This collection of biographical profiles for chapter-book age and early middle-grade readers includes a variety of queer Latine figures both contemporary and historical, across the LGBTQ spectrum (including the indigenous Binni Zaa (Zapotec) gender identity muxeril or muxe). Their contributions range across politics, the arts, sports, activism, and more.
Author Sofía Aguilar includes well-known people like Sylvia Rivera and Ricky Martin as well as ones who may be less familiar to readers in America, such as Mexican revolutionary Amelio Robles Ávila, Zapotec artist Lukas Avendaño, and queer Indigenous Kañari migrant, organizer, poet, and activist Sonia Guin?ansaca.
Each person profiled gets a page of text about their life, including a “fun fact,” and one page showing a bold, colorful image of them by illustrator Dali Valentino. While biographies of this length must naturally be only sketches, each seems to hit enough key points to give readers a sense of the person’s significance and perhaps motivate them to learn more. (One small suggestion is that I would have liked the profile of Ricky Martin to note that he is a father; I think it is important for young queer readers to know that becoming parents is possible for them, should they wish that path.)
Readers should also be aware that the book uses the phrase “born a girl” to refer to the trans man Amelio Robles Ávila. That’s a phrase that some trans people do not like, since they feel they have always been the gender that they know themselves to be. “Assigned female at birth” might have been a better way to put it. (It is unclear from the book, however, whether the phrasing is simply an older one that Ávila, who died in 1984, used himself.)
Overall, though, this is an engaging title that celebrates its subjects’ intersectional identities and should inform and inspire readers.
