Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez makes a fist and shows off the word “LOCA” inked across her knuckles. Men, other women and even her parents had called her crazy in attempts to dismiss her, so she took ownership of the word. She wrote about the tattoo in her first book, For Brown Girls With Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color, and the idea of reclaiming and reimagining the words used to hurt people informs her sophomore effort.
“Latinas get stereotyped into either the sexy spitfire … or we get put into the chola scene,” says Mojica Rodríguez . “And so I wanted to write a book about what it would look like to actually talk about us outside of the stereotypes.”
The forthcoming Tias and Primas will deconstruct stereotypes about Latinas and explore 25 different archetypes of women in Latin American families, each one a different aunt or cousin. There’s the tia who talks to plants and the tia who sees ghosts, for example.
Mojica Rodríguez has experienced stereotyping, saying peers at the Vanderbilt University School of Divinity would call her “spicy.” Rather than shrug it off, she wants to push back.
“I think we become numb to our own stereotypes, because I’ve seen other Latinas be like, ‘I’m just spicy, I’m Latin,’” she says. “And it’s not just this fun little thing. It comes with other dehumanizing aspects. When somebody sees you as literally just a condiment … they cannot see you as human.”
The author, 37, says she never felt pressure to assimilate into U.S. culture until she moved to Nashville in her 20s. She arrived in the U.S. in 1992 at age 7, immigrating with her family from Nicaragua. She grew up in Miami, which she says is “a very Latinx space” in a way Nashville isn’t.
Her grad school experiences informed her debut book in complicated ways. That 10-chapter book tackles subjects that have academic roots but have also become common in online discourse, like toxic masculinity, imposter syndrome and intergenerational trauma. But Mojica Rodríguez’s experience at Vanderbilt Divinity — and her frustrations with how exclusive and impenetrable academic writing can be — infuses her prose with a drive to make these topics accessible, understandable and personal.
That same drive led to her start the Instagram page Latina Rebels (@latinarebels) in 2013 — it currently has 209,000 followers. That platform lets her discuss topics like oppression and toxic masculinity in a more digestible medium, aimed at teenage Latinas. The page attracted attention from an editor at HuffPost, who invited Mojica Rodríguez to contribute to the outlet, kicking off a literary career.
While she’s proud of For Brown Girls With Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts, Mojica Rodríguez says she wants to move away from writing that tackles trauma in such a raw way. (“You can hear me crying in parts of the audio book,” she says.) She’s especially wary of the way white audiences consume the stories of the pain and struggles that people of color experience. She wants to pursue an anthology of Nicaraguan writing, a graphic novel and even a cookbook. Whatever’s next, she doesn’t want to compromise who she’s writing for.
“I really have an audience of Latinas who have created my whole career,” she says. “I’ve sold over 55,000 copies of my book in a little over a year. And I don’t think anybody expected it, because I don’t write for white people, [who] are considered the mainstream audience. … I hope that people understand that there is a way to make it without catering to white people. And I hope that I can be an example of that.”
Photographed by Mercedes Zapata
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