On Las Musas and Gender

“A collective of women and non-binary (identifying on the female spectrum) Latinx Picture Book, Middle Grade and Young Adult debut authors. Our mission is to spotlight the new contributions of Las Musas in the evolving canon of children's literature and celebrate the diversity of voice, experience, and power in our communities.”

With this text heading our website, Las Musas wanted to take a moment to clarify our language and our intentions regarding gender in this group. We arrived at this wording after a thoughtful group questioned the ambiguity of our original terminology of “women and nonbinary authors.”  Our current wording still feels imperfect, so we thought it would be best to explain in more detail.

Las Musas was always meant to be a space for Latina authors (cis or trans), who face specific though varied roadblocks and responses from a largely cisgender white patriarchal publishing industry. (While we seek alliance with binary Latinos in publishing, we exist as a unique and separate entity. This in no way disregards the difficulties faced by the Latinx community of all genders, nor the intricate prejudices within the community.)

In our ever growing evolution of understanding, we quickly realized that limiting our collective to binary genders would deny community to Latinx authors who faced similar and in some cases more severe roadblocks. At the same time, we don’t want anyone to be hurt or caught off guard when the group uses language or focuses on experience that center womanhood. 

What this all means is that we do not want to police or gatekeep anyone’s entrance into Las Musas.

If you want to be a Musa, we want you here.

If you feel that your writing career is impacted by your proximity to femininity, we want to uplift your voice.

If you have any questions about this, have a suggestion for how we can word this all more clearly in ten words or less at the top of our website, or want to point out a flaw in our thinking, please reach out so that we can make sure we are achieving our goal of creating a unified and inclusive community. 

xo