Four years ago, I posed a question. Other Latinx writers have since started asking themselves the same thing, which I consider to be heartening. I don’t think that I’m the first person to necessarily asked where Latinx writers are represented in the SFF genre, but I’d like to think I contributed in my way to trying to change things. Thanks to Silvia Moreno-Garcia, we have data spanning 2017 – 2019.
As of today, there seem to be more Latinx writers I’m aware of in the SFF genres. Currently, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic is listed among the New York Times’s Bestsellers, Ana Dávila Cardinal’s Five Midnights and Category Five have both dealt directly with issues affecting Puerto Rico, Zoraida Córdova has published her Brooklyn Brujas series, R.S. Benedict has several amazing stories in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and many other writers I couldn’t all name (sorry). I hope their success make publishers purchase other Latinx writers’ stories, and not view them as being too risky.
As for me, one of my favorite stories, “How Juan Bobo Got to los Nueba Yores” will finally be published. It is slated to appear in Speculative Fiction for Dreamers: A Latinx Anthology in early 2021. I’m glad to be included among such a talented group of writers. I will likely make myself a nuisance promoting the anthology, but I’m glad that my take on updating Juan Bobo (whose stories I learned from Abuelo, so many years ago) found a home. I took it upon myself to write the types of stories I’d like to read, but doing so always comes with the risk of rejection. I’m just glad that it looks like there now seem to be more chances for Latinx writers to see their work get published. This, however, is not the end — merely the beginning of the struggle to keep that door open for others coming up behind us.