The Coming-of-Age Experience in Chicanx Queer Novels What Night Brings and Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

This chapter establishes a dialogue between Chicanx canonical coming-of-age and queer young adult novels What Night Brings (2004) by Carla Trujillo, and Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (2012) by Benjamin Alire Sáenz. These writers have destabilized the traditional Chicanx coming-of-age genre by placing two social outcasts and queer characters as their protagonists. In these two novels the main characters do not integrate with the rest of their peers; they are both knowledge seekers and outsiders. Additionally, these main characters have a queer sexuality, and they, along with other characters, break from gender binaries and gender stereotypes.

Weirding Out Latinx America

The insistence on constructing an identity that pushes against and challenges mainstream or cultural pressures to be “hip” or “on fleek” forms the central tenet of the essays in Nerds, Goths, Geeks, and Freaks: Outsiders in Chicanx/Latinx Young Adult Literature. Given the established canon of Latinx YA literature and the growing body of those works that explore “weirdos,” “nerds,” and other “taboo” identities, an edited volume that examines such identities is warranted. This introduction provides an overview of the four sections and the chapters included in each section.

Afuerxs and Cultural Practice in Shadowshaper and Labyrinth Lost

In the young adult novels Shadowshaper (2015) by Daniel José Older and Labyrinth Lost (2016) by Zoraida Córdova, Sierra Santiago and Alejandra Mortiz are the inheritors of great power in their respective cultural communities: shadowshaping, the ability to provide spirits with a physical form through drawing, murals, sculpture, or storytelling; and the Deathday, a ceremony to celebrate a bruja (or brujo) receiving her particular ability, including elemental control, healing, and/or defense, among others. Yet initially, through acts of refusal, the young women are outside of the material, ritual, and cultural practices of their communities.

Chicana Teens, Zines, and Poetry Scenes: Gabi, A Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero

This chapter reads closely Isabel Quintero’s 2014 young adult novel Gabi, A Girl in Pieces. Quintero’s novel, which takes the form of a year’s worth of diary entries, and includes an illustrated copy of the titular character’s zine on female body diversity, narrates the story of a young Chicana outsider’s senior year of high school. In lieu of “fitting in” Gabi the teenage poet pens her way out of loss, homophobia, lurking sexual violence, grief, and depression. Gabi, A Girl in Pieces reveals that the creation of political art, the practice of writing, and the role of Chicana poetics can serve as vital creative outlets for Chicana outsiders, be they nerds, goths, geeks, or freaks.

“These Latin Girls Mean Business”1: Expanding the Boundaries of Latina Youth Identity in Meg Medina’s YA Novel Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass

This chapter examines the ways in which Latina urban identities have been shaped by popular culture as the “chola/homegirl.” However, this chapter argues that Medina’s novel challenges the seemingly natural alignment of urban Latina identity with the chola by calling for a more expansive view of what it means to be a young, urban Latina. This chapter uses Chicana/Latina feminist theorizing that has examined the chola identity, in addition to sociological research that has studied the ways in which urban girls of color are constructed as “bad” or “delinquent.” This chapter examines the protagonist in light of these theories. Further, the chapter argues that Medina’s novel, in expanding what it means to be a young, urban Latina, questions the ways in which those Latinas who do not model themselves as cholas are victims of identity-policing, rendered not “really” Latina, and dismissed as weirdos or outsiders within this narrow gender/racial identity script that defines chola identity as the only “authentic” young, urban, Latina identity.