Author Q&A: Jaquira Díaz On Debut Novel, ‘This Is the Only Kingdom’

To start, This Is the Only Kingdom grips readers with its prologue. It is May 1993, and a cane cutter somewhere in Puerto Rico discovers a gruesome scene in the golden cañaverales: a dead body. 

The painful beginning of Jaquira Díaz’s debut novel is a marker of what’s to come. This Is the Only Kingdom (out now from Algonquin Books) is an immersive and affecting origin story about one Puerto Rican family through the years. Set between a working-class barrio on the island and Miami, the book largely follows Maricarmen and her daughter Nena as they struggle through a new reality in the aftermath of a murder. Díaz treats time in her epic novel with delicate hands and a keen eye for the many societal challenges that face Puerto Ricans and members of the LGBTQ+ community. We meet Maricarmen as a 16-year-old who falls for Rey, a local musician who is in and out of juvie. Soon, she finds herself trying to make a home for both of them, Rey’s younger brother, Tito, and their baby girl, Nenuska (known as Nena). Then one day, that home Maricarmen has been so desperately trying to keep together crumbles before her.

More than a decade later, Nena is now a teenager herself. She is unlike the other girls at her high school, and unlike what others expect a girl from el Caserío to be like. She is also exploring her sexual identity, all while finding her place in society. After a horrific discovery, mother and daughter are plunged into another grief, this time having to navigate a murder investigation.

Much like she did in her Whiting Award-winning memoir, Ordinary Girls, Díaz’s writing in This Is the Only Kingdom reaches inside readers’ hearts and does not let go. The novel is beautiful and heartbreaking in its scope, with Díaz not turning away at all but leaning towards themes of love, loss, rejection and resilience. The author spoke with Latinx in Publishing about the inspiration behind her debut novel, the book’s many themes, and much more.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

“I wanted to tell a story about flawed characters who were failing each other and failing themselves. Who were failing, but kept trying to show up for each other. The way that this story unfolded was just two characters who fell deeply in love, but who were very, very flawed.”

Amaris Castillo: Congratulations on This Is the Only Kingdom. This is your debut novel. What inspired this story?

Jaquira Díaz (JD): I have been thinking about this story since I was a kid growing up in el Caserío. This was a story that, at first, my dad passed down to me. Not the whole story, just bits and pieces about Rey. I’ve been thinking about Rey’s story for a really long time, and I always thought that I would write this as a nonfiction book. That I would write the whole history, the trial, everything that happened after his death. 

Then as I started writing, I realized that Rey’s story started changing. It became this fictional story. I realized I couldn’t write a nonfiction book, because the characters were demanding something else. So I created this fictional family in this fictional place that is kind of like el Caserío Padre Rivera, but not quite. The story just took on a life of its own. But the inspiration for it was definitely the story that my father told me years ago, that I then started hearing from other people in el Caserío. My own family remembered the real-life version of Rey, who is not like this character at all. The story that’s in the book is fictional. There are some similarities, but everything is actually invented.

AC: Your novel is a family origin story and follows Maricarmen and Rey, who is known as Rey el Cantante. Their love story is complicated, and there are times when that love is called into question. What can you tell us about their love story and its nuances?

JD: That’s such a great question. I 100% believe in love. But I don’t believe in love the way that it’s usually portrayed in love stories; how everybody’s perfect and how people live happily ever after. I wanted to tell a story about flawed characters who were failing each other and failing themselves. Who were failing, but kept trying to show up for each other. The way that this story unfolded was just two characters who fell deeply in love, but who were very, very flawed. In the end, everything was not perfect, because people are human. And humans are not perfect. I wanted to tell a story that was deeply flawed, and that was much more representative of the way that we live and love.

AC: Your book touches on many themes – poverty, racism, drug addiction, family estrangement, LGTBQ isolation and acceptance. You weave all these themes in an unflinching manner. What was it like to weave all these themes through your characters?

JD: I’m thinking about two things. First, the mother-daughter relationship was really hard for me. I was right in the last two chapters of the book when my mom died. Even though I had been preparing myself for years, because she was sick for a very long time, it was sudden and unexpected. And I was right in the middle of writing the last chapter, which has to do with the mother-daughter relationship. I really struggled trying to put that chapter together, and trying to write a mother-daughter relationship that felt real. That still felt human and flawed, but real, and where there was redemption and understanding. I kept having to pause and think, This is not my mom. It’s not a memoir. This is a fictional family. So it was really hard to keep trying to finish it, and then stopping and starting and stopping and starting. That was the most difficult chapter to get through. 

There were also the chapters that are set in the pharmacy in Miami Beach. Those were actually based on my real life. I worked in two different pharmacies when I was a teenager, and it was right when Miami became one of the epicenters of the AIDS epidemic. I had a close friend who died of AIDS, and he was very young. So to put myself back in that mindset, I definitely thought of him. He’s not the character (in the book), but I definitely thought of my time with him and how close we were, the things we did together, how we talked to each other, and how we talked around things. 

I thought about that time when I was writing that chapter, and I thought about family estrangement for queer people back then. It was 1995, ‘96, ‘97. It was a very different time. I had friends and I had a community because Miami Beach was a place that became like a gay city. Everybody went there to find community when they were diagnosed with HIV, so it was a community that was simultaneously growing but also disappearing. It was always changing. It was always kind of in a liminal state, where I would meet people and then they would disappear three months later. And I wouldn’t hear from them again. We all knew what happened. I was 16, 17 years old, experiencing this. I was closeted, and watching people in my community struggling with their whole lives, without their families. That was one of the most difficult things to write about.

“I tend to think of writing and music as a kind of conversation. When I’m writing, I write to music and so I’m always thinking about that rhythm.”

AC: Your chapters are titled after salsa songs. I recognized some like “El Cantante” by Héctor Lavoe and “El Gran Varón.” In your acknowledgements you write that you’re indebted to musicians. As a Puerto Rican, what does the salsa genre mean to you, and how has that significance changed as you grew into a writer?

JD: I grew up in a musical family, in a musical house. My dad was friends with a lot of musicians. He was the guy who drove them to their gigs, which is where I got part of that story. We always had a lot of books and a lot of records in our house. My dad is the kind of guy who loves to tell stories. He would put on something by Cheo Feliciano, and he would tell me the story. Or he would put Ismael Rivera, and he would tell me the story. These songs always came with stories about the singer, the writers, but also the story that’s in the song. One of the things that I loved about the golden era of salsa, is that all the songs had stories attached. There was always either a love story, or a story of Pedro Navaja. It was like a plot. For me, it was like another way of storytelling and another way of imagining myself as a writer — somebody who would write songs. I studied music as a kid and I always thought that I would make music. Now I just write about it. 

The way that this connects me to Puerto Rican culture is that every single one of these songs — even the ones that were written by Rubén Blades, who is Panamanian, to me feel very, very Puerto Rican. It has something to do with the lyrics, with actual words and refranes that some of these songs have, the way that the language is kind of connected to the body. When you think about bomba y plena and when you think about musicians, it’s not just the drums that are a part of the performance. It’s also the dancer’s body that is actually talking to the drums. So it’s like a conversation. I tend to think of writing and music as a kind of conversation. When I’m writing, I write to music and so I’m always thinking about that rhythm. I have a soundtrack that I listened to while I was writing this book, and all of the songs in the liner notes were part of this soundtrack. When I was writing the chapter, “El Cantante,” I was listening to “El Cantante.” When I was writing “El Ratón,” I was listening to “El Ratón.” When I was writing “Juanito Alimaña,” I was listening to “Juanito Alimaña.” It was so important for me to get something in the chapter that feels like the song. I’m not just using this title, but this is actually an embodiment of the song.

AC: El Caserío Padre Rivera is very much its own character in the novel. It’s where your main characters live out their lives. You dedicate the book to “mi gente del Caserío Padre Rivera.” Obviously you fictionalized this caserío for the novel in some ways. What do think people misunderstand most about el Caserío, or life in el Caserío?

JD: There’s much. El Caserío today is very different from el Caserío when I was growing up there. I remember going to school after leaving el Caserío for the first time and going to a different school. When the kids found out that I was from el Caserío, everybody was scared of me. I didn’t understand it, because we all just were a community. Us kids, we were always outside playing. Everybody looked out for us. It was a real place where you could feel the community. Everybody had birthday parties, and birthday parties were block parties. The whole community showed up. When somebody gave birth — people gave birth at home — the whole community showed up. 

Looking back, I have never, ever in my life felt the kind of sense of community that I felt when I lived there. And that’s one thing that people, I think, have no idea about. Yes, there were other things happening. Yes, there were drug dealers. Yes, there was crime. Yes, there were police showing up all the time. There were people showing up killed. All of these things did happen, but what I remember is that it was where I became a storyteller. 

AC: What do you hope readers take away from This Is the Only Kingdom?

JD: I definitely wrote this thinking about my community and thinking about us from a place of love, and thinking about how we show up and how we love to tell stories. Storytelling is such a big part of our culture, including storytelling through music, like salsa music. So I would like for them to take that away. That yes, the novel is its own story, it’s also connected to something that, for me, feels really, really important, which is the ways that we tell stories and use music to tell stories in our culture. That is really important.

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Born in Puerto Rico, Jaquira Díaz was raised between Humacao, Fajardo, and Miami Beach. She is the author of Ordinary Girls: A Memoir, winner of a Whiting Award, a Florida Book Awards Gold Medal, a Lambda Literary Awards finalist, an American Booksellers Association Indies Introduce Selection, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, an Indie Next Pick, a Library Reads pick, and finalist for the B&N Discover Prize. 

The recipient of the Jeanne Córdova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction, the Alonzo Davis Fellowship from VCCA, two Pushcart Prizes, an Elizabeth George Foundation grant, and fellowships from MacDowell, the Kenyon Review, Bread Loaf, Sewanee, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and the Black Mountain Institute at UNLV, Díaz has written for The Atlantic, The Guardian, Time Magazine, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Condé Nast Traveler, and The Fader, and her stories, poems, and essays have been anthologized in The Best American Essays, The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, Best American Experimental Writing, and The Pushcart Prize anthology. In 2022, she held the Mina Hohenberg Darden Chair in Creative Writing at Old Dominion University’s MFA program and a Pabst Endowed Chair for Master Writers at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. She lives in New York and teaches at Columbia University.

Amaris Castillo is an award-winning journalist, writer, and the creator of Bodega Stories, a series featuring real stories from the corner store. Her debut book, Bodega Stories, will be published in Fall 2026 from the University Press of Florida. 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.

#DefendThePress - Letter to the Federal Communications Commission

Brendan Carr

Chairman

Federal Communications Commission

45 L Street, NE

Washington, DC 20554

Dear Chairman Carr,

In recent months, the American public has witnessed increasingly brazen examples of President Trump abusing his power to attack Americans’ constitutional rights, erode the Rule of Law, and advance his own personal and financial interests at the expense of the public interest. The undersigned organizations represent a broad and diverse group of people in the United States, and we write to express our deep alarm and condemnation of recent Federal Communications Commission actions that are aiding and abetting this pattern of authoritarian conduct.

President Trump’s unconstitutional and un-American attacks on the free press are hardly new. His second term, however, has seen these unseemly rhetorical attacks accompanied by an unprecedented weaponization of the FCC’s regulatory authority against television broadcasters to gain leverage in personal legal matters, extract financial settlement payments, and intimidate their news divisions to silence dissenting views and critical coverage.

The President has repeatedly called for ABC, NBC, and CBS to lose their broadcast licenses in response to what he deems unfair coverage. While the President is entitled to his opinions as a media critic, the First Amendment clearly prohibits government officials from abusing federal power to silence, censor, or intimidate news media organizations. We recognize, just as our Founders did nearly 250 years ago, that a free and open press is Democracy’s last and best defense against tyranny. Your Democratic and Republican predecessors had the courage to defend this fundamental American value, publicly rejecting calls to regulate or punish broadcasters for their perceived political views. You too affirmed this principle in 2021, stating: “A newsroom’s decision about what stories to cover and how to frame them should be beyond the reach of any government official, not targeted by them.”

Yet the Commission appears to have fully abandoned this principle in its review and approval of Skydance Media’s recent acquisition of Paramount Global, including CBS News and Stations. As you know, President Trump – acting in his personal capacity – filed a $10 billion lawsuit against CBS in late October, alleging that routine editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris amounted to “Election Interference and Fraud.” Trump’s lawsuit was widely panned as “legally groundless,” “frivolous and dangerous,” and “ridiculous junk” by legal experts from across the political spectrum. Yet the Commission withheld its approval of the transaction until CBS capitulated and agreed to pay $16 million. Moreover, the Commission’s eventual approval was conditioned on CBS accepting unprecedented and unconstitutional infringements on its editorial independence, including the hiring of a “bias monitor” to police alleged unfairness toward President Trump and his allies.

With CBS now effectively coerced into self-censorship, we’re troubled by recent Commission actions appearing to aim for similar outcomes at ABC and NBC. In letters sent to the Walt Disney Company (December 21, 2024) and Comcast Corporation (July 29, 2025), you warned of potential FCC intervention in ABC’s and NBC’s relationships with affiliated broadcast stations. Neither letter identified any statutory authority for such intervention. Nor did they offer any economic rationale why corporate broadcast groups, some of which own more than 100 stations apiece and rake in billions of dollars a year, would require or warrant the FCC’s assistance in standard business negotiations.

Absent any valid statutory authority, and in light of President Trump’s repeated attacks on these networks and calls to put them out of business – and your own media appearances cheering on his attacks on “these legacy broadcast media outfits and the New York and Hollywood elites” – these letters read as thinly-veiled shakedown threats: Nice business you’ve got there. It’d be a shame if anything happened to it.

Let us be clear: The FCC has no lawful authority to influence network newsrooms’ editorial decisions. The FCC has no lawful authority to coerce networks’ parent companies to pay millions of dollars to the President (or to a non-profit “library foundation” controlled by one of the President’s sons) as a condition of doing business. These are the actions of lawless authoritarians – not of honorable public servants.

As Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, your sworn duty is to the Constitution – not to any President. We urge you to speak up, as your predecessors have done and you yourself were once willing to do, in defense of the First Amendment and the Rule of Law. Affirm unequivocally that the FCC will no longer serve as the enforcer in President Trump’s unconstitutional shakedowns of media organizations.

Your oath of office demands nothing less.

Sincerely,

Brenda V. Castillo - President & CEO

National Hispanic Media Coalition

John Yang- President and Executive Director

Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC

Rosario Palacios - Executive Director

Common Cause Georgia

David Bowles - Co-founder

#DignidadLiteraria

Noreen Farrell - Executive Director

Equal Rights Advocates

Kathy Spillar - Executive Director

Feminist Majority Foundation

Jessica J. González - Co-CEO

Free Press

Seth Stern - Director of Advocacy

Freedom of the Press Foundation

Seia Watanabe - Vice President of Public Affairs

Japanese American Citizens League

Julián Castro - CEO

Latino Community Foundation

Fanny Grande - Chairwoman

Latino Excellence Project

Toni Kirkpatrick - Chair

Latinx in Publishing

Dr. Ray Serrano - National Director of Research and Policy

League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)

Amy L. Hinojosa - President and CEO

MANA, A National Latina Organization

Steven Renderos - Executive Director

MediaJustice

Derrick Johnson - President and CEO

NAACP

Ebonie Riley - SVP, National Action Network Washington Bureau

National Action Network

Diana Luna - Executive Director

National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP)

Felix Sanchez - Founder & Chair

National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts

Marc H. Morial - President & CEO

National Urban League

Ja'Lia Taylor, Ph.D., MSIS - Director of Policy, Telecommunications, and Technology

NCNW

Joel M. Gonzales - President

Nosotros

Thu Nguyen - Executive Director

OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates

Christopher Lewis - President and CEO

Public Knowledge

Kiran Gill - Executive Director

Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF)

Maya Wiley - President and CEO

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Most Anticipated October 2025 Releases

As the weather starts to cool, we're looking forward to a great book to cuddle in with. 🍵🍂 Check out the titles we are most excited about below and make sure to add them to your TBR list!

Mothers by Brenda Lozano | Translated by Heather Cleary | ADULT FICTION

When the kidnapping of a little girl shocks the Mexican capital, the lives of two very different women become forever intertwined. Gloria Felipe lives a comfortable upper-class life with her husband and five children. Nuria Valencia comes from a working-class background and has been desperately trying to get pregnant in order to save her marriage. After traditional methods produce no results, she subjects herself to horrific fertility treatments designed and administered by men, and ultimately tries to adopt but is rejected on the basis that a woman in her early thirties is too old to adopt a baby. Failed time and again by the system and about to lose hope, she is presented with an opportunity that seems almost too good to be true.

Through the eyes of a wry unnamed narrator, we witness the battle of the Felipe family to recover their youngest member and the anguished attempts of the Valencia family to save their daughter from potential danger. With the twists and turns of a thriller, and Brenda Lozano's sharp yet poignant sense of humor, the novel asks how far mothers are willing to go in the name of love for their children, and at what cost.

And I'll Take Out Your Eyes by A M Sosa | ADULT FICTION

Cría cuervos y te sacaran los ojos: Raise crows and they'll take out your eyes.

Since the age of seven, Christian has been under the thumb of a curse. He reads its dark signs everywhere: in his bedridden mother's wilting plants; in his brother's estrangement; in his father's eager fists and glassy stare. He reads it in his nightmares, in Stockton's soundtrack of sirens and gunshot. Above all, he reads the curse in the mirror, watching himself "turn" into the crow his father always predicted he'd become.

Maddened by the city's heatwaves and his own unthinkable desires, often high and drunk, Christian rips through his neighborhood, desperate to escape not only the city but the monster of his pain. But even when he leaves, the curse follows. Can Christian ever be absolved? Or is he condemned to be consumed by the same violence as his father?

A Feast for the Eyes by Alex Crespo | YOUNG ADULT

On the dreary Oregon coast, an all-seeing beast—known as the Watcher—lies in wait. When Shay and her girlfriend, Lauren, get into a fight over whether to go public with their clandestine relationship, they awaken the creature. Although Lauren is badly injured, the girls escape with their lives but can’t shake the feeling of the creature’s eyes tracking them. 

Meanwhile, aspiring photographer Zoe is desperate to put together a portfolio worthy of earning a scholarship to attend art college. Her photography teacher praises her skill but urges her to select more daring subjects for her submissions—a tall task when Zoe's camera acts as a barrier between herself and the rest of the world.

As rumors swirl about Lauren's injuries, Shay remains steadfast in that the Watcher is to blame, not her. She asks for Zoe’s help in snapping a photo of the local legend. Proof would help Shay clear her name and certainly be daring enough for Zoe’s scholarship. Together with their friends Jack and Parker, they set out to expose the Watcher before its ever-creeping eyes cast the secrets they’re all keeping from the town—and one another—into the light. 

Other Evolutions by Rebecca Hirsch Garcia | ADULT FICTION

Alma Alt, the sheltered youngest daughter of an interfaith, interracial Jewish-Mexican couple, rarely ventures far from her home on a wealthy tree-lined street in Ottawa, where nothing ever happens. The one time she did, striking out to visit her older sister, Marnie, in Montreal, things ended in disaster as she found out that beautiful, blonde Marnie had been lying about their family’s background, trying to pass herself off as white. The fallout from that betrayal leads to a devastating accident, one that claims Alma’s arm and someone’s life.

Alma is now stuck in a holding pattern, unable to move past her grief. But Alma's life is turned upside down by an encounter just steps from home with an impossible person: the boy she watched die.

Other Evolutions is a literary debut with a dark twist that reveals the uncanny in the mundane, seeing us through the worst parts of our lives toward the weird and wonderful things right in our own backyard.

Empress of the Splendid Season by Oscar Hijuelos | ADULT FICTION

Lydia España--once a wealthy, spoiled daughter of Cuba--works at a sewing factory in New York. Adjusting to her sharp change of circumstances, missing the days when her prosperous father provided her with every luxury, she ruminates on the incident that drove her away from her homeland in the late 1940s--until she falls in love with Raul, a kindhearted, working-class waiter who sees Lydia as the "Queen of the Congo Line" she used to be: the empress of "the most beautiful and splendid season, which is love."

Despite their age difference, a loving marriage follows, as well as two children. Lydia revels in her newfound happiness, but when Raul's health declines, she finds her fortunes reversed yet again. Now working as a cleaning lady, Lydia can't help but contrast her experiences with those of her clients, whose secret lives and day-to-day realities are so starkly different from her own--but over time, the role may prove to be just what she needs to secure a better life for her children.

Banished Citizens: A History of the Mexican American Women Who Endured Repatriation by Assistant Professor of History Marla A Ramírez | NONFICTION

From 1921 to 1944, approximately one million ethnic Mexicans living in the United States were removed across the border to Mexico. What officials called "repatriation" was in fact banishment: 60 percent of those expelled were US citizens, mainly working-class women and children whose husbands and fathers were Mexican immigrants. Drawing on oral histories, transnational archival sources, and private collections, Marla A. Ramírez illuminates the lasting effects of coerced mass removal on three generations of ethnic Mexicans.

Ramírez argues that banishment served interests on both sides of the border. In the United States, the government accused ethnic Mexicans of dependence on social services in order to justify removal, thereby scapegoating them for post-World War I and Depression-era economic woes. In Mexico, meanwhile, officials welcomed returnees for their potential to bolster the labor force. In the process, all Mexicans in the United States--citizens and undocumented immigrants alike--were cast as financially burdensome and culturally foreign. Shedding particular light on the experiences of banished women, Ramírez depicts the courage and resilience of their efforts to reclaim US citizenship and return home. Nevertheless, banishment often interrupted their ability to pass on US citizenship to their children, robbed their families of generational wealth, and drastically slowed upward mobility. Today, their descendants continue to confront and resist the impact of these injustices--and are breaking the silence to ensure that this history is not forgotten.

Taco by Ignacio M Sánchez Prado | Edited by Ian Bogost and Christopher Schaberg | NONFICTION

Taco is a deep dive into the most iconic Mexican food from the perspective of a Mexico City native. In a narrative that moves from Mexico to the United States and back, Sánchez Prado discusses the definition of the taco, the question of the tortilla and the taco shell, and the existence of the taco as a modern social touchstone that has been shaped by history and geography.

Challenging the idea of centrality and authenticity, Sánchez Prado shows instead that the taco is a contemporary, transcultural food that has always been subject to transformation.

This Is the Only Kingdom by Jaquira Díaz | ADULT FICTION

When Maricarmen meets Rey el Cantante, beloved small-time Robin Hood and local musician on the rise, she begins to envision a life beyond the tight-knit community of el Caserío, Puerto Rico - beyond cleaning houses, beyond waiting tables, beyond the constant tug of war between the street hustlers and los camarones. But breaking free proves more difficult than she imagined, and she soon finds herself struggling to make a home for herself, for Rey, his young brother Tito, and eventually, their daughter Nena. Until one fateful day changes everything.

Fifteen years later, Maricarmen and Nena find themselves in the middle of a murder investigation as the community that once rallied to support Rey turns against them. Now Nena, a teenager haunted by loss and betrayal and exploring her sexual identity, must learn to fight for herself and her family in a world not always welcoming. For lovers of the Neapolitan novels, This is the Only Kingdom is an immersive and moving portrait of a family - and a community - torn apart by generational grief, and a powerful love letter to mothers, daughters, and the barrios that make them.

Carne de Dios by Homero Aridjis | Translated by Chloe Garcia Roberts | ADULT FICTION

In the remote mountains of Oaxaca, the Beatniks have arrived.

María Sabina, the renowned Mazatec healer, spends her days in the small town of Huautla de Jiménez selling produce at the market and foraging under the new moon for the sacred mushrooms that grow near her home--her Holy Children, Carne de Dios, or Flesh of God. But her life changes forever when an amateur mycologist from New York, with a cameraman in tow, visits her to experience for himself the mushroom ceremony, or velada, he knows only from whispers in anthropological records. When he publishes an unauthorized article about his experience in LIFE Magazine 1957, the stage is set for an explosive encounter between the burgeoning international counterculture and the woman who became an unwilling icon of the psychedelic revolution.

Carne de Dios is a masterful and often humorous blend of history, myth, and poetic imagination, captured in a translation that mirrors the hallucinatory beauty of Aridjis's original Spanish. Aridjis's intimate portrayal of María Sabina, informed by his personal connection to her, serves as both a tribute to her enduring legacy and a critical reflection on the wave of global interest in mushroom culture still gaining momentum today.

Where the North Ends by Hugo Moreno | ADULT FICTION

Aspiring writer Uriel Romero finds himself mysteriously trapped in the body of Diego, a seventeenth-century Franciscan novice accused of heresy. Unsure whether he’s in a dream, a coma, or another dimension, Uriel must navigate Diego’s fate: to be sent to New Mexico on a perilous mission to convert the Apaches or else risk the flames of the Spanish Inquisition.

As he struggles to understand his new existence, Uriel encounters a cast of colorful characters: a prophetic friar who claims to be his father, an Apache shaman guiding him through the astral plane, a talking mule yearning for the Promised Land, and Alma—his eternal love whose tragic death still haunts him.

With echoes of “The Night Face Up” by Julio Cortázar and Journey to Ixtlan by Carlos Castaneda, this time-travel saga weaves history, mysticism, and existential mystery into a gripping tale of fate, love, and redemption.

Will Uriel uncover the truth before time runs out, or is he doomed to be lost between worlds forever?

October 2025 Latinx Releases

We’re excited to share the new releases for October 2025! Below you’ll poetry that explores poverty and ecological justice, an array of bilingual titles for kids, and even an exciting appearance from a previous LxP fellow.

ON SALE OCTOBER 7

ON SALE OCTOBER 13

ON SALE OCTOBER 21

ON SALE OCTOBER 31

Author Q&A: Samuel Teer On Creating ‘Brownstone’ with Mar Julia

Brownstone by Samuel Teer and Mar Julia begins with both dread and anticipation. Almudena’s mom is looking forward to her once-in-a-lifetime trip to be in an international touring dance production. 

But Almudena? Well, the 14-year-old is on her way to spend the entire summer with her father. Thoughts swirl in her head: “Am I okay with having to stay with a father that I’ve never met and know nothing about for three goddamn months? NO!”

When mother and daughter arrive at their destination, Almudena comes face-to-face with Xavier, who is from Guatemala. Almost immediately there is a language barrier between them. Almudena’s mom is white and, though she speaks some Spanish, they don’t speak the language at home.

Before them is a broken-down brownstone, and Xavier brings Almudena inside. He expects her to live in and help fix it up during their time together. So begins a summer of transformation for Almudena, who struggles with her identity all while forging new friendships in this new environment.

Winner of the 2025 Michael L. Printz Award, Brownstone (from Versify) is a moving and often hilarious YA coming-of-age graphic novel that touches on themes of identity, culture, and finding one’s place in a community. Readers will feel as though they’re also living in the worn-down brownstone with Almudena as she navigates new territory, and as she and her father figure out how to become family.

Teer spoke with Latinx in Publishing about the inspiration behind Brownstone, identity, language, and more.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Amaris Castillo: Congratulations on Brownstone, which I understand is the result of years of work by yourself and Mar Julia. What inspired this story?

Samuel Teer (ST): I was working at a hardware store part-time, trying to do comics. I was stocking shelves and happened to be walking by a 14 or 15-year-old Latina girl translating between one of the Caucasian employees and her dad. A thought occurred to me: I wonder what their story is. There was something about that scene that made me want to know more. I kept percolating in the back of my head for the rest of the day. And I was like, Oh, I wonder if their story is similar to my story, and Mar’s story. I started using that visual as a springboard to go, Oh, well you can sort of graft the never really fitting in with your family and sort of being literally in between two worlds. You can sort of graft that onto this imagery. And then Brownstone started to take shape. The more Mar and I talked, we discovered that we had a lot of similarities growing up, despite growing up in vastly different environments.

AC: Your main character, Almudena, is being sent to spend the summer with her Guatemalan father, who she’s never met. Her mom, who is white, has a unique once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to perform with a touring dance group. Now Almudena is thrust into a very different, Latino neighborhood, and tasked with helping her father with the renovation of an old brownstone. There’s so much she’s being introduced to, but I’m curious about how you came up with the brownstone renovation plot point?

ST: My wife and I had bought a house right before the active writing of Brownstone, so we were fixing the house that we paid for. As we’re doing that, the way my brain tends to work is that everything is like, Oh, maybe this is something to file away later that can work in a comic. So as that’s getting done, you see the day-to-day progression. That was an interesting visual metaphor for them building a relationship.

The other portion is, I went to Guatemala for the first time when I was 15. I met my maternal great-grandfather. He lived in a building very similar to the brownstone. So it was about linking those two things from my past with my present at the time, and being like, This building represents something. This tall rectangle represents something for me. I thought having that be a centerpiece made sense to build the story around.

“Which is, truthfully, what comics is: You are looking at what other people have done, and you’re building upon it. Which is also a metaphor for the book. It’s about building.”

AC: This story is very much about a father and daughter trying to wade through language barriers, as well as cultural barriers because Almudena is just now learning about her Guatemalan heritage. Can you walk us through what it was like to piece together the dynamics of their relationship?

ST: With Xavier and Almudena specifically, I knew there needed to be a push-pull. They had a lot of similarities and a lot of fears. Writing Almudena was very easy for me. I am a little bit stunted still, and so writing kind of a bratty 14, 15-year-old comes pretty naturally to me. That was very much a part of the fabric of my soul; like, I don’t get this. This doesn’t make sense. Why is the world not conforming to what I need it to be? Why don’t I fit in? 

Looking at it from Xavier’s perspective, he’s also very alienated. Even though he’s in a community, he’s still an outsider. There’s a chapter late in the book where Xavier writes a letter to Almudena that is him telling her where he’s been her entire life, and why he wasn’t around. For me, at the time of writing that, we were foster parents. We had a 17-year-old Latina in our house, and that was just me writing to her and telling her, I am so scared about this. You want to run away, and you don’t. Knowing those two bits, that Almudena was going to be kind of a brat, but eventually even out a little bit towards the end, and that Xavier was going to be an intensely lonely person surrounded by people, I knew that they would be able to connect. Those two are obviously core to the story, but the story is very much about their relationship.

AC: There are many themes in your book – most prominent among them is what it’s like to grow up mixed-race which I imagine you took from your lived experience as well. I thought it was interesting how, at times, Almudena hears conversations by her father or other characters as “really fast Spanish-sounding stuff.” It made me chuckle at times. How did you arrive at describing Spanish in this way?

ST: Mar is better at speaking Spanish now than I am. Mar and I both understand Spanish when our families talk to us, but we have a hard time speaking it. You’re processing it. You’re like, I know this is Spanish. I can hear the tone change, so I’m definitely in trouble at this moment. That kind of thing. We wanted to try to get that experience, that sort of texture, into the story. I honestly lifted the very basic idea of the little brackets saying, ‘It’s this language’ from Matt Fraction when he did his run on Marvel’s Hawkeye (series). I think it’s in the first couple of issues, but there’s some Tracksuit Mafia guys. It’s sort of like, ‘Vaguely European cursing’ or something like that in Fraction’s book. And I was like, Oh, that’s a wonderful way of taking that and making it fit this book. Which is, truthfully, what comics is: You are looking at what other people have done, and you’re building upon it. Which is also a metaphor for the book. It’s about building.

AC: As a teen whose parents are not together, Almudena has always had this image in her head of a family, and what it should look like. I thought you and Mar Julia displayed this really effectively, because it’s something that I am sure many kids whose parents aren’t together. What message were you hoping to send by having Almudena have this vision?

ST: I wanted to track her actual character growth. That she’s gonna have these flights of fancy, and have a very vivid imagination of: This is what my dad could look like, or this is what it could look like if my parents get back together, and it’ll be perfect. And for her to be the one, to be like, Hey, maybe this doesn’t have to be perfect. Maybe this doesn’t have to be the way that it is in my head. It can just be what it is. She has her quinceañera, but to me that’s the moment that she starts to become an adult. It’s that moment of, Oh, maybe this doesn’t have to be this very child-like dream.

AC: What was it like working with Mar? I understand you approached Mar early in the process of making Brownstone, so you worked on this together from the ground up.

ST: Yeah, that’s pretty much what we did. I wanted to work with Mar on something. Mar wanted to work with me on something. I came home that day from the hardware store and pitched this idea via email. And Mar was like, “Yeah, that sounds great.” And I was like, “OK, cool. Oh crap, I have to figure out how to write this.” But Mar’s art was just something I was in love with from moment one, well before Brownstone. So far I’ve only worked with people who are my dream artists to work with, and that is such a lovely thing. 

You have some imagery in your head as you’re writing. The best thing about Mar’s artwork is that Mar always brings something that’s so much better than what’s in my head, and it immediately supplants what’s in my head. We had sketches and character designs as I was writing. And, you know, in my head, I’m envisioning realer people. And the second I see that, I’m like, OK, these are the characters now... And I just so adore everything that Mar brought to the table. 

AC: What do you hope readers take away from Brownstone?

ST: This is a complicated question. Honestly, I hope they take away whatever they take away from the book. I have had people approach me and say, Oh, I got this from the book. And I’m like, Oh, I didn’t expect that. So that’s always very nice. I would definitely encourage them to just get out of it whatever you get out of it. If there’s maybe a thematic intent that I hoped for, it’s that you don’t have to fit into a binary about what it means to what is or isn’t Latinx enough.

---

Mar Julia lives on an unceded Piscataway land that makes up Baltimore, Maryland. Previous comics credits include the ‘Lumberjanes’ and ‘Adventure Time' series. Brownstone is their debut full-length graphic novel. 

Samuel Teer is the author of Brownstone and Veda: Assembly Required. Raised outside of St. Louis, Missouri, he lives in Aurora, Colorado.

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.

Author Q&A: ‘Menudo Sunday’ by María Dolores Águila and Illustrated by Erika Meza

Menudo Sunday begins with joyful anticipation. An older man, smiling, sits outside a warm yellow house. A woman and a boy pull out plastic chairs from a stack to arrange them side by side. And a grinning young girl sprints to one of her abuelos, who waits for her by the iron front gate.

“One cozy casita,” author María Dolores Águila writes. “Two grinning abuelitos.”

Out now from Dial Books for Young Readers, Menudo Sunday is a counting picture book that follows a family over one lively Sunday. The girl and her mamá, abuelos, tías and primos always gather on this day to enjoy a pot of menudo, a traditional Mexican soup made with beef tripe and hominy. The book counts from 1-15 in Spanish and English, until Abuelito Esteban’s special bowl of menudo breaks. Can the family work together and still make this a special Sunday?

Menudo Sunday is Águila’s second picture book and largely inspired by her own Sunday gatherings at the home of her paternal grandmother in San Diego. Illustrations by Erika Meza bring tremendous color and humor into the family’s already chaotic Sunday, adding to the book’s excitement. Menudo Sunday is a vibrant and fun read, and includes a Spanish glossary, author’s note, and even tips for hosting your very own Menudo Sunday.

Águila spoke with Latinx in Publishing recently about the inspiration behind her picture book. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Amaris Castillo (AC): Congratulations on Menudo Sunday. In your author’s note, you write about how some of your most cherished memories are from the menudo Sundays you’d spend at your paternal grandparents’ home in San Diego, California. I’d love to start by asking, what is a Menudo Sunday?

María Dolores Águila (MDÁ): My paternal grandma lived in San Diego, and had this huge yard. It felt like a jungle when we were kids. She had eight kids, so I have a lot of aunts and uncles, and they all have kids. We would all descend on her house on Sundays and she would make this humongous pot of menudo. 

She had this tiny two-bedroom house. And because there were so many of us, we would take turns eating in shifts. First all the adults would go, then all the older cousins, and then the younger cousins or whoever showed up late or whatever. For me, it was this unstructured spending time together… just this beautiful moment of being with family.

AC: Your book is a Spanglish counting book. When you began to write it, did you envision it in Spanglish?

MDÁ: Yes, from the beginning. I always tell people, I live my life in Spanglish. That’s how everything filters through me. I know people say it’s not proper, but some things are better said in Spanish. Some things are better said in English. In National City, where I live in San Diego, I spend half of my day speaking Spanish. So for me, it’s very natural to write in Spanglish because that’s how I share my lived experience with the world.

AC: Menudo Sunday is chock full of details, from two grinning abuelitos to seis – six little bowls filled with salsa, cilantro, lime, oregano, onion and jalapeño. Walk us through how you chose which details are a must for Menudo Sunday?

MDÁ: It took quite a few drafts to figure out how to decide what numbers to put for what. For the very first draft I was really literal. I thought it had to be something that you could physically count. Rosie (Ahmed) was my editor at the time and pushed me to rethink what counting can be. And so now we have things like, “ten dedos stealing tasty treats” and “eleven risitas when the grownups aren’t watching.” And Erika did such an amazing job even illustrating how to count those. When I was trying to create a story from the numbers, I thought, OK, how can I move through these numbers and still tell a story, and still have something to count? It was an enjoyable experience. It was like putting together a puzzle.

“And Menudo Sunday is a book of resilience. I think resilience comes from allowing yourself to experience joy and happiness. Even though things are tough, things are hard, life is stressful, still allowing yourself to experience beautiful, ordinary moments of life, that’s what it’s made out of. ”

AC: About halfway through the book, the special bowl of menudo crashes and menudo spills everywhere. At that moment it felt like the family’s whole Menudo Sunday was in jeopardy. How did you come up with that big obstacle?

MDÁ: When I wrote the very, very first draft of Menudo Sunday, I had it from 1 to 20. When the bowl broke, I had the character in “16 minutos of time-out.” That’s how I originally had it. And Rosie pushed me. She was like, I don’t know about putting her in time-out. Then I thought about it. I don’t even do time-out for my own kids. We figure out how to fix things together. I kept thinking about it and realized I have a really big chance right now. 

You know what chancla culture is, right? It’s always about the Latina mom coming after you with a chancla if you do something wrong. I get it, it’s funny, but that’s still a punitive thing. For our generation, where we’re raising kids now and trying to break these generational curses, I thought the best thing we could do is figure out how to solve this together, and not blame anyone. Yeah, they shouldn’t have been doing all that. But you know what? Kids are kids. And it doesn’t have to be the end of everything. We can come together and we can fix it, and we will be just as good as we were before. I’m trying to push back against chancla culture, and I’m trying to show some social, emotional learning – that fixing something is better than being punished.

AC: What do you think Erika Meza’s illustrations added to the story?

MDA: I don't even know if I could list everything that her illustrations added to the story. I really love the body diversity of the characters; there’s skinny ones, there’s mas gorditas. I love that, because I’m a gordita myself and I often don’t see myself in a book. The focus is not on that. They’re just there in the story. 

I also love all the little Easter eggs that she put throughout the story. And then after the crash is my favorite illustration. I know it’s really silly, but when it reads “fifteen fragmentos scattered across the ground,” one of the aunts is looking at the dog, really pissed off. It makes me laugh so much every time I see it. I love books like this, where there’s so much to look at. I think it adds re-readability to the story, because every time I read it I notice something new.

AC: What are you hoping readers take away from Menudo Sunday?

MDÁ: Barrio Rising was very much a book of resistance. And Menudo Sunday is a book of resilience. I think resilience comes from allowing yourself to experience joy and happiness. Even though things are tough, things are hard, life is stressful, still allowing yourself to experience beautiful, ordinary moments of life, that’s what it’s made out of. I just want readers to see themselves in this book, to connect with Chicano culture, to see themselves and to look for the joy and the family food traditions in their own lives.

---

María Dolores Águila is a Chicana poet and writer from San Diego, California. Deeply inspired by Chicane history and art, she seeks to write empowering and inclusive stories about everything she learns. She is also the author of the historical fiction picture book Barrio Rising: The Protest That Built Chicano Park.

Erika Meza was born in Mexico, fell in love with animation on the border of California, and developed a taste for eclairs in Paris before moving to the UK to teach at Nottingham Trent University. She is the illustrator of numerous children’s books including My Two Border Towns by David Bowles and Salsa Lullaby by Jen Arena.

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.

2025 Latinx in Publishing Recommended Books for Latine Heritage Month

Happy Latine Heritage Month!🎉

From September 15–30, we're honoring Latinx storytellers with these powerful recs from Latinx in Publishing. These titles are all 20% off with code LHM25.

Browse our picks below and then head over to LxP’s Bookshop to pick up your next read. 📚✨

Head to the LxP Bookshop now! Remember to use code LHM25 by September 30th to receive 20% off these select titles. Happy reading!

Most Anticipated September 2025 Releases

What a Latinx-filled month it is for new book releases! Here are a few of the books we’re excited to add to our TBR pile. Make sure to pick them up from your local bookstore or at the library—enjoy!

Beyond All Reasonable Doubt, Jesus Is Alive! by Melissa Lozada-Oliva | SHORT STORIES

A beheaded body interrupts a quinceañera. An obsession with her father’s bizarre video game shifts a lonely girl’s reality. A sentient tail sprouts from a hospital worker’s backside, throwing her romantic life into peril. And in the novella “Community Hole,” a recently cancelled musician flees New York and finds herself in a haunted punk house in Boston.

This collection, at once playful, grisly, and tender, presents a tapestry of women ailing for something to believe in – even if it hurts them. Using body horror, fabulism, and humor, Melissa Lozada-Oliva mines the pain and uncanniness of the modern world. Reveling in the fine line between disgust and desire, Beyond All Reasonable Doubt, Jesus is Alive! is for the sinner in us all.

Bold, Brilliant, and Latine: Meet 52 Latine and Hispanic Heroes from Past and Present by Alyssa Reynoso-Morris | Illustrated by Sol Cotti | CHILDREN’S

Young Latine and Hispanic children can see themselves reflected in 52 amazing heroes from the past and present, whom everyone can look up to. Featuring incredible icons like:

• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - Politician, the youngest woman ever to be elected to Congress

• Lionel Messi - Superstar soccer player

• Sonia Sotomayor - US Supreme Court Justice

• Ellen Ochoa - First Latina astronaut in space

Kids will be inspired by these stories and others, from sporting legends to fashion icons, political leaders to fearless changemakers, as well as renowned writers, musicians, artists, scientists, and more. These heroes' lives are vividly recounted by queer award-winning Dominican and Puerto Rican storyteller Alyssa Reynoso-Morris and brought to life by Argentinian illustrator Sol Cotti.

Silenced Voices: Reclaiming Memories from the Guatemalan Genocide by Pablo Leon | Illustrated by Pablo Leon | GRAPHIC NOVEL

Langley Park, Maryland, 2013

Brothers Jose and Charlie know very little about their mother’s life in Guatemala, until Jose grows curious about the ongoing genocide trial of Efrain Rios Montt. At first his mother, Clara, shuts his questions down. But as the trial progresses, she begins to open up to her sons about a time in her life that she’s left buried for years. 

Peten, Guatemala, 1982

Sisters Clara and Elena hear about the armed conflict every day, but the violence somehow seems far away from their small village. But the day the fight comes to their doorstep, the sisters are separated and are forced to flee through the mountains, leaving them to wonder…Have their paths diverged forever?

a chronology of blood by Teo Shannon | POETRY

A stunning debut collection by a gifted poet, a chronology of blood explores major traumas in the author’s life. Autobiographical in nature, the book is broken into three sections that each deal with a trauma the author has endured, and it explores a range of themes including gun violence, conversion therapy, misuse of drugs, addiction, and domestic violence. But balancing the anger, harm, and pain is hope: above all Shannon is a survivor, learning to incorporate these experiences into a life filled with healing and lived on his own terms.

Waiting for Godínez by Daniel A. Olivas | ADULT FICTION

Olivas’s extraordinary reimagining of a classic play lays bare the destructive and brutalizing effects of the United States’ anti-immigration policy on undocumented immigrants and their families. In Waiting for Godínez, the forever-waiting characters of Estragon and Vladimir are embodied in Jesús and Isabel, two Mexican friends living in the States. Each night Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents kidnap Jesús and throw him into a cage intending to deport him. But the agents forget to lock the cage, so Jesús escapes and makes his way back to Isabel as they wait for the mysterious Godínez in a city park. At one point Isabel looks upon her exhausted friend and laments, “What harm have you done to them? You are as much of this country as you are of México. But you are not home in either place. Ni de aquí, ni de allá.”

Waiting for Godínez humanizes the plight undocumented people face in a country that both needs and disdains them. Through a darkly comic absurdist lens, it implores us to reconsider this country’s policies in light of the fact that we are all human and deserve respect and dignity as we each try to make our way in a confusing and often indifferent world.

Mexico's Day of the Dead: A Celebration of Life Through Stories and Photos by Luisa Navarro | Photographed by Christine Chitnis | NONFICTION

Whether you are new to the holiday and celebrating for the first time, looking to process a recent loss, or just interested in this authentic Mexican cultural tradition, Mexico's Day of the Dead paints a vibrant picture of one of the country's most storied and sacred holidays.

With photographer Christine Chitnis by her side, author Luisa Navarro documents the most breathtaking displays, as well as the artisans and people who keep the traditions alive. She delves into the origins of the holiday, its rich iconography, and modern-day customs. Thoughtful essays on the evolution of Día de Muertos are coupled with practical guides for celebrating it yourself, as Luisa shares her tips for cultivating your own Day of the Dead traditions. Turn to Mexico's Day of the Dead for approachable DIY projects. Build your own altar. Make your own sugar skulls. Create papel picado and bake your own delicious pan de muerto at home.

This landmark book brings Day of the Dead to life with transportive photography, high-end finishes, and eye-catching stained edges.

All That Dies in April by Mariana Travacio | Translated by Samantha Schnee & Will Morningstar | ADULT FICTION

Lina has dreamt for years of leaving her tiny village in the drought-stricken region. Her son left long ago to find work and a better fortune. Relicario, her husband, is content to stay put in the land of his ancestors, tending to their graves. Ignoring Relicario's pleas, a desperate Lina decides to abandon their home in search of her son, work, and water. She starts her journey on foot, and Relicario eventually follows behind, bringing a donkey and a sack with his ancestors' bones. Both witness unspeakable violence, cruelty, and folly, but the hope of reuniting their family keeps them alive.
Poetically charged, restrained, and delicately condensed, this is a suspenseful ancestral tale rooted in a long Latin American history of rural displacement and perpetual inequality.

Calladita No More: My Latina Journey and the Lessons that Shaped Me by Hady Mendez | NONFCITION

"Calladita No More" is a powerful collection of stories about the lived experiences of a Latina who dared to dream big-only to find that the world wasn't built for her ambitions. Through the lens of familiar Latinx cultural sayings, or refranes, Hady Méndez shares the lessons she learned navigating identity, leadership, and belonging in a world fueled by bias, discrimination, racism, and sexism.

Each chapter holds a different refrán and lesson, blending personal storytelling with cultural reflection to spotlight hard-earned insights on empowerment, resilience, and reclaiming one's voice. This is not a step-by-step guide. It is a deeply personal narrative-an offering of wisdom and encouragement to Latinas and Women of Color who are carving their own paths through systems that were never designed with them in mind.

Hady's journey is a testament to what is possible when one learns to champion themselves, celebrate their successes, foster community, and prioritize self-care. Written with joy, clarity, and mucho orgullo, the book invites readers to reflect on the lessons they've learned and the insights they've gained.

Chloe Vega and the Agents of Magic by Leslie Adame | MIDDLE GRADE

Twelve-year-old Chloe Vega’s biggest fear is that her undocumented parents will be detained by immigration. That is, until she learns that her parents are actually part of a secret magical society…and that the suspicious looking police officers who have been hanging around their block are henchmen for an evil sorcerer determined to settle a decades-old score. 

Just when Chloe discovers that she has powers, too, her parents are kidnapped. In order to rescue them, she’ll need to harness her abilities at an elite academy, run by the very agency who exiled her parents from the magical world.

Finding herself in the center of a magical war that might destroy everything she has ever known, Chloe can’t shake the feeling that the Agents of Magic are hiding secrets. With her parents’ lives hanging in the balance, she must uncover who is truly on her side and fast to save her family—and the world itself.

The Golden Boy's Guide to Bipolar by Sonora Reyes | YOUNG ADULT

Seventeen-year-old Cesar Flores is finally ready to win back his ex-boyfriend. Since breaking up with Jamal in a last-ditch effort to stay in the closet, he’s come out to Mami, his sister, Yami, and their friends, taken his meds faithfully, and gotten his therapist’s blessing to reunite with Jamal.

Everything would be perfect if it weren’t for The Thoughts—the ones that won’t let all his Catholic guilt and internalizations stay buried where he wants them. The louder they become, the more Cesar is once again convinced that he doesn't deserve someone like Jamal—or anyone really.

Cesar can hide a fair amount of shame behind jokes and his “gifted” reputation, but when a manic episode makes his inner turmoil impossible to hide, he’s faced with a stark choice: burn every bridge he has left or, worse—ask for help. But is the mortifying vulnerability of being loved by the people he’s hurt the most a risk he’s willing to take?

Inside the Cartel: How an Undercover FBI Agent Smuggled Cocaine, Laundered Cash, and Dismantled a Colombian Narco-Empire by Martin Suarez & Ian Frisch | NONFICTION

Martin Suarez, a legend within the FBI who specialized in Colombian drug cartels, holds the record for the longest time spent continuously undercover. As his alter ego Manny, Martin followed the unspoken rules of the cartels: He knew the right lingo to use, the right whiskey to drink, the right watch to wear, the wrong questions to ask. He smuggled over $1 billion worth of cocaine into the United States for the Medellín Cartel and, as his cover deepened, he graduated to become a high-level money launderer for the North Coast Cartel. He helped wash tens of millions of dollars worth of drug money, ensnaring himself in a high-stakes game of cat and mouse while simultaneously exposing the Black Market Peso Exchange, the most insidious money laundering apparatus in the world that involved billionaire bankers, blue-chip American corporations, and even the President of Colombia himself.

Martin was raised by a father who served in the military and valorized the nobility of the FBI, and Martin stopped at nothing to allow his father to live vicariously through his son. He wanted nothing more than to make his father proud—and to be a good husband to his wife, and a loving father to his two young sons. He became a man caught between two worlds—that of an undercover agent who wanted to rid the world of its evils, but also that of a family man who was trying not to lose himself in this dark, brutal underworld that captivated the globe during the War on Drugs.

And yet his worlds begin to collide as danger creeps dangerously close to his doorstep when his cover is blown and a cartel-hired sicario comes hunting for him.

The Other Barrio: New and Selected Stories by Alejandro Murguía | SHORT STORIES

In the title story, a once-elegant hotel--now a rundown apartment building for mostly single men and a few desperate families--burns to the ground, killing seven people.

City building inspector Roberto Morales had recently reviewed it and knows there was nothing wrong with the wiring, even before he's hustled off to a "meeting" with a local mafioso.

As he pounds the pavement of San Francisco's grimy Mission District, looking for clues to the fire, he realizes the lengths to which developers will go to make another million--even as far as sending seven innocent souls to "the other barrio.

San Francisco Poet Laureate Emeritus Alejandro Murguía imbues his mostly brown, working-class characters with the grit necessary to face every day in this collection of short fiction.

How to Say Goodbye in Cuban by Daniel Miyares | MIDDLE GRADE

Carlos, who lives in a small town in the Cuban countryside, loves to play baseball with his best friend, Alvaro, and to shoot home-made slingshots with his abuelo.

One day, a miracle happens: Carlos' father, his papi, wins the lottery! He uses the money to launch his own furniture business and to move the family to a big house in the city.

Carlos hates having to move -- hates leaving Abuelo and Alvaro behind -- and hates being called country kid at his new school. But the pains of moving and middle school turn out to be the least of his problems.

When rebel leader Fidel Castro overthrows the existing Cuban president, the entire country is thrust into revolution. Then, suddenly, Papi disappears. Carlos' mother tells him that Papi has gone to America, and that they will soon join him. But Carlos really doesn't want to leave Cuba, the only home he's ever known. Besides, how will they get to America when Castro's soldiers are policing their every move? Will Carlos ever see his father again?

Book Review: An Embroidery of Souls by Ruby Martinez

Ruby Martinez’s debut YA novel, An Embroidery of Souls, traps you in a way only the most complex needlework could. 

The story follows the dual POV of Jade Aguilar and Lukas Keller, two young people with too much emotional baggage to carry. Jade is a “thread speaker,” a person with magical abilities who can see the colored strings of your soul and manipulate them with only a needle and thread. She can take and give beauty, intelligence, and even life. In Mérecal, such power is controlled by Queen María-Celese Ríos, and the Crown’s control has kept Jade isolated, with her mom being her only companion. The problem is that Jade’s mom has gone missing, leaving her alone with the demanding queen and an ocean of fears she can’t control. Then we have Lukas, an immigrant boy who must take care of his family after his father’s passing. He struggles to make ends meet, and his desperation brings him down to the sewers, where the underground queen of the Serpensas, Cora Ramos, awaits with venomous fangs. Their unfortunate entanglement with royalty ultimately brings them together, as they must solve a series of seemingly supernatural murders that have Mérecal’s people in a sort of religious paranoia. 

“Martinez’s prose is both beautiful and gut-wrenching, like a delicate thread and a sharp needle embroidering something both lovely and painful.”

With a hint of detective novel-like tropes, Martinez writes scenes packed with danger for our protagonists. They must overcome many external and internal challenges to discover the murderer’s identity. Each chapter ends in such a teasing moment that it is impossible to stop reading. Among all the chaos and high stakes, the author develops a sweet romance that sparkles with magic. Martinez cooks Jade and Lukas’s love ever so slowly; so much so that the slight steam might make your cheeks get rosy. However, your eyes might tear up as the pair deals with their respective darkness. With these deeply damaged characters, Martinez applies her knowledge as a therapist to explore their traumas, leaving little gems for the readers along the way. Many passages felt like my own therapist was talking to me; this way, Martinez reaches her readers with the same compassion and sternness only a mental health professional could. 

Martinez’s prose is both beautiful and gut-wrenching, like a delicate thread and a sharp needle embroidering something both lovely and painful. If I were a thread speaker, I’m sure I would see Martinez’s soul full of violet strings of intelligence and merlot passion. I don’t know what the color for creativity is, but I am sure she also has that in abundance. And all her hues are stitched with care into this book. 

An Embroidery of Souls is a kaleidoscope of sweet and sour moments that will not only have you rooting for Jade and Lukas’s journey together, but also for their individual healing. 

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Roxanna Cardenas Colmenares is a Venezuelan writer living in New York City who loves to consume, study, and create art. She explores multiple genres in her writing, with a special interest in horror and sci-fi, while working on her B.A. in English with a Creative Writing concentration. 

Her work has made her a two-time recipient of the James Tolan Student Writing Award for her critical essays analyzing movies. She has also won The Henry Roth Award in Fiction, The Esther Unger Poetry Prize, and The Allan Danzig Memorial Award in Victorian Literature.

In her free time, she likes to watch movies, dance, and draw doodles that she hopes to be brave enough to share one day.

September 2025 Latinx Releases

We are so excited to bring you such a plentiful list of new releases this month—we've even changed our post format a bit. Make sure to check out all these amazing titles releasing just in time to kick off Hispanic Heritage Month!

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