{"id":59529,"date":"2025-04-16T10:00:54","date_gmt":"2025-04-16T15:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/?p=59529"},"modified":"2026-01-16T20:10:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T02:10:20","slug":"nicolas-medina-mora-on-america-del-norte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/nicolas-medina-mora-on-america-del-norte\/","title":{"rendered":"Nicol\u00e1s Medina Mora on \u201cAm\u00e9rica del Norte\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sebasti\u00e1n Arteaga y Salazar is the descendant of an elite Mexican family who studies at Yale and then enrolls in an MFA program at the University of Iowa Writers\u2019 Workshop. He\u2019s working on a failed history of Mexico\u2014meaning his own failure to write his book, and the Mexican nation\u2019s failures, especially in relation to the United States. Along the way, \u201cSebas\u201d crosses many borders\u2014between the United States and Mexico, of course, but also between elite and non-elite Mexicans and Latinos in the United States. This is the basic plot of Nicol\u00e1s Medina Mora\u2019s debut novel, Am\u00e9rica del Norte<\/i>, which offers a beautifully written meditation on historical, cultural, and political relationships between the United States and Mexico. Sebas, like Medina, sees the subject of\u00a0Latinidad<\/i>\u00a0from the perspective of a member of the Mexican elite who is more like other elites in the United States than like working class Mexicans and Mexican Americans on either side of the border. On this newest episode of Writing Latinos<\/em>, we talk about all of it, including how Medina wrestles with \u201cLatino\u201d as a concept in a way that makes for great listening!<\/p>\n

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