On Writing as a Latina
As far as I’m concerned, writing, publishing, and marketing are three different things.
I write. I have always written, and I always will, whether anyone reads my words or not. However, I prefer to have my words read by others, so I’ve made the effort to get published.
Several of my friends are also write, but without any desire to be published. That’s a concept I still find difficult to grasp, but I try to love these writer friends despite our differences, and they try to love me despite my unsolicited suggestions and advice.
A lot of my advice revolves around marketing. If you want to get published, your query letters have to outline a marketing plan. Why should a publisher publish you? Well, because you are an awesome person. And, you know, because you have some skill at writing. You know and I know that that’s the real reason. But that’s not the reason that cuts it anymore.
A publisher or agent wants to hear that your specific book will appeal to all women under 40, 35% of gay men in the American Southwest, and 12% of straight male Vietnam vets, 56% of whom are proven to buy books from major chains and independent retailers. And that you’re already reaching that audience through your Web site, your radio show, or your previous novel’s sales. They need you to show them the potential money.
Sure, some publishers will publish a book just because it’s good. However, the book market no longer rewards that nobility enough to make it a common practice.
On her blog, best-selling author Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez explains her annoyance with being categorized as a Latina writer. She wonders why Jennifer Weiner’s books aren’t categorized as Jewish lit while her own are called Latino lit, and she announces her intention to sue “if and when the major chains start to segregate [her] books by ethnicity.”
I agree with Alisa’s assesment that “there are only two genres of novel: Good, and bad.” And I suppose that if anyone could pressure the major chains to eradicate their Latino and African American (and Gay/Lesbian? and Chick Lit?) sections, it would be a best-selling author and a lawyer. In my fantasies, novels are characterized only as Good or Bad, and there is no Bad Fiction section at my local Borders. In fact, in my fantasies, bad fiction doesn’t even get published.
However, I don’t mind having my book classified as Latino lit.
Latino is not a race, is it? The three races of Earth are Negroid, Mongoloid, and Caucasiod, right?. And then, there are the native North and South American tribes. You can imagine them walking over the Bering Strait as Asians, or you can ignore them, as people often do. Latinos can be black, white, or Asian, can’t they? To me, Latino just means “having ancestors who had sex with gold-seeking Spaniards somewhere in the Western Hemisphere.”
That explains my ethnicity (or half of it, at least) and my surname. But what about my culture?
I am American of Mexican descent. That means – well, that could mean anything, right? It could mean that I speak Spanish, or that I don’t. It could mean that I eat tacos, or not. You could take me and another woman born on my birthdate, in Houston, with the exact same racial makeup and socioeconomic background as mine and the exact same taste in TV shows, and our “cultural practices” could be completely different. (Turns out that my family makes tamales on Christmas and hers doesn’t. Her family spends Christmas at the Chinese buffet.) So there’s no use talking about my “culture” as a guarantee that my book will sell to anyone whose “culture” happens to have descriptors in common with mine. Right?
I write what I know. So, presumably, at least some of my characters will share aspects of my culture. If I also write descriptions of universal human truths, then any reader will be able to relate to my characters. If I write well, then most readers might also enjoy doing so.
How does any of that make me different from any non-Latino authors in the world?
Well, it doesn’t.
Then why’d I go with a “Latino” publisher and why do I subsequently let my book get categorized as “Latino literature”?
Because I like to have my words read by others, and my people – the people who have Spanish surnames and some cultural experiences in common with my own – were the first ones willing to help me achieve that.
When I sent my first book to “mainstream” publishers and agents, I was told that my writing was good, but not what they were looking for. They said they were looking for the next Chicken Soup for the Soul.
So I sent it to the Latino publisher, even though I worried that it wasn’t “Latino enough.” (I’m half white! I write Spanish at third-grade level!) They said my writing was good (if a little bizarre), and they (the Mexicans, the Puerto Ricans, the South Americans, the black, white, and brown) said they’d be happy to publish good writing by a fellow Latina.
For that, I will always be grateful.
A few mainstream publishers have contacted me since my first book came out. They want to know if I can give them the next Dirty Girls Social Club.
Unfortunately, I can’t (although I could really use the money). But, like Ms. Valdes-Rodriguez, I hope for a future in which publishers will offer me tons of money because my books are good, not because they fit into the most recently marketable version of “mainstream.”
And if that ever happens – even then – I won’t mind if anyone calls my book Latino lit, or feminist lit, or Southwest lit, or even chick lit.
You know… as long as they’re reading my words.
