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
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...
Albert Camarillo is the Leon Sloss Jr. Memorial Professor, Emeritus, at Stanford University. He’s one of a small number of people who founded the...
In a new episode of Writing Latinos, we talk with Jorell Meléndez-Badillo about his most recent book, Puerto Rico: A National History—out next month...