THE SOLARIUM

Reviews are in, and it’s 100% bulldog-approved! Of course, if you want to share your own opinion of Francisca and the Forgotten, you can buy it here and review it on Goodreads.

While I certainly hope you’ll give Francisca a chance, I also want to take an opportunity to highlight books by other amazing queer Latina authors, especially trans women.

As a queer author of color, the ethics of cultural appropriation in writing are something I’ve thought about a lot. Ultimately, my stance is that it’s not only unavoidable but undesirable for authors to only write about characters whose lived experience aligns perfectly with their own.

The problem is that, all too often, books by marginalized authors are overlooked while authors from more privileged communities are celebrated for making token efforts. This leads to an appearance of increased diversity on the page without giving marginalized authors meaningful space to actually share their perspectives.

Since my book is being put out by a small and fairly new press, I’m not super concerned about it taking up disproportionate space in any broader cultural conversations. But it does feature a trans lesbian protagonist, and I want to do my part to uplift Latina authors who are not only writing from those perspectives but experience them personally.

I’ve included slideshows below with fiction recommendations by trans Latinas, as well as some general Latino queer and horror book recs.

I was really hoping to find some YA books by trans Latinas to recommend, but I didn’t have any luck, at least not in English. I would imagine there’s more options in Spanish. If you know any YA books by transfemme Latinas in either language, please share in the comments! I’d love to check them out.