Anthologies

Anthologies

Living Beyond Borders: Growing Up Mexican in America

Featured Essay by Alex Temblador: “Is Half Mexican-American Mexican Enough?”

In this mixed-media collection of short stories, personal essays, poetry, and comics, this celebrated group of authors share the borders they have crossed, the struggles they have pushed through, and the two cultures they continue to navigate as Mexican Americans. Living Beyond Borders is at once an eye-opening, heart-wrenching, and hopeful love letter from the Mexican American community to today's young readers.
 
A powerful exploration of what it means to be Mexican American.

Speculative Fiction for Dreamers: A Latinx Anthology

Featured Short Story by Alex Temblador: “Curanderas in the Ceiling”

In a tantalizing array of new works from some of the most exciting Latinx creators working in the speculative vein today, Speculative Fiction for Dreamers extends the project begun with a previous anthology, Latinx Rising (The Ohio State University Press, 2020), to showcase a new generation of writers. Spanning diverse forms, settings, perspectives, and styles, but unified by their drive to imagine new Latinx futures, these stories address the breadth of contemporary Latinx experiences and identities while exuberantly embracing the genre’s ability to entertain and surprise. With new work for new audiences in their teens and up, and especially for Latinx people navigating their identities in the ever-shifting, sometimes perilous, but always promising cultural landscape of the US, this book is for dreamers—and DREAMers—everywhere. 

Alex’s anthologized short story and essay has been utilized in the following ways:

“Is Half Mexican Mexican Enough?”

  • Taught in the Children's and Adolescent Literature class at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Edinburg by Dr. Amy Cummins

  • Used in class project by California high school student, Natalie Martinez

“Curanderas in the Ceiling”

  • Taught by Dr. Elizabeth Fraga in a Columbia University master’s class on Latinx immigrants and bilingual counseling practices

  • Used in training sessions with interns at the Northern Manhattan Improvement Cooperation

  • Class discussions at Southern Methodist University at LaGuardia Community College

  • The focus of an online discussion at LaGuardia Community College

  • Used in a reading group called Brujas and Black Magic: Latinx Culture and Speculative Fiction with Joy Sanchez-Taylor

  • "Alex's short story, Curanderas in the Ceiling, is absolutely breathtaking. She crafts the tension between Western medicine and traditional healing so incredibly well, highlighting the different belief systems and values, and creates a real emotional connection between the character and readers. I loved the ironic critique embedded within, intertwined with compassion and understanding; and the prose left me wanting more, as great poetry does. Thank you Alex for this wonderful story, I hope to share it and use it to create awareness of our culture and traditional healing."

    — Santiago Márquez Ramos, Therapist and Co-Coordinator of Wellness Services at the Northern Manhattan Improvement Cooperation

  • "Your story in Living Beyond Borders really resonated with me. I grew up in very similar circumstances and have often had some of those same types of feelings. So thank you for writing your piece for the book. I feel that us Mixed folks are sometimes looked over and left behind, even though we do feel strongly about our heritage as well."

    — Reader, Guillermo Gonzalez