance in popular culture.
But in many cases what is portrayed in
westerns
or action films falls short in the face of a much darker reality.
Two recent books seek to show what life was really like there.
Why It Matters
: Scholars indicate that historic violence in border areas contributed to the systemic socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic inequalities that persist.
Details
:
Borders of Violence and Justice: Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and Law Enforcement in the Southwest, 1835-1935
, written by Brian Behnken and published in November, examines how police and non-Hispanic white mobs treated Hispanic people along the border in centuries past.
Courtesy of The University of North Carolina Press
The police and "extralegal groups" (a kind of paramilitary) monitored and violated people of Mexican origin to keep them marginalized, according to Behnken, a historian at Iowa State University.
Law enforcement in the hands of non-Hispanic whites used racist stereotypes to justify violence, he adds.
Behnken also writes about how Mexican-Americans fought back against that violence and even joined law enforcement to change that deal against them from within.
In the book
Border Bodies:
Racialized Sexuality, Sexual Capital, and Violence in the Nineteenth-Century Borderland,
published in June, author Bernadine Marie Hernández addresses how such violence affected women.
Hernández, a professor at the University of New Mexico, tells Axios Latino that to write it, she reviewed letters from people who did sex work in the border area in the 19th century, as well as public documents that account for how the quotas that these women had pay to work helped build roads and bridges in the border area.
3. The literary rise of Afro-Brazilians
Afro-Brazilian authors are making their mark on best-seller lists with works focused on the experiences of
pretas e pardas
(black and mixed-race) people in that country.
Our experiences, unique as well as universal, cross borders regardless of the origins of those who read it."
Itamar Vieira Jr.
Author
Why It Matters
: Brazil is where most of the enslaved people forcibly brought to the Americas ended up.
It was also the last country on the continent to outlaw slavery.
In recent years especially the nation has been reflecting on and acknowledging this history.
And black authors are helping.
Some of his works have been so successful that they are being translated into English and Spanish, a rarity because not many books in Latin America have been translated into other languages.
Details
: One of the
bestsellers
in recent years is
Torto Arado
by Itamar Vieira Jr. The electro president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, recently recommended the novel.
The author and philosopher Djamila RibeiroNelson Almeida/AFP via Getty Images
The play is told from the perspective of two sisters and a mysterious woman after an accident leaves one of them mute, complicating their daily lives in a rural area of ​​mostly black quilombos and settlements.
The story is already being adapted for series by HBO.
It was translated into English as
Crooked Plow,
due out in June.
It also already has two translations into American Spanish,
Tortuoso arado
for South America and
Crooked plow
for Mexico and Central America;
in Spain it is for sale as
Arado crooked.
Geovani Martins' 2018 collection of short stories,
O Sol na Cabeça, was
translated into English this year and Spanish in 2019. Martins weaves different stories about growing up in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, based partly on his own experience, with a style that is reminiscent at certain moments of the classic film
City of God
(which was first a novel).
On the nonfiction side there are also hits.
Philosopher and activist Djamila Ribeiro 's
Pequeno Manual Antiracista
(Little Anti-Racist Manual) has remained a best-seller since it was released in 2019.
Likewise, books like
Racismo brasileiro: Uma histĂłria da formação do paĂs
(Racism in Brazil: history of the formation of a country), published this summer by YnaĂŞ Lopes dos Santos, have been gaining traction among readers in that country.
In his own words:
"Talking about Afro-Brazilian experiences is in a way talking about America as we know it," Vieira Jr. tells Axios Latino.
"I have been surprised that so many countries with different histories and cultures have been interested in the novel, but since it deals with human experiences, unique as well as being universal, borders are crossed regardless of the origins of those who read it," he adds. the.
Notable Fact
: One of Brazil's most famous writers, 19th-century author Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, was biracial.
But it has been until the last few years that depictions and paintings of him have shown the blackness of him.
4. A Cuban classic already has a sequel
The novelist and journalist Cristina GarcĂa will publish next year a sequel to her work
Soñar en cubano (Dreaming in Cuban),
two decades after
which was nominated for the United States National Book Award.
Why It Matters
: The novel about three generations of a Cuban-American family separated by the Revolution became a classic when it was published in 1992.
The English cover of the new book by Cristina GarcĂaCourtesy of Penguin Random House
Garcia has earned a key position among the new generation of Latino and Latin American authors in the US who use their works to raise questions about migration memory, political divisions, and racial/ethnic treatment.
More details
: The sequel,
Vanishing Maps,
will be published in English in July, Garcia revealed earlier this month.
It will be about Celia del Pino, the matriarch of the family portrayed in
Soñar en cubano
, two decades after the events of that novel as the rest of her family spreads across the world and struggles to maintain their ties to themselves and their Cuban roots. -Americans.
The intrigue
:
Dreaming in Cuban
has been banned in certain public schools in the United States because some school districts consider that it contains sexually explicit passages.
A school district in Sierra Vista, Arizona, removed the book from its shelves in 2013 after complaints from some parents.
The novel was also among the books withdrawn from the Marion County, Florida, public schools in 2020 by the superintendent.
In reaction,
Soñar en cubano
and other works by GarcĂa were collected by the literary activist group Librotraficante to “smuggle” them to community libraries near schools where they had been banned.
The fact
: GarcĂa was born in Havana to a Guatemalan father and a Cuban mother.
She was 2 years old when she and her family left Cuba after Fidel Castro came to power.
Thank you for following Axios Latino!
Happy holidays and happy new year;
We will be back on January 4th.
Do you want to read any of the previous editions?
'Hey, pa, you were pachuco': Hispanic styles resurface in popularity
Mexican origin, US patent: the controversial history of the poinsettia flower
A dangerous bet in Central America: the state of emergency against gangs is extended
Controversy in El Paso Walmart shooting trial against Latinos