Sebastián Arteaga y Salazar is the descendant of an elite Mexican family who studies at Yale and then enrolls in an MFA program at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He’s working on a failed history of Mexico—meaning his own failure to write his book, and the Mexican nation’s failures, especially in relation to the United States. Along the way, “Sebas” crosses many borders—between the United States and Mexico, of course, but also between elite and non-elite Mexicans and Latinos in the United States. This is the basic plot of Nicolás Medina Mora’s debut novel, América del Norte, which offers a beautifully written meditation on historical, cultural, and political relationships between the United States and Mexico. Sebas, like Medina, sees the subject of Latinidad from the perspective of a member of the Mexican elite who is more like other elites in the United States than like working class Mexicans and Mexican Americans on either side of the border. On this newest episode of Writing Latinos, we talk about all of it, including how Medina wrestles with “Latino” as a concept in a way that makes for great listening!

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Credits:

Writing Latinos is a production of Public Books. The show’s host is Geraldo Cadava, co-editor-in-chief of the magazine, and show’s producer is Tasha Sandoval. Our theme music is “City of Mirrors” by Dos Santos.

Featured image of Nicolás Medina Mora © Santiago Mohar Volkow