Label Me Latina/o, Fall 2026 Vol. 16.3
Critical Articles
Everything We Need: Understanding Chicana Environmentalisms through the Lens of Health in Ana Castillo’s So Far from God
by Caro Register
Caro Register is a PhD candidate in Romance Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill. She specializes in 20th- and 21st-century Latin American and Latinx literature and cultural studies, with particular interest in Environmental Humanities, Critical Animal Studies and Geographies, Posthumanism, human-nonhuman animal relationships, and Critical Health Humanities. Her work has been featured in journals such as Confluencia and Hispanic Review.
From Cultural Citizenship to Negotiated Belonging in Judith Ortiz Cofer’s The Line of the Sun
by Elizabeth Garcia
Elizabeth Garcia is Associate Teaching Professor in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of Colorado, Denver, where she teaches courses in Latinx Studies. Her book Healing Memories: Puerto Rican Women’s Literature in the United States was published in 2019 by University of Pittsburgh Press. She’s currently working on a book manuscript tentatively titled Malcriadas: Feminist Disobedience in Young Adult Literature by Latina Writers.
“Underground Masculinities”: Racial and Sexual Trauma in Down These Mean Streets
by Ángel Díaz Miranda
Ángel Díaz Miranda, Ph.D. (Emory University, 2014), is an Assistant Professor of Caribbean Studies and Latin American Literature. His research focuses on contemporary Hispanic Caribbean and Mexican poetry and narrative, spatiality, and visual culture. He studies how literature and culture relate to architecture, infrastructure, nostalgia, the body, trauma and memory, illness, and queerness, from the early 20th century to the present. He contributed the chapter “Octavio Paz and the Institutions of Poetry” to Cambridge University Press’s A History of Mexican Poetry (2024).
Dr. Díaz is the co-founder of the Puerto Rican and Latin American contemporary poetry journal Distrópika. He is currently working on a monograph, Absence and Possession: Spectrality and Infrastructure in Mexico and Puerto Rico, which explores the infrastructural turn in Mexican and Puerto Rican art history and literary studies through the lens of trauma theory, hauntology, and nostalgia.
Poetry
Octubre / October
by Alberto Quero
Dr. Alberto Quero was born in Maracaibo, Venezuela. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Literature and Linguistics, a Master’s Degree in Literature, and a PhD in Human Sciences from the University of Zulia. He is a teacher of English, French, and Spanish. He has published six books of short stories, two books of poetry, and numerous academic articles in the areas of literary semiotics and narratology. He has won several literary awards in narrative and poetry. His texts have been compiled into two anthologies by Venezuelan writers. He is a literary correspondent for Latin America at CKCU FM 93.1 in Ottawa, Canada.
POV: I met my younger self for tea
by Elizabeth Muñoz
Elizabeth Muñoz graduated from California State University East Bay. She holds a degree in Comparative Ethnic Studies with a concentration in Chicanx and Latinx Studies. She is a first-generation Latina. Elizabeth lives in the Bay Area with her husband, two children, and their dogs.
Omen of Uneasiness
by Mario Alberto Obando Jr.
Dr. Mario Alberto Obando Jr. (he/him/they/them) is Director of the Mellon Foundation Latinx Lab for Storytelling and Social Justice and Associate Professor of Chicana/o Studies at California State University, Fullerton. Dr. Obando is also the Project Lead of the LatinxLab.Studio, an experimental publication hub for the Latinx Lab’s digital humanities projects. He is also the Founder and Project Co-Lead of the CSUF Central American Research and Curriculum Observatory and Lab (CARACOL) initiative, which researches the state of the field of Central American Studies to design innovative Central American curriculum. His research on student-centered pedagogy in relational ethnic studies, activism, and digital humanities is published in the books Latinx Experiences: Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Transformative Practice in Critical Media Literacy: Radical Democracy and Decolonized Pedagogy in Higher Education. Additionally, his work is published in the University of California’s Humanities Research Institute’s (UCHRI) journal Foundry, Kalfou: Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies, Latinx Talk, Journal of American Ethnic History, and the Performance Matters Journal. Other essays on the role of Buddhist meditation and friendship in educational life journeys are published in the book Sparked: George Floyd, Racism and the Progressive Illusion and in the journal The Arrow: Journal of Wakeful Society, Culture, and Politics. He has also published three poems titled “Pleasure in the Last Gilded Age” for the Special Issue “Jotería Arts, Activism, and Scholarship as Resistance” in Border-Lines: Journal of the Latino Research Center. He is currently co-editing a collection on coming-of-age Latinx narratives titled “Coming of Age Soul” and executive producing a roundtable series titled “Amor y Rigor.”
Psicosis bilingüe
by Bridget María Chesterton
Dr. Bridget María Chesterton is Professor of History at Buffalo State University (Ph.D., Stony Brook University, 2007). Her newest book, Hotel Guaraní: The Brazilianization of the Paraguayan Middle Class in Paraguay during the Stroessner Dictatorship, is in Press with the University of Pittsburgh Press. She is the author of The Grandchildren of Solano López: Frontier and Nation in Paraguay, 1904-1936 (University of New Mexico, 2013). She is also the editor of the volume The Chaco War: Environment, Ethnicity, and Nationalism (Bloomsbury, 2016). She has also published articles in the Journal of Women’s History, Hispanic American Historical Review, Journal of World History, Journal of Social History, Food and Global History, and Latin and Latinx Visual Culture. She is the daughter of an Argentine immigrant mother. This poem was inspired by her experience with Post-Partum Psychosis 7 years ago.
skin
by Adonis Diaz
Adonis Diaz is a Mexican-American artist and poet with a BA in English from Southern New Hampshire University. She writes poetry that explores womanhood in the current American political climate, mental health issues, and feelings of “being too white” as a Latina. Her writing also touches on experiences of religious isolation, generational trauma, and feminism. Adonis currently resides in Salinas, CA, with her cats, Amethyst and Bilbo Baggins.
