Review and Author Q&A: A Maleta Full of Treasures by Natalia Sylvester and Illustrated by Juana Medina

In A Maleta Full of Treasures, a young girl named Dulce is watching her abuela pack maletas through a screen. Her paternal grandmother is traveling from Peru soon to visit her in Miami. Dulce hasn’t seen her in three years.

Abuela wants to know: “What would you like me to bring you, mi dulce?” 

“Just you,” Dulce responds.

But Abuela promises a surprise. And soon, Dulce is reunited with her grandmother who arrives with suitcases piled high as mountains. They settle at home and begin to open the maletas. Inside them, Dulce finds all kinds of treasures and a sweet, earthy smell. Abuela tells her it’s the scent of home.

From award-winning author Natalia Sylvester and illustrator Juana Medina comes a tender story about cherished family visits and the connections we nurture with people and places dear to us. Reading it felt like a warm embrace. 

Out on April 16 from Dial Books for Young Readers, A Maleta Full of Treasures is Sylvester’s first picture book. It was inspired partly by the special visits from relatives who live in Peru and would come to the US to spend time with Sylvester and her family. “They’d bring these suitcases full of candies and letters from family members, and photographs and little trinkets – whatever small gifts they could bring,” the author recalled. “Nothing that was really, I would say, expensive. I treasured them because they were priceless.”

La Maleta De Tesoros – a Spanish version of the forthcoming children’s book – will be published simultaneously.

Sylvester recently spoke with Latinx in Publishing about what inspired her first picture book, what the maleta symbolizes to her, and more.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Amaris Castillo (AC): Congratulations on A Maleta Full of Treasures! This is your first picture book after years of writing for adults and teens. Reading it felt like a warm embrace. What inspired you to write this book?

Natalia Sylvester (NS): First of all, thank you for that. I’m so glad that it feels that way because that’s really what I had hoped it would feel. There’s two things that inspired this book. A) We had moved from Peru when I was four. And in the time between when I was four to around 12, we couldn’t go back until we sorted out (paperwork). As immigration, the system is so slow and full of many twists and turns, and ups and downs, that are different for everyone. In our case, it prevented us from going back to Peru for all those years, which was a huge portion of my childhood. And yet it never felt like Peru was absent from my sense of self and from my heart. That was really thanks to my relatives who would come visit. They’d bring these suitcases full of candies and letters from family members, and photographs and little trinkets – whatever small gifts they could bring. Nothing that was really, I would say, expensive. I treasured them because they were priceless. 

I remember my mom would ask relatives to bring Peruvian history books so that we could learn about our own history, since we weren’t learning it in US schools. And I wanted to capture that feeling and anticipation, but also the magic of having a relative visit you and all the ways that the home feels different. I remember the smells that they would bring with them. They would fill our house. It was like, that’s what Peru smells like. And I just wanted to celebrate that. 

B) It was actually very much inspired by the word ‘maleta.’ When I was writing Running, there was actually a line where one of the characters who is Peruvian-American is eating a candy and she offers it to my main character. I think she ends up saying something like, ‘I have a whole maleta-full back home.’ There was a point in the editing process when somebody asked, ‘Hey, why not just say a whole suitcase-full back home?’ And I thought, Well, no, because this is how we code switch. I don’t actually use the word ‘suitcase.’ Even if I’m speaking English, for me that word is one that’s full of emotion, and full of a specific emotion. It’s very much connected to those Latin American roots. And so I always code switch for that word. To me it’s a ‘maleta.’ And so I wanted to capture that sense of what it means that it’s not just a little literal word.

“...I wanted to capture that feeling and anticipation, but also the magic of having a relative visit you and all the ways that the home feels different. I remember the smells that they would bring with them. They would fill our house. It was like, that’s what Peru smells like. And I just wanted to celebrate that. ”

AC: I can see this story being deeply resonant to families with loved ones who still live in the countries they hail from. I myself remember the excitement of wondering what’s inside a maleta. To you, what does the maleta symbolize?

NS: To me, it symbolizes a sense of home no matter where you go… It symbolizes this connection and this sense of self that we carry with us when you’ve moved from one country to another, when you have loved ones moving between those places to visit you and vice versa, if you happen to be able to go back and visit them. It’s all the things that we carry, and the things that we hold close through that constant travel.

AC: There’s a precious moment in the book when Dulce begins to ration the sweets her abuela brought, basically savoring what’s left. She knows the visit is coming to an end. Tell us about that moment. What were you trying to show to readers?

NS: When my relatives would come over and they’d bring cookies and candies, each of us cousins had our favorites. And obviously, they can only bring so many. There’s always a concern about how much will your maleta weigh? Are you going to go over the weight limit and have to pay extra? And we would never pay extra, so of course we’re not going over the weight limit. You have a finite amount, like anything. It’s not the same as candies you would get here in the US. You can’t just go to the supermarket and get more.

To me, it seemed to also really reflect this idea of, I love that they’re visiting, but I know that they have to go back soon. So you start really trying to enjoy what’s there while it’s there. Los gozas. You try to savor them – not just the candies, but the moments that you have together.

AC: Dulce has never been to the country where her abuela is from, yet she longs for it. It made me think deeply about the ties some of us feel to certain countries and places. What do you make of that longing, and what was it like to put it on the page?

NS: I think it’s something that feels kind of innate. Like I said, I came here when I was four, so my first memories are actually here in the US. And yet the other thing that coexists alongside that is being an immigrant from a very young age, seeing how our family is not yet fitting in, is trying to adapt to this new country, the new language, the new customs, while also trying to stay connected and preserve our own cultures and traditions. Being aware of all that from a young age, I remember having this very distinct feeling of: Even though all I know is here in the US, I also know there’s so much more beyond that, that I left. And that is equally a part of me.  I missed Peru even though I didn’t remember it, because my family and parents kept it alive inside of me and through our language and the food we’d eat… I really did long for it. 

I remember the very first time we finally went back. And I say ‘first time,’ even though it wasn’t my first time there. But to me it felt like the first time going when I was 12. I was so affected by that, that I got a bag of soil from my mom’s childhood backyard. We were staying at my aunt and uncle’s house, which had been my mom’s childhood home. I went into their backyard and filled a bag with soil, and I took it home with me to the US because I wanted to take that piece of home with me. And I was 12. I didn’t know that you’re not supposed to do that. My mom found out later. She was like, ‘I can’t believe Customs didn’t stop you.’ It was so embedded in me, this idea of, Yes, the US is home and it’s where we’ve made our lives but our roots are also here. And that is equally a part of you. I didn’t feel as complete until I had those two pieces together.

AC: What are you hoping readers take away from A Maleta Full of Treasures?

NS: I do hope they’ll have that warmth and tenderness you spoke about. I would love it if it helps readers feel seen in the same ways that, for example, Juana made me feel seen when I saw her illustrations. In the same way that I felt like when I was younger, reading children’s books, and didn’t necessarily see my family and my home in those books. But when I started to see the spreads of this book, I was like, Oh my God, I didn’t know that could happen. It almost felt like it healed this inner child of mine. 

I hope it’ll inspire excitement and get children and their adults to talk about the things that they treasure, and why they treasure them. It was really important to me that these aren’t necessarily treasures of monetary value. They’re treasures that can be small and simple, but are very meaningful. There’s reasons for why they connect to specific people and places that a person loves or cares for, or maybe misses. So I hope it’ll inspire people to express that and value it. 

I see stories as comfort, and I hope that that will also bring comfort even to those who might also be missing that home country. Maybe they haven’t gone yet, either. I hope this gives them a sense of hope and helps them feel connected to those loved ones, despite that distance.

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Natalia Sylvester is an award-winning author of the young adult novels Breathe and Count Back from Ten and Running and the adult novels Everyone Knows You Go Home and Chasing the Sun. Born in Lima, Peru, she grew up in Miami, Central Florida, and South Texas, and received her BFA from the University of Miami. A Maleta Full of Treasures is her first picture book.

Juana Medina is the creator of the Pura Belpré award-winning chapter book Juana & Lucas and many other titles and has illustrated numerous picture books, including ‘Twas the Night Before Pride and Smick! Born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, Juana Medina now lives with her family in the Washington D.C. area.

Amaris Castillo is an award-winning journalist, writer, and the creator of Bodega Stories, a series featuring real stories from the corner store. Her writing has appeared in La Galería Magazine, Aster(ix) Journal, Spanglish Voces, PALABRITAS, Dominican Moms Be Like… (part of the Dominican Writers Association’s #DWACuenticos chapbook series), and most recently Quislaona: A Dominican Fantasy Anthology and Sana, Sana: Latinx Pain and Radical Visions for Healing and Justice. Her short story, “El Don,” was a prize finalist for the 2022 Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writers’ Prize by the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival. She is a proud member of Latinx in Publishing’s Writers Mentorship Class of 2023 and lives in Florida with her family and dog.

Interview: Shut Up, This Is Serious by Carolina Ixta

A dark cloud hangs over Belén Dolores Itzel Del Toro’s world in East Oakland. Her father abandoned her family. Her mother – a teacher – has begun to disappear after work, so Belén comes home to an empty house most days. And her older sister, Ava, constantly lectures her about not ending up like their dad.

“I don’t really know what I want to be. It isn’t my fault,” Belén narrates. “After my pa left, I’d cut class, collect my Wendy’s money, and go home to lie in bed. I laid there because I felt like I couldn’t move, like my body was tethered to the mattress.”

At school, Belén cuts class often. She’s now at risk of not graduating high school. There’s also her best friend, Leti, who is expecting a baby with her boyfriend and hasn’t broken the news yet to her parents because he’s Black and they’re racist.

Shut Up, This Is Serious (out now from Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins) is debut author Carolina Ixta’s unforgettable YA novel about a Latina teen’s circuitous path towards healing, and life’s complexities along the way. I found this to be such a richly rendered story with great nuance, care, and an unflinching eye on Ixta’s behalf towards issues like anti-Black racism and inequities in education. Shut Up, This Is Serious is at times heartbreaking, maddening, and hopeful. I didn’t want the novel to end, but was anxious to see where Belén and Leti would end up.

Ixta – herself a Mexican-American from Oakland – spoke with Latinx in Publishing about the inspiration behind Shut Up, This Is Serious, why she chose to address certain real-life issues in her book, and more.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Amaris Castillo (AC): Congratulations on Shut Up, This Is Serious! I read that the inspiration behind your novel was driven, in part, by some resentment you felt growing up in the YA market. Can you elaborate?

Carolina Ixta (CI): The YA market when I was growing up was not at all what it’s like today. And I will say I think we have a long way to go, still, in YA. But when I was growing up, the big names were John Green and Sarah Dessen. The Hunger Games became very popular. Twilight was still very popular. But there just weren’t any Latinos apart from a handful. I remember the book that everyone talked about was The House on Mango Street, which was published in the 80s. There were a couple others, but they were very few and far between. 

When I was younger, I was writing competitively with the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and I was doing their novel writing category. I would do it every year. When I got to college, I took this class on Latino literature… It was the first time that I was reading work by other Latino writers. This was in the literary fiction world, so it was not YA. I was really stunned by the repertoire that the lit fic community had to choose from. I know there’s diversity issues there, as well, but they seem to have so much more. 

I look back at my old work that I’d written when I was in high school or before, and I realize that every character I had written was white. And I had no idea. I just wasn’t cognizant enough of their identity, of my own identity, and I chalked it up a lot to reproducing what I was consuming… I was reading a bunch of books about white people and, somehow in my subconscious, thinking those were my own experiences when they really weren’t. And then reproducing them – writing these characters that were white that weren’t dealing with any of the real issues that I was dealing with in my life. So I felt very resentful. I finished school and went to Berkeley for graduate school. And I started writing a book and reading a lot of middle grade because I was a fifth-grade teacher. In my time away from YA, I realized that there had been this beginning of a renaissance, I’ll say, where I was able to go into the middle grade and YA sections and suddenly there were these big names like Elizabeth Acevedo, Erika L. Sánchez and Jason Reynolds. 

Again, I want to emphasize (that) I feel like we still have lots and lots and lots of work to do. But I didn’t want to feel like I was the first in a conversation. I wanted to feel like I was in conversation with other people. And it was the first time I was able to feel that way. So that’s what really led me to write the book.

AC: Your book largely centers on Belén, a teen from East Oakland who is struggling after her father abandoned the family. She is also at risk of not graduating. She is an incredibly compelling character who doesn’t always make the best choices. What was it like to form this character?

CI: Belén was a really challenging character for me to form because I related to her, but I really didn’t at the same time. I related a lot to her family structure; I was also raised by a single parent. But in terms of her academic performance in high school, I was not that. I was very much an AP student. I did all of my homework. I was a good student growing up. But because I studied to be a teacher, I found that most of the time when students are “underperforming” or truant or missing class, it’s because there’s usually issues at home. If not, they’re responding to systemic obstacles placed in front of them that are working. 

One of the reviews I read of this book was like, ‘Belén hates school.’ I was like, ‘No, no, no. Actually, I think school hates Belén.’ She’s not on the right track. She has teachers who really couldn’t care less what she’s doing. So when I wrote her, I very much wanted her to be opposite to me in my experiences as a student. I wanted her to be opposite to Leti. She’s (Belén) underperforming. She’s cutting class all the time. And I very much wanted her to follow an anti-hero arc; every solution that would seem so clear from the vantage point of a reader or even an adult, she’s not going to take. Because she’s young, right? She’s making a lot of mistakes. I think what made her such an interesting character to write is that she’s making so many mistakes and that the path out of her issues seems very clear, but to her as a 17-year-old girl, it really isn’t. 

In earlier drafts of the book, she’s not making that many mistakes. She’s a little bit too mature. So as I worked with her character, I wanted her to make mistakes and be almost empowered by the mistakes that she is making – specifically in this romantic relationship that she gets into. She’s privy to some information that I think any other cognitive person would be like, ‘Ooh, you should probably stop doing that.’ But given the nature of the situation that she’s in, she’s very much like, ‘This is all I have left.’ I really wanted her character to be a character where the answer seems so clear: ‘Go to class. Do your homework. Don’t go out with this guy.’ But at the same time, I wanted to give her so much of an introspective monologue, where readers then can walk away saying something like, ‘Well, it would make sense why she would do that. She’s in a very, very challenging position.’

For her character, it was really important for me to make sure she was making mistakes that were relevant to a 17-year-old’s experience, but also relevant to someone who’s going through a profoundly challenging time that even some adults haven’t gone through. So for Belén specifically, it was very much walking the line of making her empowered but also still making her immature and making her a child, and behave very much like a child.

AC: You touch on some real-life issues within our community: anti-Blackness, colorism in the Latinx community, inequity in education, differences in class. You’re also an elementary school teacher. What drove you to address these themes in your novel?

CI: Very much my experiences growing up, and then the experience of being a teacher. I am a white-presenting Latina. My sister is not. She’s a Black-presenting Latina, even though nobody in our family is Black. It’s interesting how that can happen. I had a very easy childhood growing up. My nickname meant ‘pretty.’ I was favored by my grandparents because I was so pale and white, and I had green eyes. As I got older and became cognizant of issues around race generally, I then became very cognizant of issues about race in the Latino community. So the caste system, the effects of colonization, all of that. I was taking a lot of classes on ethnic studies and critical race theory in my undergrad, and then in my graduate school experience. And I was learning a lot. I literally felt my brain growing some days.

“When I thought about the book, I was like, well, I want readers to walk away with knowledge that maybe they didn’t have before. But I can’t just sit there and give these dictionary definitions. It’s too boring. It’s too dry. So I have to make sure they’re embedded into the story. ”

I became a fifth-grade teacher, and my students were going through exactly everything I had gone through as a child. They were repeating these words and this really aggressive language, specifically to their Black peers. And when I would call for parent-teacher conferences, their parents would be like, ‘Well, what is the problem?’ It reminded me a lot of my upbringing; my parents and my family members would similarly make these very racist backhanded comments. I didn’t realize they were a problem until I was in university, or somewhat high school age. I didn’t know it was a huge problem, and a problem I had language for where I can point to mestizaje, colorism, caste system, and blanqueamiento. I didn’t have that language until I was in college. And I was looking at my students and really thinking like, Man, if I don’t teach you what these words mean, you may never learn them. And not because I don’t think they’re not going to go to college. I really want them to. But because there are so many obstacles in their path to get there, the largest of them being finance. And many of them would be first-gen students. So it was like, ‘I can’t guarantee all of you are going to have the same path that I had. So I have to teach you about this stuff’....

When I thought about the book, I was like, well, I want readers to walk away with knowledge that maybe they didn’t have before. But I can’t just sit there and give these dictionary definitions. It’s too boring. It’s too dry. So I have to make sure they’re embedded into the story. A lot of that came with attempting not to underestimate my readers, and just throwing it in there in a subtle way and letting them make their own connections.

AC: Let’s talk about the stereotype of teen pregnancy among Latinas. It is something Belén seems keenly aware of as it relates to her best friend, Leti. Can you talk about how you chose to address this stereotype and turn it on its head?

CI: It’s so funny to me because I never thought I would write about teen pregnancy. It was never something that was super pressing in my mind. I wanted to write more about sex, and sex for Latinas and sex for young women – and our perceived notions about Latinas and young women who are sexually active. And I think the only way I could do that was if I did make Leti’s character pregnant. Leti is obviously a character who you wouldn’t imagine would get pregnant, right? She’s like a very nerdy AP student. She’s very, very devoutly Catholic. But when I was younger, I remember having pregnant classmates. As early as seventh grade, I remember having a classmate who was pregnant, who was Latina. And I remember the way that the teachers treated her. They treated her like she was some kind of zoo animal and as if she was lesser than. I didn’t have the language then. I just was observant.

I went to a very big public high school. We would have pregnant girls, and it was just kind of par for the course. There were just too many of us to really care too much. But as I got older, when I went to university, again, I was taking all of these classes and learning a lot about the tropes of the Latina pregnant girl and of the promiscuous, sexy, hot Latina – and where these things come from. 

Specifically in regards to teen pregnancy, I was learning that statistically it’s not that Latina girls are engaging in sex more than white girls, for example. It’s that most of us are brought up Catholic. So if we’re really pointing fingers, it’s not toward promiscuity. We’re truly pointing fingers at colonization. That goes centuries back. Mexico was colonized by the Spanish and we’re taught to believe certain aspects of the Bible. One of them is that you don’t have sex until you’re married, and you only have sex with your husband and then you don’t use birth control. All seems good and well until you realize that kids are human. Leti, for me, served to exemplify that it’s not because she’s stupid. She’s perhaps one of the smartest characters in the book. It’s not because she’s promiscuous. She’s really not having sex that often. It’s because she was just never taught that this is what happens when you have sex. Or this is what could happen, because in her household, her parents are what I would say almost oppressively Catholic… I wanted Leti’s character and her arc to really show that the archetype and the stereotype of the pregnant Latina is usually posited to readers and to media consumers without much context. If you know the history of colonization, if you know the Catholic Church, and if you know young teenagers, teen pregnancies specifically for Latinos makes lots of sense. Because we can preach all we want about not having premarital sex and abstinence being the best way, but kids are kids, right? They need to experiment and do what they’re gonna do. They’re human beings… 

And I wanted readers to understand that a pregnancy is not the end of a life. It truly, biologically, is the beginning of another one, but also just a different path for someone to take. And to also address some of the stigmas around premarital sex and teen pregnancy.

AC: What are you hoping readers take away from Shut Up, This Is Serious?

CI: I wrote this book with Latino readers in mind first, and I’m hopeful that everyone else takes something away from it as well. But for the Latino readers: I really want folks to really think deeply and critically about our racial identity, and to not shy away from thinking about race. We talk all the time about how people are discriminatory toward Latinos, which is very true. We talk less about how we are discriminatory toward each other, and then how we are discriminatory toward other racial groups. So I want that to be the first thing that folks walk away from. 

I also wrote this book for Latina women. I want them to walk away understanding that they’re seen and they’re valued. I think Belén’s story, despite her being a Latina girl, is pretty ubiquitous in theme of asking for help when you need it and understanding that abandonment is not the end of life. It really truly is just the beginning of a different one. And to think of absence as presence after a lot of grief and healing. That’s really what I wanted folks to walk away from.

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Carolina Ixta is a writer from Oakland, California. A daughter of Mexican immigrants, she received her BA in creative writing and Spanish language and literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and obtained her master’s degree in education at the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently an elementary school teacher whose pedagogy centers critical race theory at the primary education level. Shut Up, This Is Serious is her debut novel.

Amaris Castillo is an award-winning journalist, writer, and the creator of Bodega Stories, a series featuring real stories from the corner store. Her writing has appeared in La Galería Magazine, Aster(ix) Journal, Spanglish Voces, PALABRITAS, Dominican Moms Be Like… (part of the Dominican Writers Association’s #DWACuenticos chapbook series), and most recently Quislaona: A Dominican Fantasy Anthology and Sana, Sana: Latinx Pain and Radical Visions for Healing and Justice. Her short story, “El Don,” was a prize finalist for the 2022 Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writers’ Prize by the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival. She is a proud member of Latinx in Publishing’s Writers Mentorship Class of 2023 and lives in Florida with her family and dog.

Book Review: Breakup from Hell

One of my first reviews for Latinx in Pub was The Storyteller’s Death by Ann Dávila Cardinal. It was her adult fiction debut; it was a novel that touched me and helped me learn about Puerto Rico in such a personal way. So, when the opportunity to review one of Cardinal’s young adult novels came up, I jumped on the chance to review it. If you are looking for a quick heart-pumping unique young adult fantasy romance to add to your February TBR, look no further!

Breakup From Hell by Ann Dávila Cardinal is a fast-paced and surprisingly funny young adult novel that questions the desire to save the bad boy because the bad boy might not always deserve to be saved. Breakup From Hell follows the tale of Miguela Angeles, a teenager living in a small town in Vermont where she feels trapped. Her abuela is keeping secrets from her and she is tired of experiencing the same day over and over. That is until she runs into a new boy named Sam outside of church. With Sam blowing into town, Miguela jumps at the chance for something new and she begins to change. She is turning her back on her best friends and they are worried. But in the midst of Miguela’s new whirlwind romance, she cannot help but feel like something is wrong. As she unravels the secrets her abuela is keeping from her, Miguela soon realizes she is living in something akin to her favorite horror novels. Miguela’s journey is full of twists, turns, betrayals, revenge, and (unexpected) love.

Cardinal’s Breakup From Hell uses religious themes that are important to many Puerto Rican homes to show how individuals can find their own power and change the course of not only their lives but the lives of those around them. This book also highlights the sacrifices families, specifically mothers, make to protect their children. Cardinal’s work points to the strength in our maternal figures, allowing young women to see themselves as strong, as the savior they need instead of being saved. Miguela follows in her mother’s footsteps and is guided by the strength of multiple material figures in this book. There is a beautiful craftsmanship to this book where religion guides without becoming all-consuming for the characters in a way that I think can be aspiring and potentially healing to those with a difficult relationship with Christianity.

“Breakup From Hell is a rich adventure story where a young Puerto Rican woman gets to become her own hero. It has a rich creativity and blends culture, heritage, and religion into a unique story to highlight the growth and strength teenagers have within themselves.”

I am so glad that I read this book; it feels like Cardinal looked into the brain of my teenage self and wrote the book that was sitting on my heart to read. Breakup From Hell is a rich adventure story where a young Puerto Rican woman gets to become her own hero. It has a rich creativity and blends culture, heritage, and religion into a unique story to highlight the growth and strength teenagers have within themselves. This book is a wonderful read for those who are looking to diversify their reads and to celebrate the joy of a young girl who just went through a breakup from hell.

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Ann Dávila Cardinal is a writer and director of student recruitment for Vermont College of Fine Arts, where she earned her MFA in writing. Her young adult horror novels include Breakup from Hell and Five Midnights and its sequel, Category Five, and she also writes screenplays and podcasts with her son, Carlos Victor Cardinal. Ann lives with her family just north of Stowe, Vermont, and is always on the lookout for shadow demons. Visit her online at anndavilacardinal.com.

TEREZA LOPEZ (she/her) is a recent graduate from Clark University with a double major in English and history. She attended Clark University again in Fall 2021 and obtained a Master’s in communication. When she is not studying, you can find her obsessively reading or taking care of her new kitten.

Book Review: A Place to Anchor by: Estela Casas

A Place to Achor: Journalism, Cancer, and Rewriting Mi Vida is an autobiography written by Estela Casas. In her autobiography, Casas gives the reader the opportunity to see inside her life, focusing on her work as a journalist and her journey with cancer. As a news anchor in El Paso, TX, Casas was a constant presence in the homes of her viewers. She was a trusted voice, helping viewers through tragic and trying times, eventually learning, that with her own personal life changing news, she would have to trust others as well as reinvent herself.

Casas’ story is one of courage under fire. She is taken by surprise with the diagnosis of thyroid and bilateral breast cancer. She was used to being the one who reported on the news, keeping her life private but everything changed. Quickly, she became the news and her life was no longer private. Casas decided to open herself up to her viewers, who became both her reason to live and her motivation to change who she was and how she saw herself.

As a journalist, you are privy to many behind-the-scenes circumstances. You pick and choose how and what to report, in order for viewers to make informed decisions. However, when your life becomes the news, it’s even harder to strip away your bias and beliefs. Fear, vulnerability, and faith become a constant. You hardly recognize who you’ve become, unsure if this new version of you can go back to how things were. This is what Casas vividly depicts in her story. “Faith or fear” becomes her mantra, she musters her courage and embraces the uncomfortable, all in the hopes of advocating for others to be their own health care advocates. Casas’ wish, other than being alive, is to enjoy her life with her children and watch them grow, to know that her story pushed others to practice self-care, to take an interest in their physical well-being, and to question the power of faith during turbulent times.

During all of these trials, Casas became very aware of just how much she needed her viewers. Casas’ decision to let the viewers into her private bubble was one that surprised even her, yet there was never really any doubt about the fact that this is how she had to experience it all. The viewers needed to know what was going on and Casas needed to share, but most importantly, she needed her viewers’ support. With each chapter of the book, each turn of the page, the reader is drawn into the shared experience. When Casas is faced with a challenge, feels free, embraces her looks changing, and starts rediscovering her faith in God, we are there right with her.

“Casas’ wish, other than being alive, is to enjoy her life with her children and watch them grow, to know that her story pushed others to practice self-care, to take an interest in their physical well-being, and to question the power of faith during turbulent times. ”

The book resonated with me, as my life seemed to mirror some of Estela’s experiences: an orphan, a mother, Latinx, a journalist, and a survivor, not of cancer but a number of near-catastrophic brain bleeds that required emergency brain surgery. Our stories are not the same exactly, but I was able to empathize with Casas and her journey. The book is a story of a life and of a death. The death of old self to a newer thriving ever changing better version of herself. I am certain you will find a nugget of wisdom or two in Casas’ journey. You will laugh, cry, become fearful and hopeful, while also finding yourself in Casas’ journey. I loved this book and I think you will too.

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Estela Casas is a first-generation El Pasoan, mother, cancer thriver, and philanthropist. She is a former English and Spanish language news anchor and journalist who used her platform to not only report the news, but find ways to make a difference in her community. Estela founded the Stand with Estela Casas Cancer Foundation to help increase awareness about breast cancer and raise money to help uninsured women on their cancer journeys.

In her 37 years as a prime-time television news anchor, Estela has highlighted issues of education and health for underserved communities. She eventually found herself the subject of her own reporting, bringing her loyal viewers with her as she shared personal stories about her chemotherapy treatments and surgeries. As a two-time cancer survivor, Estela aims to show women that they too can successfully wage the war against any challenge—not just cancer. Estela firmly believes that her strong faith and love of family, friends, and strangers helped transform her into a better version of herself.

Angela “Angie” Ybarra is a senior student enrolled in the Nontraditional Degree Program (NDP) at Northeastern Illinois University. She hopes to work as a grant writer to assist local nonprofit organizations that address the issues of gentrification within Chicago's NorthWest side and help them find funding for their work. Angie loves to give her audience the opportunity to formulate their own views by presenting the facts or points of interest with the hope to move her audience into action.

“Journalism is what maintains democracy. It’s the force for progressive social change.” —Andrew Vachss, Author

Book Review: The Making of Yolanda La Bruja by Lorraine Avila

Sometimes the title of a book is all you need to see in order to decide whether or not you want to read it but this book brought the full package. The Making of Yolanda La Bruja by Lorraine Avila does not disappoint. From the title, to the powerful cover image, I was immediately drawn. The content of this book is also so well written that you are hooked from the start. The first chapter starts us on a journey and keeps us captured until the skillful wrap-up of the story in the final chapter.

As the story opens, the reader is treated to some of the mystical charms of Yolanda’s ancestors and her culture. Have you ever experienced a tarot card reading before? Well, Yolanda’s family lives a life full of tradition that is seeped in this way of life. They have beliefs in the powers that be and tarot cards, visions, and spells are part of their everyday life. This YA book is relevant to today’s issues, giving us a look at what school can be like for teenagers nowadays. Think fire drills versus active shooter drills. Yolanda’s unique abilities can be chalked up to being good at reading people but the storyline shows us that it is so much more than that. Yolanda is a seer of sorts and when a new boy transfers into her school, she gets a strange feeling about him. We join Yolanda on her adventures to try and stop a tragic event befalling her school and community.

Rich in so many traditions, The Making of Yolanda La Bruja gives us a deeper look at Brujeria and how it can be viewed as a religious experience, specifically pertaining to the story, in the Dominican Republic. A young girl living in the Bronx, excited to be turning 16, Yolanda is about to be further introduced to Brujeria. Throughout the story, she is faced with the challenge of trying to show a young boy what is special about her community, hoping that this will keep him from performing a most heinous act that could alter the face of her beloved community.

This book is rich, filled with flavorful words that come together to paint a coming-of-age story that centers tradition, religion, and the reality of being a teenager faced with the possibility of a tragic incident, too familiar to many people and communities across the United States and the world.

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Lorraine Avila (she/they) is a storyteller. Lorraine was born and raised in the Bronx, NY and is a first generation Dominican-American. Avila spent a decade as an educator in the K-12 education system. She has a BA from Fordham University in English, an MA in Teaching from New York University, and an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh. The Making of Yolanda La Bruja is her YA debut.

Angela “Angie” Ybarra is a senior student enrolled in the Nontraditional Degree Program (NDP) at Northeastern Illinois University. She hopes to work as a grant writer to assist local nonprofit organizations that address the issues of gentrification within Chicago's NorthWest side and help them find funding for their work. Angie loves to give her audience the opportunity to formulate their own views by presenting the facts or points of interest with the hope to move her audience into action.

“Journalism is what maintains democracy. It’s the force for progressive social change.” —Andrew Vachss, Author

Book Review: The Flower In The Skull by Kathleen Alcala

Kathleen Alcalá weaves together a story that begins over 100 years ago, in the community of the Opata Indians, in the Sonoran Desert. It is a story of three generations that centers around the life of Cocha. Starting amidst a small village, in a time of violence and war, we are invited to see the beauty of the land through Alcalá’s descriptive words, painting a vivid picture of the Opata Indians land. A land that is simple and yet grand in tradition, and the villagers, slight as they may be, are the strength of the village. Though a hard life to image and an even harder one to live, we witness the struggles that Cocha faces, soaking up the words of Alcalá.

The reader follows the travels of Cocha who is destined to live a life that is innately centered around survival. From a young age, Cocha realizes that her life will not be easy. Living in a land full of dream-like beauty, quiet and peacefulness, the reader quickly sees how Cocha’s home becomes overrun with the brutality of war. Soldiers invade, confiscate land, capture the men of the village and displace many others. Cocha must leave her home, her village and her way of life for the unknown. This book provides a look into the lives of ordinary people who faced extraordinary circumstances. Along the way, either by the need for self perseveration or the desire to keep the family together, Cocha faces many obstacles.

“This book provides a look into the lives of ordinary people who faced extraordinary circumstances. ”

Traversing generations, we are given a look into the hope, fear, vulnerability, ordinariness and the courage it takes Cocha to carry on her lineage, with the lesson that people are more alike than different, regardless of time and space. We see how Cocha goes from being a child, to her siblings caregiver in a breath. She experiences a shock in discovering her mother’s dependency on a man, lost, willing to walk away from her family; not looking back once.

Fast forward to the 1990s and we are introduced to Shelly. Shelly finds herself in Tuscan in search of details for a research project she is working on, when she stumbles upon a photo that gives her a connection to her past and her ancestors. The photo is of Cocha, who Shelly thinks looks like the only photo that she has of a family member. Could it be? Is fate intervening to provide Shelly with a renewed sense of self and a way to move forward in her own life, amidst that which has not changed—patriarchal attitudes.

Let this book provide you with a look at life in Cocha’s village, to the long dirt road that she travels to find herself, both literally and figuratively. We sit and watch in our mind’s eye a life unfold and give way to a tale of modern times. We discover the trauma of a generation and the healing process that takes place. You will enjoy this book, which originally appeared in the late 1990s and is the 2nd book of what was to be a trilogy. The Flower In the Skull, however, holds its own and stands alone as well. I enjoyed Alcalá’s style and her introduction of characters, the description of the land and the life of Cocha. Perhaps this tale will strike in you a desire to know more about who you are.

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Kathleen Alcalá was born in Compton, California, to Mexican parents and grew up in San Bernardino. She is the author of six award-winning books that include a collection of stories, three novels, a book of essays, and The Deepest Roots: Finding Food and Community on a Pacific Northwest Island, from the University of Washington Press. A member of the Ópata Nation, Kathleen makes her home on Suquamish territory.

Angela “Angie” Ybarra is a senior student enrolled in the Nontraditional Degree Program (NDP) at Northeastern Illinois University. She hopes to work as a grant writer to assist local nonprofit organizations that address the issues of gentrification within Chicago's NorthWest side and help them find funding for their work. Angie loves to give her audience the opportunity to formulate their own views by presenting the facts or points of interest with the hope to move her audience into action.

“Journalism is what maintains democracy. It’s the force for progressive social change.” —Andrew Vachss, Author

Book Review: Where There Was Fire by John Manuel Arias

We don't learn our family history all at once. We learn it in fragments, casual asides, and eavesdropping. Tangents are important, oftentimes everything. We master the art of listening as much as we master the art of interjecting because storytelling can be as interactive as it is captivating and, while we do take the scenic route, we get to the point. Children of a certain generation also know which questions to ask and won’t ask them. That is to say, some of us hesitate on subjects we inherently know are delicate. And it’s in this tension of what’s withheld that John Manuel Arias brilliantly writes his debut Where There Was Fire, detailing a strained family saga haunted by the colonial history and machismo it’s set against. 

The novel opens with a hot night in 1968 Costa Rica, an evening we soon learn was planned to be spent as a date to the local theater, that culminates in a destructive fire and murder. Told in shifting multi-generational perspectives traversing time, the women of the novel are left to make sense of what came to pass that night and in the years since. Illustrated by the novel’s nonlinear narrative approach, piecing together family history doesn’t happen chronologically. Like an investigator’s wall crowded with tacks and string, we trace a web of evidence to the novel’s present time, 1995, when the oldest daughter of the family is intent on answers, for her own sake and for the sake of her son. However, this pursuit comes more easily to us as readers with valuable access to various points of view that render a fuller scope of the tragedies wrought throughout the novel. Where a mother may feel righteous in her bitterness, we may see a daughter who has a right to her pain. In the novel, Arias pens a range of voices so that we see it’s not just one stake in the matter, it’s several. 

Arias, who is also a poet, writes this story with lyricism and evocative imagery expressive of Latin American canon. During his September in-person event at Book Soup LA for the novel, Arias discussed the necessity he felt in writing a speculative family history that leaned into magical realism rather than shied away from it. The mesmerizing croaks of toads (which I made the mistake of listening to on the Internet) and the myths woven into the story are the most memorable for me. And while I’m sure there is more than one reason Arias had to use this narrative style, the one I think about the most is that he’s haunted. He said as much, matter-of-factly describing his life living with ghosts. I thought about this a lot while I read the novel because being haunted can feel like nagging nostalgia, and I realized that all the women in the novel are haunted by their histories, including the parts unbeknownst to them. But it seems that, apart from the greed that drives the colonization of Costa Rica and the U.S. capitalization of locally farmed bananas and other crops, the women are directly harmed by the men in their lives too; by family members, friends, and the specters of machismo. And Arias shows us this harm processed by Costa Rican women, who sit with each other and drink instant coffee, in a country famous for their coffee beans.

This harm can seem so ordinary in a culture steeped in misogyny, to live with the omnipresent forces of patriarchy backed by a dominant religion and colonization. But Arias skillfully takes a deeper look at the family’s women of several generations, revealing their relationship dynamics, bringing forth their individual agencies and responsibilities to each other, and where they failed too. One of the book’s cruxes is mother-child estrangement and understanding what it takes to go against the societal norms woven into the culture, to have a child dignify themselves worthy of respect rather than blindly accept a mother who vaguely does everything “for a reason.” The novel’s narrative choices makes the estrangement more mystifying, since we don’t have all the information right away, pulling our sympathies in all directions. So while the search for explanations may be less complicated to us as willing readers, the novel challenges us to do the heavy work of feeling our conflicting emotions.

““Where There Was Fire” examines whether time can heal generational wounds, if forgiveness can come with time, or if grudges and pain are as much part of our inheritance. I think Arias points to mercy instead. The rains of Costa Rica could cleanse a fire.”

When I think about Where There Was Fire, the heartwrenching question I come back to is: what could have been if generational pain didn’t make a family so guarded with each other? Though the pain is shared and passed around, it can be so isolating. The avoidance—and cowardice—that spans decades is toxic, and in the novel Arias runs this up against the toxicity of the pesticides used by the American companies mining bananas with fervor. The colonial and capitalistic harm done to Costa Ricans is a major part of the generational trauma the novel’s characters contend with, and that’s the thing: how does a Costa Rican family have the space to understand one another under the gigantic and violent shadow of U.S. capitalism? It informs their dynamics, a legacy that was crudely and unsuccessfully shrouded by those same American companies, the living ghosts Costa Rican descendents live with. Ultimately, in family histories, Arias sensitively shows us how misunderstandings brew in silence and resentments nestle in what is left unsaid. It makes it easy for violence. Where There Was Fire examines whether time can heal generational wounds, if forgiveness can come with time, or if grudges and pain are as much part of our inheritance. I think Arias points to mercy instead. The rains of Costa Rica could cleanse a fire.

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John Manuel Arias is a queer, Costa Rican American poet and writer, and the National Bestselling author of Where There Was Fire, a Good Morning America Buzz Pick and Barnes & Noble Discover Pick. A Canto Mundo fellow & an alumnus of the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop, his prose and poetry have been published in The Kenyon Review, PANK, The Rumpus, and Akashic Books. He has lived in Washington D.C., Brooklyn New York, and in San José, Costa Rica with his grandmother and four ghosts.

Andrea Morales is a Board Member and Fellowship & Writers Mentorship Director of Latinx in Publishing. As a Contracts Associate at Macmillan, she works on and negotiates various book agreements on the adult and young adult trade side. She is from and based in Los Angeles, where she graduated from the University of Southern California with a B.A. in English Literature and a minor in Psychology. She previously interned as an editorial assistant with Red Hen Press and a literary agent. A daughter of Guatemalan immigrants, her special mission is to boost the visibility of Central American writers and literature. You can find her on Instagram as @guatemalcriada and lurking on Twitter as @guatemalcriada.

Margarita Engle and Olivia Sua On Bringing Water Day To Readers

Water days are special days for a young girl in Trinidad—a town in central Cuba. They hold great significance for her whole village, actually.

On this particular water day, the girl joins her mami on a mission to mend their family’s leaky hose.

By the time the water man
finally arrives, we’ll be ready to fill
the blue tank on our flat red roof
with clear water
that flows
like hope
for my whole
thirsty familia.

Newbery Honor Award-winning author Margarita Engle brings readers Water Day—a celebratory picture book about the arrival of the water man to a small village. The book (out now from Atheneum Books for Young Readers) was illustrated by Olivia Sua.

The village in Water Day no longer has its own water supply. So residents rely on the water man, who visits weekly to distribute water to them. This time, he arrives in a wagon pulled by a horse that strains against the weight of a metal tank. Through the eyes of the book’s young narrator, readers are pulled into the anticipation of this day and, most importantly, what it means to have access to water.

“This story is really the contrast between how easy it is to get a drink of water in so many places, and how difficult it is in so many other places,” Engle told Latinx in Publishing. “And I’m not going to say that it’s just the U.S. against developing countries, because I live in a part of California where a lot of my neighbors’ wells have gone dry. And we don’t have access to city water because we’re in a rural residential zone. So if our wells go dry, that’s it. We have to do exactly what’s shown in this book, which is [to] bring water in a tanker truck.”

Engle was born in Los Angeles but spent many childhood summers with family in her mother’s hometown of Trinidad de Cuba. The author said she featured a horse and wagon for water transport in her book because, in Cuba, there’s a fuel shortage which causes horses to be used in some areas to bring water to people.

The joyous tone of Water Day is not only a credit to Engle’s lyrical style of writing, but also to Sua’s gorgeous illustrations. Sua’s art form of mostly painted cut paper breathes life into the book—bringing readers closer to Cuba and its people. There are also colorful houses with intricate iron window bars. There is a kitchen with hanging pots. A mango tree. There are mountain landscapes behind homes and churches. And even tinajones—big clay jars that the narrator’s great-grandmother says used to be filled with daily afternoon rains.

“This is probably one of the most research-intensive books I’ve ever done because I was trying to capture Trinidad,” Sua said. “I wanted to get the essence right.”

Though Water Day doesn’t explicitly say the story is set in Cuba, Engle confirmed it is.

Sua said she conducted a lot of research on Cuba through Google Maps and through photos of the country online. She also received input from Engle.

The illustrator said the story’s themes of environmentalism and the climate crisis first drew her to Engle’s manuscript. They are topics she cares deeply about.

Readers of Water Day may feel a jolt of realization as to just how important water is in their everyday lives. This is succinctly described in the below lines from the book:

Five days have passed 
since the water man’s last visit.

We need to bathe,
wash clothes, 
cook rice…

Engle didn’t hesitate when asked if that was intentional on her part.

“Yes, absolutely,” the author said. “We take water for granted. . . There’s a lot of injustice all over the world. It’s not just Cuba. It’s not just certain societies. There’s just this injustice in terms of access to water, and it’s so basic. This is something that everybody needs, but we don’t have equal access.”

Sua said Water Day is an important story. “Some of us are experiencing flooding,” the illustrator said, “and some of us are experiencing water scarcity.”

Engle has written many verse novels, memoirs, and picture books throughout her publishing career. For this book, she wanted to tell the story from the point of view of a child without scaring readers or making them sad.

“I actually wanted to focus on the joy of the arrival of the water, rather than on those days in between when you don’t have it being delivered,” the award-winning poet said. “I wanted to focus on the excitement of just what it means to finally have water.”

In her author’s note, Engle wrote about her mother’s hometown of Trinidad and how water access has become a lot more complicated due to factors such as climate change, polluted groundwater, and crumbling pipes for delivery. She told Latinx in Publishing that, when searching online for photos of the rooftops in Trinidad, you’ll see the blue tanks of water. You would not have seen that a few years ago, Engle added, “because everybody was able to get enough water from wells and so forth.”

She wants children to think about how privileged they are when they do have running water.

“I want to say we’re wealthy if we have that, but it’s a different kind of wealth because there are areas where middle-class people in the U.S. don’t have access to clean water,” Engle said. “So it’s just something to not take for granted. We need to treasure our natural resources.”

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Margarita Engle is the Cuban American author of many books including the verse novels Rima’s Rebellion; Your Heart, My Sky; With a Star in My Hand; The Surrender Tree, a Newbery Honor winner; and The Lightning Dreamer. Her verse memoirs include Soaring Earth and Enchanted Air, which received the Pura Belpré Award, a Walter Dean Myers Award Honor, and was a finalist for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction, among others. Her picture books include Drum Dream Girl, Dancing Hands, and The Flying Girl. Visit her at MargaritaEngle.com.

Olivia Sua is an artist who creates elaborate works of painted cut paper. She is from Washington State and resides in her hometown of North Bend. In 2020, Olivia graduated from Pacific Northwest College of Art with a BFA in illustration. When she’s not illustrating, Olivia likes to go backpacking, quilt, and collect seeds for her garden. Visit her at oliviasua.com.

Amaris Castillo is an award-winning journalist, writer, and the creator of Bodega Stories, a series featuring real stories from the corner store. Her writing has appeared in La Galería Magazine, Aster(ix) Journal, Spanglish Voces, PALABRITAS, Dominican Moms Be Like… (part of the Dominican Writers Association’s #DWACuenticos chapbook series), and most recently Quislaona: A Dominican Fantasy Anthology and Sana, Sana: Latinx Pain and Radical Visions for Healing and Justice. Her short story, “El Don,” was a prize finalist for the 2022 Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writers’ Prize by the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival. She is a proud member of Latinx in Publishing’s Writers Mentorship Class of 2023 and lives in Florida with her family and dog, Brooklyn.

Author Q & A: Mari and the Curse of El Cocodrilo by Adrianna Cuevas

When 12-year-old Maricela Yanet Feijoo isn’t at school or with her best friends, Keisha and Juan Carlos, she can sometimes be found wincing at what she calls her family’s “Peak Cubanity.” She also worries that her next-door neighbor and classmate—who she calls “Mocosa” Mykenzye—will judge.

“Peak Cubanity” is what Mari calls her family’s behavior when she feels they’re being over-the-top. And she’s got many examples from which to draw from on New Year’s Eve because that’s when she says they reach Peak Cubanity. It’s the day Abuelita lugs a suitcase around the block because she wants to travel the upcoming year. And Mami sweeps and mops the whole house, leaving a bucket of dirty water by the front door, so that she can throw it out at midnight.

“At least we won’t be eating twelve grapes at midnight as fast as we can,” Mari narrates. “When I almost choked last year, Papi had to do the Heimlich maneuver on me and everything. I shot a green grape straight out of my throat and into the eye of my sister, Liset. Maybe something that’s supposed to bring you good luck shouldn’t also try to kill you. Just a thought.”

“Cuevas brings readers another memorable story that will both make you chuckle and feel deeply for a young girl finding her place on her family tree.”

Which is why at the start of Adrianna Cuevas’ new middle grade novel, Mari and the Curse of El Cocodrilo, the titular character declines to participate in her family’s biggest New Year’s Eve traditions: burning an effigy to rid themselves of the past year’s bad luck. But after Mari fails to throw hers into the fire, strange things begin happening. Bad luck falls upon her, then spreads to her friend, Keisha.

Out now from HarperCollins, Mari and the Curse of El Cocodrilo is a heartfelt and humorous story about one girl’s journey toward self-acceptance and learning how important it is to know your family’s history. Spooky vibes and silliness also permeate the book, as readers witness all kinds of things happening to Mari. Among them are uncooperative pencils during a quiz, a possessed violin and, in Keisha’s case, shoes that glue to the mat when she’s at fencing practice.

Once Mari discovers she has a unique ability to call upon her Cuban ancestors, she and her friends embark on a quest to work with the ghosts to try to defeat El Cocodrilo. Can they do it?

In Mari and the Curse of El Cocodrilo Cuevas brings readers another memorable story that will both make you chuckle and feel deeply for a young girl finding her place on her family tree. The Pura Belpré Honor-winning author spoke with Latinx in Publishing about crafting Mari’s story, preserving your family’s history, and more.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Amaris Castillo (AC): Congratulations on Mari and the Curse of El Cocodrilo! What inspired this story?

Adrianna Cuevas (AC): This story really came from a couple of avenues. First, I’m a horror fan. I’ve always loved horror. My dad took me to see Alien 3 when I was a kid in the theater, probably way younger than a child should have been seeing Alien 3 in the theater. That is a core memory for me. Part of it was this is my fourth published book now, and I’ve been writing mostly adventure. I was a little bit spookier with The Ghosts of Rancho Espanto, but I really wanted to dip my toe more into spookier stories for middle grade kids.

The emotional inspiration really comes from my own experiences, and different students that I’ve interacted with; those second and third generation kids who are trying to figure out how their parents’ culture and their grandparents’ culture still fits into their lives. Because I think sometimes you can feel a little bit more disconnected from it.

For me, growing up I didn’t hear about a lot of the experiences of my family when they were in Cuba. They didn’t talk about them. One of the reasons I wrote Cuba in My Pocket was because I wanted to hear those stories. A lot of times there’s kind of a disconnect, where you don’t have all the family history that a lot of other families do. My husband’s family is from rural Oklahoma and when his grandfather passed away, they had this shed full of all this stuff from generations and generations past that was connected to their family history. Everything had a story. And I thought, I don’t have anything like that. I have things from my dad, but they’re all from things once he moved to the U.S. I have one small jewelry box that my grandmother actually wrote on the inside, “I brought this from Cuba.” That is literally the only thing.

So that’s a long-winded answer to say I was drawing from my own experience of kids that feel like they’re wanting that connection, perhaps—or maybe they don’t—with their family’s culture. But they’re not quite sure how that works. Then, of course, I wanted to throw in some horror just to make it fun—because I can never help that.

AC: Your main character, Maricela—or Mari—cringes at how extra her Cuban family can be. She even has a term for it: Peak Cubanity. It reminded me of how some first generation Americans struggle at times to straddle two cultures—that of the United States and of the country their parents hail from. What was it like crafting this character who, from the first page, seems to shun her family’s culture at first?

AC: A lot of it was not entirely based on my own experiences, but drawn from them. I grew up in Miami, Florida. Growing up Cuban in Miami, Florida, is a super privileged thing to do in all honesty, because your culture is everywhere. Our music is on the radio. You have your choice of Cuban restaurants to visit. You would go out and do all your errands for the day, and never have to speak English once.

I did not feel that sense of ‘other’ until I went to college in Missouri, because that was my first time being away from an area where, in all honesty, my culture was the majority. And so I got that sense that Mari does, of ‘Well, who am I and how do I fit in? And everyone here assumes that I’m Mexican because I speak Spanish.’ That happened to me a ton. It especially happens to me here in Texas. And so I wanted to honor those kids who feel the same way. I mean, Mari loves her family. But what child of any cultural background is not embarrassed by their family ever so often?

I wanted Mari to experience the joy that you can get from learning your family’s history, but at the same time understanding maybe why you didn’t know all about it to begin with. Because a lot of it can be painful. That happened when I was researching Cuba in My Pocket. I’m asking my dad and my cousins, as well, of their experiences in Cuba and coming over to the U.S. And not all the stories are great. You can see why maybe kids don’t hear everything, and adults are reluctant to talk about it. A lot of it was drawn from my personal experiences. But if you’ve ever met Cubans, the “Peak Cubanity” fits because we are not a subtle people. And so I had a lot of fun just writing the joy and the extra that Mari’s family is.

AC: Your book is so lively with all the bad luck shenanigans that happen to Mari and, later, her friend, Kiesha. How did you come up with all the bad luck instances that happen? That was so fun to read.

AC: I will say that coming up with nonsense or just off-the-wall things is not hard for me when I am living with a now 16-year-old. Neither he—as my son—nor I have any filters. We tend to bounce really silly ideas off of each other all the time. I think as a creative person, it is really important to have someone like that in your life who doesn’t edit your creativity. They encourage you.

In all honesty, I’ve gotten into the habit where, if an idea pops into my head—even if it’s really off-the-wall—I’m not self-editing right away. I think that happens to a lot of authors, where you come up with an idea and the very next spot is, ‘Oh, no, that’s dumb. Nobody’s gonna want to read that.’ Because I have people in my life—my husband, my son—who are always encouraging my ideas and helping me brainstorm even the most nonsensical thing, I really value that as somebody in a creative profession.

It’s not hard to think of off-the-wall things when you’re just kind of letting your brain go. I always joke that as a Cuban, it’s very easy to write horror. It’s very easy to write a character that’s been cursed with bad luck. By and large, because of our political history, Cubans tend to be pessimists in all honesty. They’re gonna look at a situation and pretty much assume the worst is going to happen. That’s the whole function of horror, is asking, ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’ And so I feel like I was at a cultural advantage, thinking: ‘Well, what’s the worst that can happen to Mari in this situation?’

AC: You’re like, ‘I got this. I’m Cuban.’

AC: Exactly. Like, I was already being a pessimist about this situation. I knew what was going to happen.

AC: There’s another storyline here about the importance of documenting the stories and memories of family members who are deceased. What message were you hoping to send by highlighting this?

AC: I realize that for each of my books, it’s really my way of hanging on to something that I think is important, and that I think needs to be remembered. . . In Mari’s story, it’s my way of showing that, ‘This is why that’s important. We’re not going to have all these people around forever.’ You know, Mari only gets a lot of the stories from ghosts. We can’t let that be our option, where we’ve waited too long to preserve our family’s history.

One of the things that I am passionate about is the ability to tell our own stories, before someone else tells them for us. We need to remember and commemorate what’s happened to us before somebody else decides to tell our own history. And so I think that’s something I’m pretty passionate about because it’s now come up in pretty much every single manuscript I’ve written. I always have the adventure plot, the horror, the silliness, whatever—but the emotional core of all my stories is always going to come from something that I feel is important to remember. I think that’s why I addressed the story the way I did.

AC: What are you hoping readers take away from Mari and the Curse of El Cocodrilo?

AC: I never go into writing any of my books with a lesson in mind. Because, for me, I want young readers to dive into one of my books. I want them to lose track of time. I want them to forget where they are, and I want them to just enjoy a story. That’s my primary goal with every single one of my books.

With Mari though, it would make me pretty happy if it made a young reader curious about their own family’s histories, start asking their elders some questions, or asking to be told stories. But by and large, I’m always just wanting my readers to have fun with my books.

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Adrianna Cuevas is the author of the Pura Belpre honor book The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez, Cuba in My Pocket, The Ghosts of Rancho Espanto, Mari and the Curse of El Cocodrilo, and Monster High: A Fright to Remember. She is a first-generation Cuban-American originally from Miami, Florida. A former Spanish and ESOL teacher, Adrianna currently resides outside of Austin, Texas with her husband and son. When not working with TOEFL students, wrangling multiple pets including an axolotl, and practicing fencing with her son, she is writing her next middle grade novel.

Amaris Castillo is an award-winning journalist, writer, and the creator of Bodega Stories, a series featuring real stories from the corner store. Her writing has appeared in La Galería Magazine, Aster(ix) Journal, Spanglish Voces, PALABRITAS, Dominican Moms Be Like… (part of the Dominican Writers Association’s #DWACuenticos chapbook series), and most recently Quislaona: A Dominican Fantasy Anthology and Sana, Sana: Latinx Pain and Radical Visions for Healing and Justice. Her short story, “El Don,” was a prize finalist for the 2022 Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writers’ Prize by the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival. She is a proud member of Latinx in Publishing’s Writers Mentorship Class of 2023 and lives in Florida with her family and dog, Brooklyn.

Book Review: Kiss Me, Mi Amor by Alana Quintana Albertson

Alana Quintana Albertson is known for having many talents. When she’s not rescuing dogs from high-kill shelters, through a rescue she founded, and being an alumna of prestigious universities, she’s writing romance and mystery books. On July 4, 2023, she graced her readers with a second book in the Love & Tacos series, Kiss Me, Mi Amor, published by Berkley Romance.

Kiss Me, Mi Amor follows the middle Montez brother, Enrique, as he attempts to partner with Carolina Flores, a female farm owner who refuses to give the heir of the Taco King empire the time of day. However, when the holidays arrive, she lies to her overbearing family that he is her boyfriend. On these pretend dates, Carolina begins to figure out that she doesn’t have to be the traditional daughter and woman that her parents, especially her father, want her to be. The feelings between Enrique and Carolina grow more intense and they begin to wonder what their fake dates look like for the future as the holidays, and maybe their growing romance, start coming to an end.

Carolina Flores is the owner of the Flores Family Farm and the daughter of farm workers. Although she’s the owner on paper, her father is the one who calls the shots in business and in family. In their traditional Mexican home, her father has rules about women that he implements onto his ten daughters—and Carolina is sick of it. She refuses to marry to avoid moving from one male-dominated household to the next. Carolina loves her independence and wishes to keep it that way. However, when she meets Enrique, she begins to push back against her father’s rules and her outlook on love. When her dad falls ill, she lies about Enrique being her boyfriend and begins to rebel. While enjoying her time with Enrique and opening up to new experiences, it causes major arguments with her parents. She does some soul-searching and finds solace in reconnecting with an aunt who was shunned for defying her father’s rules as well. Carolina has to make major decisions that will better suit her, her family, and Enrique.

Enrique Montez is the middle child of the Taco King empire. He wants to reassess the chain’s agricultural relationships and partner with ethical farms, and Carolina is exactly who he’s looking for. When he drives up to Santa Maria to meet her, he finds out that her sister set up the meeting without Carolina’s knowledge. She refuses to partner with the chain but this doesn’t deter him from finding her captivating in brains and beauty. He offers to play Joseph in the upcoming Las Posadas and this sets their fake dating in motion as Carolina lies about him being her new beau. Enrique has strong, opposing opinions about Señor Flores’ outlook on women and family, so he plays along with her lie if it means she can break free. At first, he never pictured himself settling down but after spending time with her, he begins to reconsider. Things come to a head when Carolina decides that she needs to figure out who she is outside of him and her father. Months go by with no contact until they reunite once more.

“Alana Quintana Albertson shows her flawless ease in “Kiss Me, Mi Amor” of creating a fake-dating, holiday romance . . . while highlighting important conversations such as agriculture, farm worker’s rights, and the patriarchal culture within a traditional Mexican family. ”

While Enrique and Carolina come from different backgrounds, they open each other up to new experiences. He showers her with a shopping spree, which includes new Louboutins, while she tells him what celebrating Nochebuena entails. Neither are afraid to have hard-hitting conversations with the other. Carolina has him work her field and he realizes that it’s going to take more than just words to evoke change with the unethical farms that the chain partners with. Enrique helps her realize that she’s allowed to have fun and let loose with their mini trip to Disneyland and a day trip to Carmel-by-the-Sea. The pair help the other see what their life can hold if they push against the odds and open their minds to change. Through these experiences, their growing feelings for each other blur the line between fake dating and real dating. As Alana effortlessly puts it, “But they shared one language that needed no translating. Amor.”

Alana Quintana Albertson shows her flawless ease in Kiss Me, Mi Amor of creating a fake-dating, holiday romance (where they have to share one bed!) while highlighting important conversations such as agriculture, farm worker’s rights, and the patriarchal culture within a traditional Mexican family. While the Love & Tacos series celebrates many aspects of Mexican culture, she doesn’t shy away from speaking on prominent issues that the community faces.

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Alana Quintana Albertson has written thirty romance novels, rescued five hundred death-row shelter dogs, and danced one thousand rumbas. She lives in sunny San Diego with her husband, two sons, and too many pets. Most days, she can be found writing her next heart book in a beachfront café while sipping an oat-milk Mexican mocha or gardening with her children in their backyard orchard and snacking on a juicy blood orange.

Melissa Gonzalez (she/her) is a UCLA graduate with a major in American Literature & Culture and a minor in Chicana/o & Central American Studies. She loves boba, horror movies, and reading. You can spot her in the fiction, horror/mystery/thriller, and young adult sections of bookstores. Though she is short, she feels as tall as her TBR pile. You can find Melissa on her book Instagram: @floralchapters