If you are in New Rochelle on October 15...

Dear chica, comadre, chingona, cabrona: Sci Fi, Fantasy, Speculative fiction needs you (#SFWAPro)

Photo: Pixabay

Here is what I know: You are writing. Fan fiction. Stories about ghosts and legends and shapeshifters. Vampires. Monsters. Spaceships and magical neighborhoods.

Sometimes — when I'm lucky — I get to read your words.

From those examples I know you are cabronas with enough will to crash through Sci Fi's titanium ceiling; chingonas with entries that greatly expand the vocabulary of the fantastic; comadres mixing speculative into your masa and green chile sauce, and other elements of the everyday; chicas whose stories are prompted by epic or dystopic worlds first limned by others. 

But most times, when I land on the pages of my favorite SFF magazines or leaf through the anthologies, you are not there.

You should be.

Latinas comprise 16.4 percent of the female population of the United States. There is no comparable demographic breakdown for SFF women writers, but given how rarely Latina writers are in evidence in the pages of even the most diversity-focused publications, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the percentage were in the lower single digits. 

There are strong voices that have emerged in short and long form: Kathleen Alcalá, Carmen María Machado and Guadalupe García McCall (to name just three), but there aren't nearly enough chicas, comadres, chingonas and cabronas to represent us.  

You need to submit your work, even if it is only once or twice a year, okay? I know it's hard to put your work on the line, particularly with the microaggressions Latin@s sometimes experience about inclusion of Spanish and Spanglish words (and so many other aspects of our cultures and experiences), but here are a few submissions calls you might want to consider:

• Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine, guest edited by C. C. Finlay and open to electronic submissions until Jan. 15.

• The Los Angeles Science Fiction One-Act Play Festival, Roswell Award for Short Fiction, open to submissions until Jan. 15

• Crossed Genres, current theme: failure, open to submissions until Jan. 31

• Unlikely Story, Issue #12 Journal of Unlikely Academia, open to submissions until March 1.

• Terraform, submission information, ongoing.

• Fantastic Stories, submission information, ongoing.

Be in evidence "off the page" as well. There are an incredible number of conventions across the nation at which, generally, Latinas are sadly underrepresented. My own favorite conventions to attend are Readercon and Arisia, but I have heard great things about WisCon and Mo*Con. Financial assistance to attend some cons is available through Con or Bust.

Keep going. Young Latinas (hell, old Latinas too) need to see themselves in stories, and as purveyors of stories. Each story is about so much more than just the story ... it also represents, to paraphrase Gina Rodriguez in her Golden Globes acceptance speech a few days ago, a culture "that wants to see themselves as heroes" — and not only in the narrative, but in crafting the narrative.

(go to approx. 1:39 to hear the section of Gina's acceptance speech that made many Latinos tear up.)

Meet some Latina writers also crafting their own narratives, here.

Dear Latinas: Are we content being mannequins?

"Flying Mannequin (3302472992)" by Christine Zenino from Chicago, US - Flying Mannequin. Uploaded by russavia. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

In the past several weeks I've written two pieces for AL DÍA News media about how the entertainment media objectifies Latinas. Hollywood to Latinas: Shut up and get naked deals with a study that says Latina portrayals in mainstream films (regardless of "attractiveness" of the character) are more sexualized than for any other racial or ethnic group. The second, Hollywood to Latinas, part II: Shut up while we ogle you, touches upon the choice of Emmy award-show organizers to put Sofia Vergara on a revolving pedestal (and her choice to comply) while the CEO of the academy of television arts spoke about the industry's advances in diversity.

Vergara, who has been dubbed "Sofia Vengüenza" (Sofia Shame) by Vanessa Smith, the VP of Marketing and Advertising of ImpactoNY, has responded to criticisms of allowing herself to be used, essentially, as a mannequin by saying her critics have no sense of humor. Other responses, often from Latino men (straight and gay), have posited that those critical of the Emmy bit and of Vergara don't understand Latin American cultural mores and more significantly, are simply jealous because they are ... unattractive. Well, no. Smith, for example, is a Costa Rican and extremely attractive. She's also smart as a whip and undoubtedly understands that Vergara's portrayal (on screen and off) as a dimwit distinguished only by her exaggerated accent and by her killer body has a real impact.

The fetishization of the "Latina" body has given Venezuela a curious coming-of-age tradition: cosmetic surgery. Rita di Martino (who founded a support group for the victims of faulty breast implants), told Stuff.co.bz that many Venezuelan girls receive the gift of plastic surgery when they turn 15. The article goes on to state that "in 2011, Venezuelan women had nearly as much cosmetic surgery performed as their British sisters, an industry study says. Britain is over twice as large as Venezuela — and over three times richer." In fact, according to an article that appeared in the Guardian in 2011, Venezuelans often take on debt to finance their perfected bodies. "The demand for surgery is such that banks offer attractive loans for procedures, with slogans such as: 'Have your plastic on our plastic.'"

In the United States, the proliferation of beauty pageants intended for young (and very young) Latinas points to the pervasive idea that notice comes to Latinas most readily via beauty. While there is money to be made from winning pageants, participating in them is costly. And what the pageants reinforce in terms of body image and perceptions of beauty can be reprehensible (make-up on five year olds, anyone?) and downright destructive (in 2013 the Little Miss Hispanic Delaware title was taken away from 7-year-old Black Dominican contestant Jakiyah McCoy and given to blond, light-skinned runner up Tiffany Ayala). 

A study from the American Association of University Women found that Latinas between the ages of nine and 15 already have a negative body image that further drops by 38 percent as they get older. Celebrities from Demi Lovato to Shakira have admitted to body image issues severe enough that they led to eating disorders and cutting (Lovato) and prompted therapy to help deal with them (Shakira).

While body image ranks much lower as a concern for women in general in mid-life, middle-aged Latinas who undergo breast cancer surgery have greater "body image disturbance" than their peers of other races and ethnicities (Women over 50: Psychological Perspectives By Varda Muhlbauer and Joan C. Chrisler). Is it because we're more tied to the "ideal body" (generous breasts to balance a generous booty and a slender waist between) than any other race/ethncity? Maybe. 

"Latinas ... are generally thought to be more traditional in their gender role attitudes," write Muhlbauer and Chrisler, "and that might account for part reason why they have been shown to be more distressed than Black and White women after breast cancer treatment."

I'd say traditional is the wrong word, I prefer conventional. Looking at Vergara's stint on the display stand points to a conventional gender role attitude that also finds expression in some of the defenses of it. 

If you noticed, Vergara said very little while up on the pedestal. The sense that we should beautiful and seen but not heard still infects many aspects of Latina life — from Latinas who suffer domestic abuse in silence to those professionals who are told they are impolite or "too American" when they voice an opinion. Likewise, Vergara's little jokey moments were (very carefully) not rebuttals of the objectification taking place in front of her. In fact, she dealt with them in exactly the way Latin American women have long been taught to deal with piropos de albañil (the sometimes hilarious but always grotesquely sexual "compliments" catcalled from the street), that is, to neither confront and correct but to deflect through good nature and an understanding that "boys will be boys." 

Latina "femininity," of this type is never proactive, but reactive; never challenging, ever accommodating. I'd like to think we have no desire to raise daughters like this: mannequins of a type, docile and interchangeable. I'd like to think we ourselves have no desire to be like this. But perhaps we do. I recently heard a 30-ish Latina professional brush off criticism of Vergara's choices — not because she likes the stereotype the actor has chosen to embody — but because she's made so much money doing it. It's the same justification Eva Longoria uses whenever she hears criticism of the show she produces, Devious Maids.

That's another Latina stereotype, of course. That we'll do anything and everything for the bling.

Bleh.

Inset photo: "ReuseumManniquins" by Kencf0618 - Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Eligible for awards: The Latina conundrum

I haven't been a published SFF writer that long (my first sale was in 2010), but I've been a journalist forever and January and February is when I start thinking about awards. Because it is the season to put together submissions (in journo-world) and to remind those who put together award ballots that you have work that is eligible (in SFF-world).

The stakes are higher in journo-world, but easier too. I'm an editor, and much of what I'll be considering for submission is other people's work: reporters, designers, photographers, videographers. I'll have two sets of awards criteria and news conventions to juggle as I make my decision about submissions — English-language news media and Spanish-language — from the thousands of pieces we produce at AL DÍA in the span of a year. I'll ask each member of the editorial team to remind me of their best work, and then, when it comes to the young Latinas on the team, will have to push.

Because they're modest.

Because nearly every Latina has had it drummed into her — early and often — that we must be humble and self-effacing. Particularly if we are talented. Even more particularly if we are talented and working in a profession like journalism where advancement comes much more readily if you are a man (only 30 percent of supervisory positions in newsrooms are held by women, according to the 2013 ASNE report).

You might be tempted to think that this is no longer the case with the younger generation of Latinas, but in my experience no matter how bright, well-educated and competent my younger colleagues are, they still shy away from speaking with obvious pride about their work. More often, they demur and minimize accomplishment. In their worst moments, they defer to their male counterparts' opinions about deficit and internalize it as self-censoring truth.

Part of my challenge, as the older Latina journo in a supervisory position, is to actively discourage this cloak of modesty and deference. 

To encourage them to forsake their reputations as nice, quiet, unassuming members of the newsroom and embrace much riskier qualities: authenticity, ambition, audacity. 

Because they possess all of those qualities, they just need to own them. 

Not that it is easy. 

In fact, while I've long been an unapologetically assertive and self-assured journo (I've been called loud, rude and a pain in the ass more than once, usually by discomfited male colleagues), I am more tentative in the SFF writing sphere. No, I'm not a shrinking violet (my formidable mama didn't raise any of those) but I do find myself thinking twice before submitting my stories to venues with daunting reputations; and thrice before adding my titles to the lists of award-eligible stories. 

Damn cloak, so tempting to hide under it.

But if I ask the young women on AL DIA's editorial team for audacity, I can offer no less, and as it happens, it's "award eligibility reminder" time for the Hugos and Nebulas. So here is my short list of eligible work:

• UPDATE: My short story "Ember" which appeared in the anthology Menial: Skilled Labor in Science Fiction from Crossed Genres. 

• My short story "Collateral Memory" which appeared in Strange Horizons June 10, 2013  is eligible in the short story category. Read it, it's a good story. I guarantee it's a voice and narrative unlike any other. If you can't (or don't want to) nominate it, leave a comment on it anyway. Truth be told, there is little I love more than reading people's responses to my work.

• That publication in Strange Horizons also makes me eligible for the John W. Campbell Award, which is given to the best new science fiction or fantasy writer whose first work in a qualifying market was published in 2012 or 2013.  Neither my novel, INK, nor "La Gorda and the City of Silver," (nor any other stories I've published) make me eligible, but "Collateral Memory" does. And I won't lie, it would be cool to be nominated. So if you can ... think about it.  

Ultimately it doesn't matter whether any of the work I submit for my editorial team at AL DIA wins any awards. Nor does it matter if I am nominated, or ever win, an SFF award. What matters, mijas, is that we believe we can. And that we dare to say so, nice and loud.

Updated 1/11/14

Nuestras Voces, Our Voices: Emerging Latina writers talk about their work - Teresa Jusino

Editor's note: this is the 12th in a monthly (sometimes twice-monthly) series of guest blog posts in which emerging Latina writers talk about their work, their process and what inspires them.

Teresa Jusino is a New Yorker who  lives and writes in Los Angeles. Her pop culture criticism has been featured on websites like Tor.com, GirlGamer.com, Al Dia, ChinaShopMag.com, PinkRaygun.com, Newsarama, and PopMatters.com. 2012 saw Teresa’s work appear in two Doctor Who anthologies: Chicks Unravel Time (Mad Norwegian Press) and Outside In (ATB Publishing), and she was also published in Mad Norwegian’s Whedonistas. Her fiction has appeared in Crossed Genres, and she is currently writing a webseries based on the short film, Incredible Girl, by Celia Aurora de Blas, which is coming in 2014.

Writing as escape

I got my first, and only, detention in the eighth grade. In English class. For writing too much.

I was working on some story the way I always did in every class — furtively, with a notebook hidden underneath whatever book we were supposed to be looking at, taking passes at writing words during a lull in class discussion, or when my teacher wasn’t looking, or when someone was asking a question…

I was good at listening to what the teacher was talking about and writing short fiction at the same time. I got straight “A’s” in English. Lay off.

In any case, I was working on some story or other and one of my best friends was sitting next to me and wanted to read it. So, I passed it to her at the exact moment my teacher decided to look in our direction. Thinking we were passing trivial schoolgirl notes as opposed to the literary genius that was actually taking place, Ms. Lind gave us both detentions.

Even honor students get in trouble sometimes. Still, it’s pretty funny that the one time I did get in trouble at school was for sharing writing in English class. That’s how big a nerd I was. I wrote so much that I got in trouble for it.

But that moment captures just how important writing has always been to me. It’s not something I can stop. It’s something I’ll willingly get in trouble for, because the alternative is worse. It’s either write or go crazy. It’s either write, or die.

However, there’s a huge difference in how I approached writing before and after I made the decision to do it professionally. I’ve been a writer since I could pick up a pen, but when I was about 10 or 11, I decided that I wanted to be an actress. I was a huge fan of Beverly Hills 90210 (the original, not the stupid new one), and I loved reading articles like “A Day in the Life on the Set!” I thought to myself, That’s a job?! Hell yeah! I like pretending to be other people! I like dressing up! I wanna do that! And I did, I joined drama club in junior high, and continued in it all through high school, eventually becoming the club’s president. I went to NYU and got a BFA in Drama from the Tisch School of the Arts. I spent a good six years after college trying to make a life as an actor.

But the writing was always there. During all my free time (and even time that wasn’t so free, as illustrated by my detention story) you would find me with a notebook and a pen, scribbling for dear life. In fifth grade, I wrote reams of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Alien Nation fan fiction, and friends would accost me during recess to read the latest “episodes.” In Junior High, I created a world of cartoon characters I called “bug people,” which eventually led to the comic strip, Cutsie-Wootsie and Friends, which told the story of Cutsie-Wootsie, her boyfriend, Hungry Boy (never w/out a hot dog in his hand to show you how hungry he was), her best friend, Maggie, and a cast of characters that lived surprisingly soap-operaesque lives for people who looked like little bugs. I drew that comic on looseleaf and passed it around to friends during French class. One of those friends STILL has them. Throughout high school, I was writing short stories and a “novel,” I submitted pieces to our literary magazine, and during my Junior and Senior years, I was the editor of the school newspaper. I was the girl who secretly cheered when teachers assigned essays, when all the other students were going “Awww, man!” In college, I was primarily there for an acting degree, but I double-majored in English Literature, because I just couldn’t let writing go.

This continued after college. I would write during auditions and play rehearsals. I would write in line for movies and museum exhibits. I would write on my commute to and from work. I would write at work the same way I did when I was at school - furtively, when I was supposed to be engaging in other things.

Writing was the best way I knew how to express myself. Despite my acting ability, I was never more clear, or more honest, than when I wrote, even when I wrote fiction, so I always sought it out and craved it.

Then I got older, and I decided to try to make writing my living.

Fiction doesn’t pay right away, so I decided to go the non-fiction route, and built a name for myself in geek pop culture journalism. For a while, I was passionate about that, as I got to write about things and people that excited me. It was thrilling, too, to chase interviews, and come up with new angles through which I could examine the sci-fi and fantasy that I loved.

But after several years of that, I was burnt out on trying to come up with new ways to talk about the same limited sphere of interests. I’d written myself into a box, and what’s worse, that writing sapped my energy from the writing I wanted to be doing.

I missed telling stories.

And yet, even now, as I work two part-time day jobs that allow me the flexible schedule I wanted so that I’d have more time to write, the writing doesn’t come as furiously as it used to. It used to be that I couldn’t contain my writing. It was how I spent all my free time. I had boxes and boxes of notebooks of things I’d written. I had several stories constantly going on at once.

Now, I wrestle with finishing one at a time.  

Writing was my way of escaping other parts of my life. Now, though, there’s less that I want to escape. When I was younger, I did a lot less participating in the world around me, and when I did I was always on the periphery, never wanting to get too involved. I was afraid, insecure. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve grown into myself, and become the kind of person that wants to experience everything. To me, it’s more important to tend to my relationships or try new things than it is to have a successful writing career. Don’t get me wrong, a successful writing career is my biggest goal - but not if it comes at the expense of the rest of my life. And maybe that means that success will come more slowly for me, if at all. But I can live with that.

Yet writing continues to be my truest, most long-lasting love. It’s just that our relationship has evolved. It’s not only the way I best express myself, but the way I best process my thoughts and feelings. For example, I’d never really thought about my writing in these terms before I was asked to write this guest post and talk about my writing. Suddenly, as I started to put words on a page, my feelings started making sense. More than talking, or drowning my sorrows in food and drink, writing is how I best understand myself and the world, which is strange considering that it used to allow me to hide from those things.

I don’t feel the physical need to write that I used to. It isn’t compulsive anymore. But perhaps that’s a good thing if it means I’m happier with the rest of my life. I have a balanced, healthy, adult relationship with both my life and my writing at the moment, and I’m very grateful.

NPR's Code Switch forgets (or ignores) Latinas

con safos

In my work as the managing editor at Al Día News I spend a lot of time asking questions about the Latina experience in the United States. It is not an academic exercise. I’m intimately and professionally invested in examining the way we exist within a culture that sometimes erases, criminalizes or fetishizes us, and routinely overlooks our accomplishments.

I’ve heard many Latina stories, many Latina voices.. Each of those Latinas — cis and trans; immigrant and native-born; established and emergent; young and old — has something to say about what it means to be a Latina in the United States at this particular moment in time.

But that panoply of Latina voices has a hard time getting heard outside of specifically Latin@ circles. Sometimes, not even one Latina voice is heard.

NPR’s Code Switch, for example, picked up on the activity prompted by the #solidarityisforwhitewomen twitter hashtag created by writer Mikki Kendall, and generated a roundtable discussion that would explore the intersection of digital feminism and race in more depth than twitter’s 140-character limit permitted. They then asked Roxanne Gay, Jill Filipovic, and Kendall herself, to write posts for the site. The final two writers invited to the roundtable were Lindsey Yoo and Jamilah Lemieux (her piece is not posted yet, as I write this).

Three African-American writers (including the originator of the hashtag), one white blogger and one Korean-American. No Latinas.

It’s not that Latinas didn’t participate when the hashtag was trending, because we did. If memory serves, Aura Bogado, the news editor of Colorlines.com and a contributor to the Nation, was especially active. Even if I hadn't been following the hashtag, I would have seen this because she tops my "always read" list on twitter for her substantive, engaged take on the world.

So, then?

Maybe NPR's Code Switch thought the problematic intersection of race and feminism was not a consideration for the 25 million mestizas, afrolatinas, indigenous and white Latinas who live in the United States. Or maybe they thought we had nothing to contribute that couldn’t be said better by others.

One of the most pernicious and pervasive biases about Latinas is the belief that we are intellectual lightweights.

According to the American Association of University Professors, Latina tenured or tenure-track female faculty members frequently find themselves facing stereotypes centered on intellectual capacity. “Some are told by colleagues that they are particularly articulate, or that they speak English well, implying that this is atypical,” a 2012 AAUP article states. “Others have described instances where students, other faculty members, or staff members have assumed that they are service workers or anything but professors.”

The opposition to Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation was also couched in terms of intellectual ability. Jeffrey Rosen’s profile in the New Republic, which served as her introduction to the public, was chock-full of quotes about the future Justice’s middling intelligence and lack of “intellectual gravitas.” When Salon’s Rebecca Traister analyzed this sentiment, she posited that the emphasis on lack of intellect showed just how difficult it was for a woman to be judged on par with male colleagues. But not too terribly long after Sotomayor became Justice, Elena Kagan, a white woman, went through her own confirmation hearing, during which she was characterized as talented and “scary smart.”

In popular imagination, we’re all sassy but vacuous Devious Maids; dopey and unintelligible Sofia Vergaras; or variants of Lupe Ontiveros' goodhearted, but undereducated, domestic worker (a role the talented actress played 150 times in Hollywood movies). There is no other Latina image, no matter how brilliant its exemplar, that approaches the amount of face time given to the stereotype of the intellectually challenged Latina.

Being dismissed as second-rank isn’t limited to Latinas of course, it is something that every woman of color faces, to lesser or greater degree, across almost every field of endeavor. The original hashtag of #solidarityisforwhitewomen was born precisely because this weaponized dismissal of credibility and authority is used so frequently against African-American women.

But, I’m a journalist as well as a Latina, and it’s galling to see my mainstream colleagues at NPR leaving Latinas wholly out of a serious discussion of the intersectionality of race and feminism. It indicates that they have closed their ears to the Latina voices so richly in evidence on the same platform where they noticed #solidarityisforwhitewomen trending.

Here are some Latina voices, in addition to Aura Bogado, that the folks at Code Switch should pause to hear:

• Veronica Arreola, who explores exactly the intersection of feminism and “Latinidad” on her web site Viva la Feminista 

• The collective MalintZINE — “radical mujeres, some of color and some queer, based in Tucson, Arizona” — who use twitter, tumblr, facebook and their web site to call attention to disparities of power and to decry the silencing of Chicana voices in feminism and within male-centered Chicano activism through art and commentary. 

• Afrolatina Rosa Clemente is a Hip Hop activist and journo with political cred, who is outspoken about race, feminism and dozens of other issues. 

• Trans woman and mujerista Voz who has long spoken and blogged — unequivocally and unapologetically — about the way cis feminism excludes and endangers trans women of color. Her insights are sometimes hard to hear, but are invaluable for cis women who too often shut their trans sisters out of the conversation.

There are many others, of course. So many varied, intelligent and thoroughly engaged Latina voices out there, speaking about all manner of issues. I invite NPR’S Code Switch to — as labor activist Dolores Huerta once said — get off the sidewalk and walk with us into history

Nuestras Voces, Our Voices: Emerging Latina writers talk about their work - Melissa Fontanez

Editor's note: this is the tenth in a monthly (sometimes twice-monthly) series of guest blog posts in which emerging Latina writers talk about their work, their process and what inspires them.

Melissa Fontanez is working on a collection of poetry and her first novel. Her poem, “four ways of looking at the moon,” was published in the chapbook Something in the Water. Books, photography and music consume her life, but the love for her family shines the brightest.

Picking at threads

If you pay attention and listen to the world around you, the magic of inspiration is not hard to find.

My poetry reflects emotions, thoughts and feelings I have swirling around inside. The light touch of a breeze sliding along my skin. Standing under a tree at night, staring up at the moon. Watching my daughter purse her lips and the tufts of dandelion floating away with her wish. Listening to the stark quiet of a winter’s day. Admiring the vibrancy and rustle of fall leaves. The pleasure and pain of love. It all speaks to me and has me running for the nearest pen and paper, trying to capture it all. Writing poetry also helps me work out things that may be bothering me, or a way to remember all the good.

The novel I’m working on started with one red thread.

Each member of the writing workshop I belong to was told to close our eyes as our instructor placed a thread in each of our hands. I opened my eyes, ran my finger over it lightly until I started to write. From that prompt, came one of my main characters, Ines. She picked at the thread on her sweater, as she anxiously waited for some news. I can’t tell you what that is; you’ll just have to read all about it when I’ve finished the book, but just that simple, lone thread inspired me to do something I thought I never would.

I won’t sit here and say it’s always easy. Any writer can tell you that. I battle with loving and hating my work. For the longest time it was hard for me to even share it with others. It is a very vulnerable position to be in, but there is nothing else I would rather do.

I can only hope that someone will read my work and be able to identify with it in some way. That’s always my favorite part when I’m reading; to be able to connect with the words and find your voice.

So be open, to everything, and see where it takes you.

Nuestras Voces, Our Voices: Emerging Latina writers talk about their work - Lisa Quinones-Fontanez

Editor's note: this is the eighth in a monthly (sometimes twice-monthly) series of guest blog posts in which emerging Latina writers talk about their work, their process and what inspires them.

 

Lisa Quinones-Fontanez is a secretary by day, blog writer by night and Mami round the clock. When Lisa’s son, Norrin, was diagnosed with autism in May 2008, she found herself in a world she did not understand. In 2010 Lisa founded the blog AutismWonderland (www.autismwonderland.com). AutismWonderland is an award winning blog that chronicles her family journey with autism and shares local resources for children/families with special needs. In between work, blogging and advocating for Norrin, Lisa is also working on a historical fiction novel A Thousand Branches. A chapter excerpt (The Last Time of Anything) received an Honorable Mention in Glimmertrain's Family Matters October 2010 competition. You can find Lisa on Twitter (https://twitter.com/laliquin) and on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/AutismWonderland). 

The more I wrote, the more inspired I was to keep going

I grew up in a home filled with books. My father worked in a book factory and he’d bring them home. I can still hear the crack of the cover as I opened each book for the first time; I still remember the way the pages felt as I thumbed through them.

As a girl I spent countless hours reading about people I could not identify with and neighborhoods that didn't look anything like mine. I didn't realize I was missing something.

I was twenty years old the first time I read a book written by a Latina. It was Esmeralda Santiago's When I was Puerto Rican and I read it in less than two days. Her words filled a void, I didn’t know existed. It was the book that inspired me to write, except I had no idea what I want to write about.

Writing professors encouraged me to write what I knew. And over the next few years, I wrote about the things I thought I knew, but nothing worked. I had yet to create a character that haunted my every thought.

In the winter of 2004, I took a vacation to Puerto Rico to visit my godmother. During my trip, we visited the small island of Vieques. It was there that I began to visualize character, a family, a story. I spent the next few years reading, researching, writing and revising.

I began graduate school in 2008 hoping to complete the historical fiction novel inspired by my vacation years earlier. But my son had been recently diagnosed with autism and there was little time to write. Working full time during the day, going to school at night while trying to navigate the special education system was challenging, and my novel was put on hold. I was exhausted and lost my inspiration; suddenly my characters and their world seemed incredibly far away.

I was forced into this new world that I knew nothing about. I didn’t know a single person with autism. I didn’t even know what autism was. I turned to books for comfort, for guidance, for knowledge. I found all of those things yet it still wasn’t enough.

Not a single autism book was written by a Latino or featured a Latino family like mine. I could not identify with any of the men and women sharing their stories. The women wrote about quitting their careers to stay home with their children or moving to smaller house, some even moving to another state so that they could afford services. I knew I couldn’t quit my job as a secretary and my husband couldn’t quit his job as a Fed Ex courier. Living in a two-bedroom apartment, there wasn’t much we could downgrade to, and moving out of The Bronx wasn’t an option.

Two after my son’s diagnosis, I started writing about our autism experience, my son’s progress, our concerns, frustrations and joy and the search for an appropriate school placement. And the more I wrote, the more inspired I was to keep going.

Autism isn’t openly discussed among the Latino community and I write to help other parents know they are not alone and to know that there is hope. I want to encourage parents to advocate for their kids, to know their rights so that they fight for what their kid needs. I write because I love my son and I want the world to know what our version of autism looks like. I want people to know how much my son has inspired me.

One day I will finish the historical fiction novel I started. But for now, I will continue writing about raising a son with autism because it’s the story I am compelled to write.

Nuestras Voces, Our Voices: Emerging Latina writers talk about their work - Julia Rios

Editor's note: this is the seventh in monthly series of guest blog posts in which emerging Latina writers talk about their work, their process and what inspires them.

Julia Rios is a writer, editor, podcaster, and narrator. She hosts the

Outer Alliance Podcast (celebrating QUILTBAG speculative fiction), and

is one of the three fiction editors at Strange Horizons. Her fiction,

articles, interviews, and poetry have appeared in Daily Science

Fiction, Apex Magazine, Stone Telling, Jabberwocky, and several other

places. Her website is www.juliarios.com, and she's @omgjulia on Twitter.

Embracing diversity

My father came to the United States from Yucatán, Mexico when he was a teenager. My earliest memories are filled with his melodious voice, deep and still bearing an accent that marked him as different from my mother's WASP family. Though he spoke English fluently, and even got a PhD in Psychology from the University of Southern California, his English speech patterns remained slightly off. He never taught me Spanish, but I managed to absorb some of his foreign markers all the same. To this day, I sometimes use the wrong prepositions, or not quite usual English constructions when I'm tired. "Put it in the table," I'll say. "Close the lamp."

Most of the time when that happens, it amuses me, but sometimes it makes me angry, or profoundly sad. My father wanted me to be proud of my heritage. More than once in mid-September, he took me to Mexican Independence Day celebrations on Olvera Street in Los Angeles, he made sure I knew Cinco de Mayo was not "Mexican 4th of July" like many advertisers claimed, and he shared stories and food from his home with me in between our infrequent visits to his family. But for all that, the reason my father didn't teach me Spanish was because in Southern California, Latin@s abound, and unfortunately, so does racism. My father wanted me to pass for white, to assimilate, and to have the privilege accorded to people who didn't speak Spanish at home.

As an adult, this push and pull of pride vs. shame is still confusing, and I spend a lot of time thinking about who I am, which communities I belong to, and why. I realized a few years ago that as a child I loved the show I Love Lucy, because it presented a comforting family structure. There was a white mom and a Latino dad who had an accent, yelled a lot, and also liked to sing. It was very similar to my own home. When I asked my sister if she liked it, too, she was surprised and said yes, and that it was weird we'd both liked it because it wasn't a particularly new or popular show during our childhood. It should be obvious though that there's nothing weird about us wanting to see ourselves reflected in our media.

Because of that, I have been paying more attention to what I put into my fiction lately. I started out writing with default straight white viewpoint characters, because that was what I'd understood was "normal" in commercial narratives. Now not everything I write includes Latin@ content, but I've issued an open invitation for those aspects of my background to come out and play. I think about all the other people out there who long to see representations of themselves, and I take that as challenge to embrace my own diversity.

I'm not just a Latina. I'm Mexican. I'm American. I'm bisexual. I'm a feminist. I'm left-handed. I love cats. All of these things are part of me, and none of them alone make me who I am. My story "Oracle Gretel" recently appeared in PodCastle and is forthcoming in Heiresses of Russ 2013 edited by Steve Berman and Tenea D. Johnson. It features a bi protagonist and a talking cat. My story "Love and the Giant Squid" will appear in July in Pen-Ultimate: A Speculative Fiction Anthology edited by Lisa J. Cohen and Talib Hussain. It features a character who has a lot in common with my own father, though he's very much a fictional person. I don't know what the future will bring for my writing, but I do know that all of it will be in some way Latina, because it all will come from me. If I want to encourage my Latin@ peers to stretch out and embrace their full identities, whatever they may be, I guess first I must start with myself.

Nuestras Voces, Our Voices: Emerging Latina writers talk about their work - Melinda Palacio

Editor's note: this is the sixth in monthly series of guest blog posts in which emerging Latina writers talk about their work, their process and what inspires them.

Melinda Palacio is an award-winning poet and novelist. She lives in Santa Barbara and New Orleans. Her poetry chapbook, Folsom Lockdown, won Kulupi Press’ Sense of Place 2009 award. She is the author of the novel, Ocotillo Dreams (ASU Bilingual Press 2011), for which she received the Mariposa Award for Best First Book at the 2012 International Latino Book Awards and a 2012 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature. Her short stories and poetry have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies. Her first full-length poetry collection, How Fire Is a Story, Waiting, (Tia Chucha Press 2012) was a finalist for the Binghamton University Milt Kessler Poetry Award and the Patterson Poetry Prize. Read more of Melinda's work at www.melindapalacio.com or every other Friday on La Bloga. http://labloga.blogspot.com/2013/05/readings-and-greetings-at-old-zoo-in.html

Think, Dream, Write

My inspiration and writing process continues to evolve. Sometimes the change is so drastic, I wonder if I have a personality disorder because I don't favor routines. Even my favorite foods and color vary.

When it comes to writing, whether it be fiction or poetry, what motivates me most is getting the story right. I don't need to be in the same room every day in order to write. Rituals are lost on me because I often take my laptop and work in a different area of my house. Speaking of houses, I live in two different cities, Santa Barbara and New Orleans. Therefore, I can't rely on setting or mood.

Much of my inspiration for storytelling involved looking at old family photo albums. My grandmother would point to pictures of relatives I had never met and would tell me who they were and what they were doing when the photograph was taken. The photographs gave me a strong visual sense. I didn't realize it until I heard California Poet Laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera, describe looking through old photos with his mother as an early act of poem making. Poem making and myth making through stories of family photos are some of my earliest memories. With three or four phrases from my grandmother, I would craft a whole story in my head and dream up an entire narrative.

Before I sit down to write, I like to apply the Think Method, as seen in the 1962 film the Music Man in which a con artist teaches a small town's children how to strike up a band and make music by thinking, rather than practicing. I'll often spend hours and weeks thinking of new scene, chapter, or essay before I compose with pen and paper. At some point, I transfer my draft to the computer. Given that I'm dyslexic and cannot read my writing, I rely more on thinking and remembering my initial idea. Sometimes, the ideas come to me in dreams. I keep a notebook and pen by my bed because as much as I will myself to remember, I often forget the idea by the next day.

While I love variety and working in different genres, especially fiction and poetry, what I truly enjoy most is revision and the noise a crumpled paper makes when it lands in the recycling basket. This is more fun than a virtual manuscript and garbage can on the computer screen.

My motivation doesn't change. I still want to write the best poem that I can possibly write, the best book, or the best blog post. My secret is to read my work aloud. All the hiccups and extra words stand out better when I read something out loud. This is a step that's easy to skip when I am on deadline, but I'm much happier with the work when I slow down and take the time to read my draft out loud from a printed page.

Nuestras Voces, Our Voices: Emerging Latina writers talk about their work - Sujeiry Gonzalez

Editor's note: this is the fourth in monthly series of guest blog posts in which emerging Latina writers talk about their work, their process and what inspires them.

 Sujeiry Gonzalez is a relationship expert, coach, author, and freelance writer and editor. Get relationship advice and view coaching packages on LoveSujeiry.com.

Writing as therapy

Writing is my therapy. Instead of giving thousands of dollars to a therapist to dissect my innermost fears, I lay them out on the page. This is why my writing is so raw and honest. This is why many readers of Love Trips: A Collection of Relationship Stumbles — my first published book where I reveal my relationship woes — ask me in awe, "How can you share so much?"

I do put it all out there. Read a few pages of Love Trips and you’ll learn about the bad sex that I've had, that I've willingly participated in drunk dialing sessions, and that I have severe abandonment issues stemming from my philandering, Dominican papi.

Yet, I don't ever feel exposed.

I write as if I were writing in a journal, as if the words and stories I create are just for me. I write without guilt or shame because I am not guilt-ridden or ashamed of the many mistakes that I have made and repeated. I write with candidness, openness, and humor because I am candid, open, and humorous.

My writing is an extension of me.

And so I utilize my voice, my experiences, my imagination, and my personality in my work.

It is what makes my writing mine.

It's not brain surgery. I don't have a magical writing process that leads me to create entertaining and well-received content. Although, I do have a knack for remembering the annoying details of every man I've ever dated. I am also very skilled in the art of introspection, which allows me to reflect when writing. Being introspective means that I can search within for ideas. That I can educate readers on all things relating to love, relationships, and self-awareness. Or as I often say, to be "self-first."

Much like myself, my writing has developed. Although writing is still my therapy, it has become much more than an escape from a shrink's leather couch. My purpose has evolved. My inspiration now stems from a desire to heal...others. I write to help women, if only to save them a world of heartache and thousands of dollars.

Nuestras Voces, Our Voices: Emerging Latina writers talk about their work - Elianne Ramos

Editor's note: this is the third in monthly series of guest blog posts in which emerging Latina writers talk about their work, their process and what inspires them.

Elianne Ramos is principal and founder of Speak Hispanic, a marketing and PR consultancy focused on non-profits. She is the winner of the 2012 Game Changers Award from Politic365, and was recently nominated to the 2012 Yahoo Women Who Shine. She's also a columnist at Huffington Post, NBC Latino and Mamiverse. Her website is http://www.elianneramos.com. You can follow her on Twitter @ergeekgoddess.

Writing: Your heart on display

If I were to give it some thought, I’d say there must be something really wrong with all of us who decide to write for a living. Why else would you decide to put your heart and innermost thoughts on public display? And yet, we continue plodding on, one word at a time, in the hopes that transcribing the crazy thoughts swirling in our head can somehow orient us, help us find meaning, validate us.

The act of writing, in my case, serves many purposes. It’s a chance to understand life. To reimagine. To reminisce. To calm down or get fired up. To battle on. To BE. Inspiration, capricious goddess that it is, tends to show up unannounced, at odd times, always unwilling to give in to humanly-imposed timelines or expectations. Many a times, she’s triggered by completely random things: A phone call. A line from a forgotten poem. A tweet. My daughter’s laughter. A starry night. Trova music. Mandelbrot fractals. Justice.

Yet in my experience, she’s always willing to come along with me while interacting with people. Which is ironic, to say the least, coming from someone who grew up as a geeky, awkward girl with her nose in a book. I was never what you would call a social butterfly. Yet somehow, immersing myself in the fictional worlds of Allende and Marquez and Benedetti awakened my curiosity for the gazillion stories that surround us, everyday, everywhere, in every person we meet. Stories of challenges met, of travails overcome, of hopes crushed and regained…

There is something I find absolutely fascinating about the kaleidoscopic and relentless nature of the human spirit: People who aren’t afraid to claim their birthright to be awesome, magnificent, creative; who don’t wait for life circumstances to be perfect; who dare to rewrite their own roles and become the heroes in their own life.

As we step into the private chambers of someone’s story, we are given permission to flip through the pages of their life, to become a character in their stories of escapism, of turmoil, of redemption. We get a glimpse at the core of their very self. And at that magical moment, our souls recognize and embrace each other, like friends reuniting at long last. It is then that we realize that all our stories are really but one story: the story of humankind. And that glorious realization, to a writer, is what makes it all worthwhile.

Nuestras Voces, Our Voices: Emerging Latina writers talk about their work - Lorraine C. Ladish

Editor's note: this is the second in monthly series of guest blog posts in which emerging Latina writers talk about their work, their process and what inspires them.

  
Lorraine C. Ladish is the editor in chief of VivaFifty.com, an online publication for Latina moms. She is the mother of two young daughters and lives in Sarasota, Fla. with her blended family. Fully bilingual and bicultural, she has written 15 books of non-fiction (in Spanish) and two novels (in Spanish and English). Click here to go to her Amazon listings. Follow her on Twitter @lorrainecladish.

It started with books

I still remember the smell of ink of my grandfather’s printing press. The press spat out leaf after leaf of paper with printed words. The mechanical noise was comforting. It had a pattern to it. My sister and I would help collate the pages after they had been guillotined. Covers were glued on. They then became books. That happened on Saturdays. I must have been around six or seven years old.

My grandfather wrote. He wrote all the time. Longhand. On pieces of paper he would sometimes lose. He wrote wherever he was. He wrote poetry and read it to me. My father wrote too. He wrote on notebooks, using precise penmanship. He wrote with a fountain pen. At ten years old, so did I.

One of my schoolteachers once asked me for an autographed copy of one of my dad’s books. I gave her the book. She asked me whether it was autographed. I said yes. I didn’t know what autographed meant. She looked at the pages and told me the book wasn’t autographed. I took it back home to my father. He signed the book. I promised myself that from then on I would always ask what a word meant. I also realized it was important to autograph a book. One’s own book.

At 12, books were my best friends. I was shy. Very. I preferred books to people. Saturday mornings, it was the printing press, but the evenings were spent at the bookstore. We had more books than toys.

I thought everyone spent their free time reading and writing. My family did. Eventually I realized other people had other interests. But I continued reading and writing.

At 29, after years of writing just for myself in journals, I felt I had to do something important before I turned 30. I wrote a book. I managed to get it published. Don’t ask me how. But it happened.

Readers wrote to me. I felt like I´d done something of value. It felt good, so I wrote more books. All I wanted was to be a writer, a published writer. Yes, I could write in my journal, I could write for me … but I also wanted to do it for others.

My first book was non-fiction. My second book was too. My publisher didn’t want me to switch to fiction. It wouldn’t sell as well. I wrote more non-fiction. And I liked it.

I wrote novels too. Some were rejected. Thankfully. Eventually, two were published. Others were not. Thankfully too.

I continued writing … in my journal, in books, magazines. I even taught writing. Well, not really. I taught losing the fear of writing. Well, again, not really. I challenged people to lose the fear of writing. Some have gone on to publish books. They write e-mails letting me know of their accomplishments. I feel happy for them … and for me.

I had kids, and they have more books than toys. They see me write. They write too. I ended up publishing seventeen books. It sounds like a lot, but it feels like nothing. I need to write more. Like I need to drink water.

I became an editor … and yet I couldn’t stop writing. I couldn’t stop communicating. I wrote more books, I wrote blog posts, I wrote e mails.
I write. But I also run, draw, dance, speak, love and live. Because yes, I’m a writer, but most of all I’m a communicator.

And I’m OK with that.