Guest Authors: Claire Jimenez + Melissa Coss Aquino + Cleyvis Natera

Conversation Partner: Aisha Cort

Three modern Latina writers gather to discuss how their writings have opened the lid on the unsaid and sometimes painful histories and lore present in families. Together, their stories help challenge the long-held expectations by their communities to keep these secrets.

Individually and collectively, their stories wrestle with generational silences, the thoughts and experiences we often keep to ourselves. If there is a clear theme in their literature, it is that appearances are not always what they seem. Their characters hold our hands as we, too, consider situations where we thought we knew someone until, suddenly, we discover something about them that we would have never imagined. Their stories lead us to consider fresh outcomes if openness instead of secrets was encouraged and cultivated.

The writers on this panel, Cleyvis, Melissa and Claire, have made about-turns on this tradition of reticence, becoming instead, the gatekeepers of a new tradition - of one that embraces disclosure, openness and light.