Finding Latinx

September 15, 2020
A young, queer Latinx journalist travels the U.S. to find out exactly what the term means to those who use it. Ramos has impressive credentials: The former deputy director of Hispanic media during Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, she is a Vice News host and correspondent and contributor to MSNBC and Telemundo. In her debut book, the author gives voice to a rapidly growing American demographic. Interviewing "the voices that are often neglected in the back of the room," the author shows us a myriad of experiences that are often flattened in other portrayals. Many of the issues facing the Latinx community are the same as those that present challenges for other marginalized groups, including racism, colorism, gentrification, and sexual abuse. While the author does a good job informing readers about certain elements of the Latinx experience, the narrative sometimes bogs down in comparative statistics. Many of the numbers are helpful for context, but their abundance can detract from the power of the personal stories. Via these anecdotes, the author conveys both "the exceptionalism and the ordinary" in the Latinx community, demonstrating attention to nuance and allowing her interviewees to express themselves freely. As much as this is an exploration of the Latinx movement--which "forces you to look at 60 million people in a different way [and] to reframe the country's own geography"--it is also a journey for Ramos. "I am queer; I am Latina; I am Cuban, Mexican and first-generation American," she writes. "These are words I was not ashamed of saying out loud--but there's a difference between passive recognition and really owning one's identity....Yet the truth is that, for years, I had either blindly danced around these identities or felt like I had to choose one over the others." Though the narrative is sometimes choppy and lacks a coherent throughline connecting the chapters, it's clear that this was an important project for the author, and her passion is evident. An inclusive look at the Latinx experience.

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October 15, 2020
Embraced by progressives supportive of those who identify as nonbinary, the term Latinx seeks to de-gender and decentralize Spanish grammar's use of the "o" ending for male nouns, as in Latino. In her new book, recognized journalist Paola Ramos, of VICE and MSNBC and other venues, whos is the daughter of renowned journalist Jorge Ramos, recounts a journey of coming out for herself and for a wide-ranging array of people not easily defined or categorised, who are embracing Latinx for its impactful inclusivity. Travelling to all corners of the country, from the pesticide-poisoned fields of California to the ragged trailer parks of Texas to the South, Midwest, and up to the Northeast, Ramos collects the stories of "uniquely different" people. People who are queer or trans, farm workers, reformed gangbangers, climate crusaders, Muslim Latinx, and Blaxicans (African Mexicans) are just some of the individuals who open up to Ramos and share their startling and compelling experiences. Illustrated with disarming photos of Ramos and her subjects, this travelogue through an emerging and empowering world of newly redefined identity and community belongs in all nonfiction collections.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

November 1, 2020

In her first book, VICE journalist and progressive activist Ramos champions the term Latinx as an empowering collective identity--a grassroots banner inclusive of all Hispanics and Latino/as, be they undocumented, poor, queer, indigenous, or Black. Touring the United States, Ramos interviews Latinx people who are redefining Latino identity. She encounters Indigenous Guatemalan immigrants who do not speak Spanish, women farmworkers battling pollution and sexual harassment, Afro-Latinas who face racism from white-passing Hispanics, and an undocumented drag queen from El Salvador who competes in Miss Gay America. This work gives voice to this diversity. The author's own life echoes these themes. She is a queer, first-generation, millennial woman with Mexican and Cuban parents and an Afro-Latina partner. "The only label that can accommodate that spectrum of ambiguity," concludes Ramos, "is the Latinx banner." This personal narrative is in many ways her own story of "coming out Latinx." Readers can build on this book by picking up Ed Morales's Latinx or Laura E. G�mez's Inventing Latinos. VERDICT A revelatory, celebratory trip through the amazing diversity of Latinx.--Michael Rodriguez, Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs

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