The Growing Multitude of Latinx Voices

In an absorbing 2009 TED Talk that has been streamed by nearly fifteen million viewers, the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warns us of “the danger of a single story.” The single story lends itself to stereotypes, she says. It reduces multiple voices, multiple experiences, to a simple and incomplete narrative. “Show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.” The single story robs people of their dignity, their humanity.

To illustrate this, Adichie recounts a visit she made to Mexico. On her first day in Guadalajara, she observed Mexicans going about their daily routines in public spaces. “I remember first feeling slight surprise. And then, I was overwhelmed with shame,” she recalls. “I realized that I had been so immersed in the media coverage of Mexicans that they had become one thing in my mind: the abject Mexican.” She had bought into the US media’s single story of Mexicans as interlopers and economic pariahs. She had not seen them, not known them, as complex human beings; as everyday people leading ordinary lives.

What made Adichie’s reflection on her own biases especially poignant was her long advocacy for a more nuanced knowledge of the African continent and what even university professors naïvely refer to as African literature. As if it comprised a unified literary tradition, when the lived realities are both innumerable and immeasurably complex. So, too, are the lives of Latinx communities and individuals.

It is the multiplicity and complexity of Latinx lives we wish to highlight in this issue of Chiricú Journal. “Vox Latinx” is a playful reference to the Latin term for “voice of the people.” But it is also a solemn call to honor the multitude of narratives that comprise Latinx literatures and arts. Those narratives are as wide-ranging as they are numerous. Issue editors Amanda M. Smith and Alfredo Franco have assembled an impressive array of critical and creative works that speak to swelling popularity and power of Latinx narratives.

In this issue, we hear the voices of queer, feminist, and undocumented Latinx activists, artists, and self-identified artivists. We hear about ways that art is deployed to educate as well as empower communities—for example, in the face of deportations, in the wake of the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016, or on the occasion of the current US president’s inauguration in 2017. By way of critical articles or interviews, we also gain insights into the dazzling literary minds of Héctor Tobar, Pedro Pietri, Giannina Braschi, and Claudia Nina. Also in this issue, we are treated to captivating new work by the eminent writers Cristina García and Catherine Carberry as well as to the resplendent poetry of Gina Franco, Gloria García Lorca, Vincent Toro, and Yllari Chaska Briceño Delgado de Montesano. In sum, this issue heeds Adichie’s admonition to beware the allure of the single story, by showcasing the plurality and power of our Vox Latinx.