Not all of us can create our magnum opuses if we live in overcrowded housing — In recent weeks, the theme of solitude has forcibly taken center stage in our lives. Counsel from public health officials around the world has been unwavering: The magnitude of the harm caused by this pandemic will heavily depend on how well people adhere to social distancing protocols. …

For a century, pop culture has valued lighter-skinned Latinx actresses to the detriment of understanding the complexity of Latinidad — In the spring of 1919, California Motion Picture Corporation released the Western film Just Squaw. The star and co-producer of the film was Beatriz Michelena, one of a small number of Latina actresses who were able to achieve success on the silver screen in its nascent years. Michelena starred in…

She’s an icon of Mexican culture, but women have interpreted her differently than those who support our machismo institutions — “When I look at La Virgen de Guadalupe now, she is not the Lupe of my childhood, no longer the one in my grandparents’ house in Tepeyac,” writes Sandra Cisneros in her 1996 essay “Guadalupe the Sex Goddess.” “Nor is she the one of the Roman Catholic Church, the one…

The hormonal imbalances and side effects pushed me into a spiral of shame — “Let me see, mija. Come here,” requested my favorite aunt in a soft voice. I begrudgingly got up from the tile floor where I was lying next to my cousin while we ate mango raspados six inches from a box fan on full blast. It was our preferred way to…

But only if we continue to fund it — Toni Morrison’s speech “The Habit of Art,” included in her book The Source of Self-Regard, references an event originally written about by an unnamed young reporter. It recounts the way that a group of Haitian citizens used theater to undermine the Tonton Macoute, a special operations unit within the Haitian…