By Thania Muñoz D. and Fabio Chee Madrigal
Hi! ¿Cómo está el ambiente?
¿Le gusta el party que nos hemos aventado por casi diez años?
We are definitely stoked you have stuck it out with us!
Through the work of editing ten issues we have had the pleasure of reading texts from some of the best emerging Latinx voices in the world. We have collaborated with writers, scholars, and institutions from U.S. academia to put forth two fabulous special issues focusing on American Indigenous languages and poetics of placement and longing. We have presented at AWP and we are currently exploring new ways of highlighting our presence on the American literary landscape. Last year marked the third consecutive year in which Latin@ Literatures has nominated texts to the Best of the Net Awards and the Pushcart Prize, a tradition that will undoubtedly continue.
We cannot be more excited, pues, to start our ninth year of existence with this, our tenth issue!
To highlight some of the texts in this issue: we are reminded about the power of a children’s perspective as Lizbette Ocasio-Russe narrates through Aida, a school aged girl running an errand for her mother, the story of 1934’s Puerto Rico’s agricultural workers’ protests in “The Elixir.” A young Latine perspective is also explored by Alejandro Sanchez in “Sex in Spanish.” Sanchez’s coming of age short story creatively navigates how machismo can hinder an adolescent’s experience of sex but also the joys of finding, eventually, hopefully, good matches to our sexual desires. In the science fiction story “Lenguas,” Luis Ramos explores the endurance and value of myth through time, and the connection between nature and the human spirit in a story about a strange animal and his owner. Lastly, there wouldn’t be Latine literature, if we wouldn’t talk about our identidad and immigration stories. In this issue we bring you poetic reflections by Ayendy Bonifacio about that little race box we all have to fill out now and then and the historical complexity of why they try to make us/ want us to fit in those boxes, as well as a very mesmerizing poetic essay exploring Mexican-American migration through memory, in “I dream of oceans,” by Emilia Díaz Magaloni.
It has been so rewarding to get so many emails and social media messages from you about how much you value this digital literary placita we call Latin@ Literatures. ¡Gracias! In an era of increased criminalization of our Latinx communities, continued banning of our books, stories, and histories, we pride ourselves in reading all of your cuentos, poetry, memoirs, and everything in between. Editing and publishing Latinx literature is our pedacito de lucha, we see you, we value you. As this country violently tries to deport and intimidate us, makes it harder for us to access higher education, deny DACA to a whole new generation of undocumented students, we will continue to remind everyone, ourselves, them, we are here, you cannot erase us. Our creativity goes beyond their stereotypes, we are writers, storytellers, poetas, we are artists, we belong, and the texts in this issue–in all of our issues–reminds us of that.
In the past and through this year, Latin@ Literatures has been sponsored by the Latinx and Hispanic Faculty Association at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, and their generous grant has been enough to keep us on the internet and be able to provide all of our services free of charge to the Latinx community. However, with increasing presence and promotion, our costs have risen and our editors have had to chip in when making extraordinary efforts to promote the journal, like the expenses associated with our presence at AWP. The fact that institutions like our current sponsors are experiencing budget shortfalls due to cuts from the current administration is also worrisome. Our future sponsorship is not guaranteed.
In the coming year we expect Latin@ Literatures to expand in order to fight against the incursions affecting our projected budgets. Currently, we are contemplating the best way to incorporate paid review services for Latinx authors and publishers, for example. We also thought about the standard literary journal practice of charging for submissions, but our content accessibility is something that we value very highly and thought it best to keep that option only as a last resource. Regardless of whatever changes we undertake, our journal will continue its efforts to operate as an open, free-content website available to everyone.
We value your stories, your poetry, your art. We hope that our service continues to showcase the strength in them.
¡Pásele, pues! Get comfortable, acompáñenos a leer, and make some new friends. La fiesta continúa.