Ambientes_New Queer Latino Writing

by Lazaro Lima

  MYRIAM GURBA (b. 1977, Santa Maria, California) is the author of Dahlia Season (2007), a short story and novella collection that won the Edmund White Award. Her writing has been anthologized in the collections Life as We Show It (2009) and Bottom’s Up (2004). She was chosen to be one of the inaugural members of RADAR Lab, the world’s only queer arts residency, which was held in 2009 in Akumal, Mexico. Gurba’s favorite crooner is Morrissey and she is working on a new book tentatively titled The Hunger Crónicas, or Why Some Girls are Bigger Than Others, a total nod to The Smiths.

  RAQUEL GUTIÉRREZ (b. 1976, Los Angeles, California) is a community-based performance writer and cultural activist. She is a cofounding member of the performance art ensemble Butchlalis de Panochtitlan and has written their first play, The Barber of East L.A., currently in production and commissioned by a humanities initiative at the University of Southern California that enabled the troupe to work with Luis Alfaro. Gutiérrez has performed nationally with Butchlalis and has been published in poetry and other journals. She holds degrees in performance studies from New York University and in journalism and Central American studies from California State University–Northridge.

  DAISY HERNÁNDEZ (b. 1975, Union City, New Jersey) is the former editor of ColorLines, the national newsmagazine on race, and coeditor of Colonize This! Young Women on Today’s Feminism (2002). She is a former columnist with Ms. magazine, and her personal essays have appeared in various anthologies, including 50 Ways to Support Lesbian and Gay Equality (2005), Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class (2004), Border-Line Personalities: A New Generation of Latinas Dish on Sex (2004), and Sex and Single Girls: Women Write on Sexuality (2000). Hernández received her BA in English from William Paterson University and an MA in journalism and Latin American and Caribbean studies from New York University. She is a powerful public speaker and has lectured widely across the country. Her website is www.daisyhernandez.com.

  LUCY MARRERO (b. 1978, Dallas, Texas) has published her work in Hipmama Magazine (2008), Sinister Wisdom (2008), Young Scholars in Writing (2009), and Visible: A Femmethology (2009). Marrero currently attends Antioch University in Los Angeles and is involved with the Los Angeles chapter of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence.

  ELÍAS MIGUEL MUÑOZ (b. 1954, Ciego de Ávila, Cuba) is one of the premier writers of contemporary Latino literature. He holds a PhD in Spanish from the University of California–Irvine and considers himself a “recovering academic,” having left his teaching position in Kansas in 1989 to devote his time and energy to writing. Muñoz’s highly acclaimed novels include Los viajes de Orlando Cachumbambé (1984), Crazy Love (1988), The Greatest Performance (1991), Brand New Memory (1998), and Vida mía (2006). Passionately infused with the theme of exile, his fiction deals with friendships that empower, gender roles, and new definitions of family. Muñoz’s stories, memoirs, and essays have appeared in numerous anthologies, including Herencia: The Anthology of Hispanic Literature of the United States (2002), The Encyclopedia of American Literature (1999), The Scribner Writers Series: Latino and Latina Writers (2004), W.W. Norton’s New Worlds of Literature (1994), and the Handbook of Hispanic Cultures in the United States (1993). After leaving his native Cuba as a child, Muñoz lived in Spain, Southern California, Kansas, Washington, DC, and New Mexico. He currently resides in California. The story featured here was adapted from a chapter of his forthcoming novel.

  ACHY OBEJAS (b. 1956, Havana, Cuba) is one of the most prolific and well-known writers of her generation. Obejas’s major publications include We Came All the Way from Cuba So You Could Dress Like This (1994), Memory Mambo (1996), Days of Awe (2001), and Ruins (2009). An award-winning journalist, she worked for more than ten years for the Chicago Tribune, writing and reporting about arts and culture. Among literally thousands of stories, she helped cover Pope John Paul II’s historic 1998 visit to Cuba, the arrival of Al-Qaeda prisoners in Guantánamo, the Versace murder, and the AIDS epidemic. She is a blogger for vocalo.org and writes regularly about Latin music for the Washington Post. Obejas has received a Pulitzer Prize for a Tribune team investigation, the Studs Terkel Journalism Prize, two Lambda Literary awards, an NEA fellowship in poetry, and residencies at Yaddo, Ragdale, and the Virginia Center for the Arts. Her work has been translated into Spanish, German, Hungarian, and Farsi. Obejas has lectured and read her work in the United States, Cuba, Mexico, Spain, Argentina, and Australia, and has been a distinguished writer-in-residence at the University of Chicago and at the University of Hawai’i. She is currently the Sor Juana Visiting Writer at DePaul University in Chicago.

  URIEL QUESADA (b. 1962, San José, Costa Rica) is a prolific author who writes predominately in Spanish. He is the author of seven books of fiction, including the award-winning novels El atardecer de los niños (1990), Lejos, tan lejos (2005), and El gato de sí mismo (2006), and the short story collection Viajero que huye (2008). Quesada holds an MA in Latin American literature from New Mexico State University and a PhD from Tulane University. He lives in New Orleans and is the director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Loyola University. As a scholar, Quesada has done research on a variety of topics that include Latin American detective fiction, popular culture, testimonial literature, and gender and sexualities.

  JANET ARELIS QUEZADA (b. 1975, New York City) is a poet whose writing and reviews have appeared in Curve Magazine (2009) and Urban Latino Magazine (2009). Her work has also been anthologized in the collection Writing on the Edge: A Borderlands Reader (2003). She lives in Los Angeles.

  CHARLES RICE - GONZÁLEZ (b. 1964, San Juan, Puerto Rico) was born in Puerto Rico and reared in the Bronx. He is a writer, a longtime community and LGBT activist, and executive director of BAAD! The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance. He received a BA in communications from Adelphi University and an MFA in creative writing from Goddard College. He attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 2005, 2006, and 2007 and received a residency from the Byrdcliffe Guild in Woodstock, New York. Rice-González also serves on the boards of the Bronx Council on the Arts and the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC). His work has been published in many journals and he has written several plays including “What Carlos Feels” (1990), “Pink Jesus” (1997), “Los Nutcrackers: A Christmas Carajo,” produced each year at BAAD! since 2004, and “I Just Love Andy Gibb,” which was selected for Pregones Theater’s 2005 Asunción Play Reading Series and received a workshop production in May 2007. His debut novel, Chulito, will be published in spring 2011.

  HORACIO N. ROQUE RAMÍREZ (b. 1969, Santa Ana, El Salvador) flew to the United States in 1981 along with two of his older sisters, escaping the brutal US-funded Salvadoran Civil War. He learned English at El Sereno Junior High School in Los Angeles, was a closeted homosexual tennis star at Monrovia High School, and attended the University of California–Los Angeles and the University of California– Berkeley before beginning to teach at the University of California–Santa Barbara in 2003. His oral history- and archival-based work has appeared in the Journal of the History of Sexuality (2003), Queer Migrations: Sexuality, U.S. Citizenship and Border Crossings (2005), Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History (2005), Oral History, Public Memories (2008), and Gay Latino Studies: A Critical Reader (2011). His creative nonfiction writing—part of an emerging “literatura centromaricona” (in the wise words of his colleague Santiago N. Bernal), or queer Central American literature—has appeared in Mapping Strategies: NACCS and the Challenges of Multiple (Re)Oppressions (1999), Virgins, Guerrillas & Locas: Gay Latinos Writing about Love (1999), and Queer Codex: Chile Love (2004). His forthcoming book is Memories of Desire: An Oral History from Queer Latino San Francisco, 1960s–1990s.

  EMANUEL XAVIER (b. 1971, Brooklyn, New York) is the author of the novel Christ Like (2009) and the poetry collection Americano (2002), the editor of Bullets & Butterflies: queer spoken word poetry (2005) and Mariposas: A Modern Anthology of Queer Latino Poetry (2008), and he selected finalists
for Best Gay Erotica 2008. He has been awarded the Marsha A. Gómez Cultural Heritage Award, a New York City Council Citation, and a 2008 World Pride Award. He has appeared on Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry and continues to perform regularly as a spoken-word artist throughout the world. A compilation CD of his work, Legendary—The Spoken Word Poetry of Emanuel Xavier, is available for digital download on iTunes. His website is www.emanuelxavier.com.