Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with Speculative Fiction from Latinx Authors

It’s Hispanic Heritage Month, a celebration that, rather than commencing on the first day of September, begins mid-month and extends through October 15, echoing the multiple nations that commemorate their independence day around this time of year. (Nicaragua’s independence day is September 15, Mexico’s is September 16, Chile’s is September 18, etc.) It’s an idiosyncratic choice that reflects the diversity of nations and identities that constitute the vast region we call Latin America.

While works such as Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude or Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits are sure to appear on recommended book lists during this time of the year, I wanted to focus on speculative fiction with a Latin American perspective. Most of the titles below have been published or translated in the past decade and provide a window into the eclectic landscape that makes up Latin American fiction, which includes authors producing tales in their native country, as well as emigrants and second- and third-generation diaspora members. This body of work has been categorized as everything from Hispanic to Latinx to Chicano literature and beyond, with no doubt more terms and definitions to come. In the end, though, whatever we call it, I love how these works challenge and feed our imaginations.

Through the decades, we have encountered an ever-growing universe of voices that encompasses not only the stalwart grandparents of our literary tradition—the Juan Rulfos and Julio Cortázars that helped define a generation— but also newer authors who are imprinting speculative fiction with their own seal, or writers who have only recently begun to appear here and elsewhere in translation. The result is a series of unexplored roadways into fantastic worlds yet to be discovered.