How To Write Latinx/Hispanic characters (And How Not To)

fiama-l-hernandez:

Okay, so you wake up one day and decide you want to include a Hispanic/Latinx character. That’s great, I’m always up to seeing more diversity everywhere! That being said writing a culture that’s different than our own can be very challenging sometimes and thus here I am with this post pointing out the more general things. There is so much diversity within the Latinx/Hispanic community I could in no way really cover how to write all of us. 

How To Refer To Us

Okay, let’s start out with the basics. 

Let’s get one thing clear. We’re not Spanish. We speak Spanish, of course. Colonization will do that. But we are in no way Spanish. Spanish people are from Spain, European and very much not from Central or South America. Of course, there are dozens of different countries within Latin America but as a whole, we are all Latinx/Hispanic.

There is sometimes a bit of confusion as to how to refer to us, and really it depends on the person. 

Hispanic is the one I most commonly use to describe myself because it’s very gender neutral and I just like the way it sounds. 

Latinx is the one that causes a bit more confusion. Latino is the singular used when referring to males. Latina is used as the female singular. Now the way Spanish works, the masculine singular is also as plural to refer to everyone both male and female as a whole. They are Latino, for example. Latinx is a more gender-neutral usage that refers to males, females and any nonbinary or genderfluid people. It’s not all that common to use in actual dialect as it is online though. At the end of the day, it depends on a persons preference. 

Diversity within Latin America

Did you guys know that there are 33 Latinx/Hispanic countries? Because sometimes I’m convinced people think that after the US, there’s Mexico. And just that.

Nope.

Please for the love of god stop making everyone Mexican. We’re not. I mean I am but that’s beside the point (I’m also Costa Rican and would love to see a Costa Rican character out there *hint hint*) Very often we’re all mushed together and it just doesn’t make sense because every single country has its own diverse culture, slang, and lifestyle. 

An important thing to note is that we don’t all share the same slang. Or food. 

For example, in Costa Rica we say “Mae”. It’s the equivalent of “Dude” in English (though more gender neutral like Dude is in New York. In Venezuela, they say Chamo/Chama. I’m pretty sure there are 31 other variations. If including spanish speech is absolutely necessary, DO YOUR RESEARCH. If I hear one more Columbian character speak using Mexican slang…

In other news, we don’t all eat Burritos. Didya know that’s actually texmex? 

Food will vary depending on the region. Sometimes Enchiladas in Mexico are different than Enchiladas in El Salvador. In Costa Rica Tostadas is just toast. In Mexico, Tostadas are my joy and happiness. 

Another example, In Mexico they eat a lot of tortillas. In Costa Rica we eat rice with EVERYTHING. Apparently throwing rice into soup is not a normal thing everyone does. Who knew? I do actually because I researched!

Now we move onto the physical description. We can be tall, we can be short. We can have brown skin, we can have extremely fair skin. Diversity is among us. Also, families can be literal rainbows. In my direct family of four people, none of us share the same skin color. My dad has brown skin, my sister is more of a dark sandy color, my mom has an olive color to her, and depending on how healthy I am I’m either olive or pale in that way that makes you wonder whether you’re looking at a corpse. 

We can be naturally blonde too by the way. I’m not. But a lot of Hispanic/Latinx people are naturally blonde. Some people have blue eyes. My dad has some really nice green eyes I, unfortunately, did not inherit (I did spend the first month of my life with gray eyes though!) Afro-Latino people also exist! Asian-Latino people do as well! There is so much diversity among us! You have no excuse for making us look all the same. 

How Bilingual People Really Speak

If you do include Spanish within your WIP chances are your character is Bilingual. There are some… odd interpretations of how bilingual people out there speak. They make me go WTF sometimes. (Or most times really)

At the end of the day it really depends on the person, but here are a few things that really stand out:

Bilingual people are not gonna speak half English half Spanish to someone who we know won’t understand us. Especially not if we live in the good ol USA. Racism is a thing and chances are if we speak a half Spanish half English sentence we are going to have confused people, and we will probably be mocked. Now if your character is speaking to a friend or family member they might mix a bit of one language with the other, but there’s not going to be a seamless mix of both because it gets confusing very fast. I can either count in Spanish, or in English. I will have an aneurysm if I attempt to do it in both.

Also the whole “I forgot to switch back” thing is just weird, please don’t. 

Here’s a quick list of things we actually do as bilingual people. 

• Accidentally translate a saying or phrase into a different language and watch confusing settle in others’ faces as they try to figure out who the fuck says that
• Try to say a word in one language but you only remember the word for it in spanish so you just sit there trying to find the correct word, while your friends start suggesting words in hope that you guys can move on with the convo.
• Making up “Spanglish” words and then realize they don’t actually exist (I’m still salty with my mom for telling me “Mopear” was a word. Apparently that is not how you say “To Mop” in spanish) 
  
• Try to apply the grammar structure of one language into the other and confuse the fuck out of yourself and everyone else. 
• Use a word in one language that seems similar to this word in another language and then find out they’re a different thing. (Embarazada does not mean Embarrassed guys. I found that out the hard way) 

That’s it for now!

There are probably a lot of topics I have not covered here, and I cannot speak for everyone, so I did make this post to cover the more general aspects of things, but if you have any more questions don’t hesitate to pop into my Ask box! Happy writing guys!