I Love Boosters is an absurdist, anti-capitalist film spotlighting the gentrification of San Francisco and the rising cost of living through a girl group of Boosters. Corvette, played by Keke Palmer, is a designer aspiring for mainstream success. Her admiration for luxury fashion drives her to steal from the store of her favorite designer, Christie Smith, the CEO and Founder of Metro Designers. Alongside friends Mariah (Taylour Paige is back on our screens) and Sade (Naomi Ackie), Corvette lifts from the galleria to survive out of the chicken shop she’s squatting in. From Corvette packing clothes in a snowsuit to Mariah holding her breath to pass as white in a retail space, the girls are creative. The film’s gritty mise-en-scène is contrasted with the maximalist fits of The Velvet Gang’s boosters: they clash with an unbending capitalistic world.

Eiza Gonzalez stuns as Violeta, a Metro Designers employee who is radicalized after receiving a shortchanged check. Her Metro Designers manager explains that her MetroDesigners uniform has been deducted from her paycheck. This scene was a throwback to when I worked at Target as a teenager, and we had to buy the mandated red work shirts out of our own paycheck. Only after surviving a year of racing against time and indigestion during my thirty-minute lunch breaks was I gifted two shirts.

We previously know González as reserved physicist Auggie Salazar from Netflix’s adaptation of The Three Body Problem and bank robber Darling in Baby Driver (2017). She’s proving she has range in I Love Boosters as a part-time Reddit sleuth and alt girl.

Violeta spends the film unionizing the other Metro Designers stores and convincing the boosters she’s trustworthy enough to be let in on their plan to take down “the man,” in this case Christie Smith, for abusing factory workers like Jianhu (Poppy Liu) and for stealing Corvette’s suit idea from a fashion competition. Violeta later spins back as a Reddit junkie to explain dialectical materialism – the driving force behind a teleportation device the boosters use to steal Christie’s inventory.

The Significance of the On-Screen Weird Emo Latina

Violeta’s character offers a glimpse of real representation for alternative Latinos, who love an internet deep dive or conspiracy theory rabbit hole. Rather than being eroticized or cast as a one-dimensional love interest, for once, we are given a Latina in a non-conventional and non-stereotypical role. Through Violeta’s aesthetic, we get a glimpse of an unexplored subculture of alternative, emo, or goth Latinos that I often have to go to social media to seek out.

Take artists like Pierce the Veil (the most famous no sabo emo band) and 5to Parke to indie alt artists like Cuco and Princess Nokia, or more popular artists like The Marias, Mon Laferte, Omar Apollo, and so many others who express joyful discordance with a culture that can be restrictively Catholic or conservative at times. Black lipstick, graphic makeup, body piercings, tattoos, and pink and spiky hairstyles are all radical body modifications for our Latino parents. For emo Latinos, these are aesthetic rejections of the Latino monoculture, gender expression, and respectability politics in the home. These looks aren’t from a Pinterest board or Depop curated fashion choices; it’s counter culture. It’s a disengagement from traditional styles like the ranchero aesthetic or the understated, neo-colonial linen dresses.

When we see an alternative Latina aesthetic on screen, it offers an opportunity to destigmatize scene culture. There’s more than one stylistic lane for Latinos besides popular aesthetics like the nostalgic folklorico or 90s Chicano flannels and white tees.

I would be remiss not to mention Jenna Ortega’s Wednesday Adams for breaking the mold of what Latinas could do or look like on screen: a scary, resting bitch face in a supernatural way, not in a Chola way; all black clothes; raro. For a long time, I feared she was the exception and not the rule. Mainly, because I needed a new character reference for people to label my uninviting demeanor besides Wednesday Adams (ee can’t be the only two non-conventional Latinas you know in your life). Enter Violeta.

Violeta’s Missed Opportunity

Yet Violeta appears tertiary to the film’s main events and I’m left wanting more. Her scenes are primarily voiced over by the boosters or involve her ousting by the group until the film’s end. Rather than partaking in the main cast’s shenanigans, she serves as an expository tool to explain dialectical materialism.

Eiza González’s role in I Love Boosters is so rare that it hurts when she’s given less screen time, hence why we have so many charged online conversations on casting. When opportunities for Latinas remain limited, every role is seismic, even supporting roles. Audiences are not only debating who should play Violeta, but they’re also reacting in real time to an industry that still treats Latina performers as interchangeable or disposable, even, despite a wealth of new, young talent: Julissa Calderon, Keyla Monterroso Mejia, Alycia Pascual-Peña, Xóchitl Gomez, Barbie Ferreira, Mishel Prada, Jessica Marie Garcia, etc.

Originally, the role was offered to Melissa Barrera, who was fresh off her firing from the Scream franchise after her vocal support for Palestine. Riley was the first person to offer Barrera a role after she was essentially blackballed for her advocacy work. Although some netizens speculated that Alexa Demie was competing for the role, rumors were quickly put to rest when Riley revealed on Twitter (X) that he had offered Demie a different role.

The issue is less with Boots Riley and more with the lack of acting roles for Latinas in Hollywood. We yearn (yearn!) to see Latinas in three-dimensional roles on screen. And we’re so used to the expectation that they’re not cast due to a scarcity mindset in the industry, that Boots Riley had to come out and clarify three Latinas were not up for the same acting role in his new film.

If anything, I Love Boosters demonstrates what becomes possible when filmmakers imagine Latina characters outside the industry’s usual confines: crazy ex, spicy, exoticized, etc. The frustration is that characters like Violeta remain exceptions rather than fixtures of new releases.

Again, one role does not have to fulfill an obligation to represent Latinas, especially if it’s B character who won’t be as fleshed out. But every time Viola was absent from the screen represented a missed opportunity for character development.

Alexa Demie recently clarified her absence from the screen by telling The Hollywood Reporter that she is choosing to take on fewer roles post-Euphoria and highlighted her need to audition for roles that make an impact, with collaborators like Julio Torres (Fantasmas). That’s a level of precision we do not see from most careers in the digital age, where there’s this need to be seen everywhere and in everything. This approach to her career may have been why she never answered Riley or his casting team: the role is serviceable at times.

Each year, we’re filling over a third of seats in theaters, but only comprising 3% of all on-screen characters in film1. Historically, many of those roles are narco-trafico-related or pass the paper bag test.

Back in February, Odessa A’zion dropped out of the A24 adaptation of the book Deep Cuts after facing online backlash for accepting a role as a white woman playing a half-Mexican character. This prompted 100 Latino actors to sign an open letter to Hollywood stating, “Recent casting decisions around the character Zoe Gutierrez in A24’s ‘Deep Cuts’ have exposed a troubling pattern...We acknowledge and commend Odessa A’zion for listening, reflecting, and deciding to exit the project and become an ally. Yet how did this happen?”

“The absence of Latina audition opportunities, and the choice to replace a clearly Latina character with a non-Latina actress, signals a broader, ongoing erasure of our community from the stories that define our culture. This is not about any one actor or project. It is about a system that repeatedly overlooks qualified Latino talent even as our identities, histories, and experiences fuel the most enduring stories.”

– Open Letter to Hollywood, signees include David Castaneda, Xochitl Gomez, and Becky G

Though Violeta is not the most developed character in I Love Boosters, she’s memorable as a character Latina actresses rarely portray on screen: a radical leftist who’s chronically online, with piercings and bleached eyebrows. She’s a certified weirdo and a Marxist who isn’t tied up in an eroticized stereotype or a romantic lead.

A singular film or role can’t restructure all of Hollywood’s Latina representation, nor should it be expected to. Violeta offers a glimpse into what more equitable roles look like, one where Latinas get to portray quirky, weird characters free from typecasting. Until the representation gap closes, every Violeta will feel equally hopeful and insufficient.

Hollywood, I don’t want to have to rely on social media to see more weird Latinas, the ones with nose rings, finger tats who share with us their eyebrow-raising political theories from TikTok deep dives in their monotone voices. I want to see them on the big screen too.

Today, I sourced a book from scratch. Braving a Long Story Books’ pop-up at Stereo, full of stroller-pushing moms and women carrying weiner dogs in tote bags, only to find that the book sold out within minutes. I drank a lavender soda as a consolation, and then off to the Atlanta Beltline I went, until I found the last copy at their newly installed vending machine. By then, Taylor Sheridan’s sense of pioneer adventure was already within me for this read, because, divas, I was laboring.The book’s reading frenzy comes amid the announcement that Anne Hathaway bought the film rights to Caro Claire Burke’s novel and will be starring in the adaptation. Yesteryear follows a Trad Wife Influencer sent back in time to 1855 and forced to live out the lifestyle she promotes online without the help of producers, ranch hands, or nannies.

If you’re expecting a Trad Wife Influencer to be punished by being sent back to 1855, then this is not the book for you. Or at least that seems to be why so many readers set out to buy this book from the disappointed GoodReads review section. Reader reactions want Natalie Heller Mills to be humiliated by 19th-century domestic labor and put to the task by the Montana frontier. But Burke’s goal here isn’t to dole out punishment to a “bad woman.”

Burke’s novel reacts to a need in the book market to see Trad Wife Influencers fleshed out in text from their appearances on our algorithms or in The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. She’s pulling back the curtain on how gender performance is the real product that Trad Wives Influencers are selling to their followers. Followers who are largely women who have none of the financial literacy their faves do when it comes to $300 charcuterie boards. Burke examines why we, as an audience, are so enamored with the aesthetic.

For many white women, Trad Wifeism is nostalgic of a time period where women could recede from public life into the home, but for Latinas, it’s an inheritance of domestic labor.

For me, it’s a familial cycle I was ready to break out of since I saw my mom wake up at dawn to prepare my dad a freshly-squeezed glass of orange juice before both of their jobs at our family business. It was not tapping into “divine feminine energy,” it was an obstacle to her daily life. I saw her spend many evenings racing to get dinner cooked before my dad came home. The entire mood of the house depended on her getting these chores done to his satisfaction.

Caro Claire Burke’s main character, Natalie Heller Mills, is clearly modeled after the Nara Smith or Hannah Neeleman archetype: a conventionally attractive woman who slings domestic labor and gender performance as aspirational content to millions of followers. The sourdough starter made in couture, perfectly dressed kids, golden hour lighting for b-roll of manicured hands.

But at the heart of the dream is the reality that receding into the home in today’s economy necessitates immense wealth to mask the burden of labor. The privilege to relinquish one’s self into homemaking without financial panic is what followers are responding to. It’s not doing laundry with natural detergents or raising children in isolation. It’s the freedom to opt out of capitalism: rent anxiety, student loan debt, corporate burnout.

As Natalie says in the book, “What I didn’t say to Shannon: disappearing is an expensive magic trick. Did these girls have the funds to pull it off? What I said instead was much simpler: “Go on.”” (Burke, 275).

Trad Wives like my mom labored: preparing each one of my dad’s meals, cutting his hair, deep cleaning the house alone, doing all secretarial tasks for his business. (Before childcare was involved, which included braiding my hair in elaborate styles). Trad Wife Influencers aestheticize that labor to capitalize on economic dread as the middle class narrows. The content is carefully packaged to look like a soft life with endless slow mornings.

The distinction between Trad Wife and Trad Wife Influencer is one we’re supposed to derive for ourselves here. Trad Wives work, but Trad Wife Influencers, well, they do nothing.

This is the driving force behind Rue’s famous Euphoria monologue, “Maddy knew who she was from a very early age… ”For Maddy, a former pageant girl, she was primed for a life of gendered performance, “because you didn’t have to be the prettiest or the tallest or the blondest or the whitest. You just had to have fucking confidence.”

Maddy, like us, isn’t interested in actually being a Trad Wife but in financial independence. “She realized how much she liked not doing anything…” When she studies the women who come into her mom’s salon, it’s not because they’re the best at making sourdough starter, it’s because “none of them actually did anything.”

Who gets to be a Trad Wife?

As a culture, we’re so intrigued by the role of the Trad Wife, because it’s one that historically wealthy white women have always performed. In Angela Davis’ 1981 essay Women, Race and Class, she argues that the “housewife” was never a reality but simply a class symbol exploiting the labor of Black women, low-income women, and immigrant women of color working inside suburban homes. Trad Wife Influencers are just the latest response to the collapse of the middle class by repackaging that era as an escape. But nostalgia for the “good old days” ignores who made that dream possible.

Perhaps this is why we find Nara Smith’s success an interesting subversion of who we expect to be a Trad Wife Influencer. Nara Smith, as a Biracial Black woman, has aesthetically achieved what was previously denied to Black women. Again, the “privilege” to be a Trad Wife is what followers gravitate towards.

Latina Trad Wives: Not Too Far in the Rearview Mirror

Latina Trad Wives also provide another lens to this. Their pink Hello Kitty kitchens and “cooking my man’s lonche at 5 am” captions do not communicate the same polished sterility as mainstream Trad Wives. Their aesthetic is less rooted in wealth, but in supporting their blue-collar husbands, recognizable to any of us who saw our mothers and grandmothers do the same each morning growing up.

Unlike affluent white trad-wife influencers choosing to abandon corporate ambition or forego Ivy League education, Latina trad-wife content documents routines many of us already inherited. For Latina women, this is not a subversive choice or a glamorous alternative; it is simply what we’ve watched generations of women do.

Influencers like Jennifer Mendoza film themselves waking before sunrise with their hair in chongos, warming tortillas on the comal, throwing jamón onto the stove, brewing coffee, and warming up their husband’s car before work.

What’s more interesting to me is how differently Latinas interpret this trad wifeism as a neotraditional aesthetic. Some Latina Trad Wife Influencers view it through a traditional lens as their “role” to stay home and cook and childrear. They’re “supporting their man,” but would a dual-income household support him further?

Other Latina Trad Wives view it as cultural participation in addition to working their 9-to-5. @alexamariesa on TikTok frequently captions her videos, “cook with me after my 9-5 as a Latina corporate girly and wife.” Alexa says in one video, “At the end of the day, it’s not about who cooks or cleans, it’s about a partnership, if you know what I mean.”

Ironically, both have content that looks virtually the same: cooking traditional meals, wooden kitchen tools, and tidying up montages. “Choice feminism” reframes this labor as empowerment and masks the burden, even if lovingly chosen.

The work we saw men do ended after eight or ten hours. The work we saw our mothers and abuelas do never ends: desayuno, lonche, cena, wiping mocos, preparing backpacks, folding laundry late into the night after returning from work themselves.

That is the artifice of patriarchy: to convince women that fulfillment is in endless domestic chores.

Disinheriting Domestic Labor

For me, marriage and servitude to a man have felt like a generational trap. Cinderella, Ariel, and Belle could never convince me that marriage was inherently romantic. My abuela in her pueblo, Juchitán, gave birth to twelve of my abuelo’s children after “se la robaron.” When I ask her about her marriage story, all she says is, “No tenía un vestido blanco.”

Before marriage, she was a maid for a Spanish family, preparing meals for the family and caring for their children. There was never a life she didn’t know outside of survival or caregiving to others. Like many Juchitecas, she received no formal education. If she had a dream, she never told us, or could never visualize one for herself.

My mother would also go on to work for the same Spanish family before immigrating to Santa Barbara, California, in her twenties. She would go on to marry my father and spend years restructuring her life around his, but when she finally divorced after years of cohabitation, there was little infrastructure to support her.

She had to return to the job market, in one of the most vulnerable positions: an immigrant woman of color with limited job experience. She began her long uphill battle, working odd jobs before obtaining her GED, and eventually settling into office work in her 50s. Through the work of therapy, she unwove the narrative she grew up with: a woman must endure to build a happy home.

Generations of women before me have suffered in the position of wife and mother without autonomy. So when I see a perfectly lit shot of a loaf of bread on the windowsill, it feels more like The Yellow Wallpaper than a righteous return to gender roles.

What’s not being filmed: the risk of being a Trad Wife.

I want to spend my 20s single in my own apartment, making mistakes, building a career, and having as much sex as possible. I want to feel my frontal lobe seal in place without children asking for fruit snacks, that’s empowering to me, therapeutic even.

Sure, corporate life can suck, but I can always get another job, another degree. An independent bank account will never put me in the same position as being at the whim of a husband who is the sole provider for the household.

Trad Wife content is frozen in time for the perfect scenario: a home-owning family with two elementary-aged kids in a stable economy where the husband goes to work, and the wife stays at home. And when the kids leave the home? Or the husband cheats? Is baking from scratch or prepping masa for tortillas enough? What happens to the Trad Wife in her fifties who’s never paid into social security income if her husband leaves her?

Disinheriting domestic labor as a life path feels much more subversive than bowing out of corporate life. After watching countless women invest their lives into the role of mother and housewife, I’m turning the energy to me and my ambitions, that’s a path I know I can never regret.

This first edition spotlights some of my favorite entertainment & culture pieces. Here you will find a review on Wicked that draws connections between Elphaba and American exceptionalism, a review on I Love LA steeped in LA’s literary past, and a linguistic history lesson that contextualizes the significance of DTMF’s Grammy win. In these pieces, these writers seek out the personal, political, and profound in pop culture. Give them a read!

✧ where are all the Latinos in I Love LA?

by CynWrites

CynWrites

where are all the Latinos in I Love LA?

I Love LA is Rachel Sennott’s brainchild, drawing from the lineage of women-led coming-of-age comedies like Sex and the City, Girls, Broad City, and Insecure. But unlike SATC or Insecure, this show’s satirical target is a very specific ecosystem: the privileged, hyper-individualistic cluster of star-fuckers, industry nepo babies, and aspirational creati…

Read more

6 months ago · 10 likes · CynWrites

✧No One Mourns the Wicked, Especially if They’re “Bad Immigrants”

On perpetuating harmful binaries, divesting from “goodness” & solidarity

by How To Survive Your Flop Era

How To Survive Your Flop Era

No One Mourns the Wicked, Especially if They're "Bad Immigrants"

This post will contain spoiler adjacent content so if you aren’t into that, feel free to skip <3…

Read more

a year ago · 7 likes · 2 comments · How To Survive Your Flop Era

✧ *** Chuckles in Caribbean Spanish***

by Jennifer Mota

Jennifer Mota

*** Chuckles in Caribbean Spanish***

"Los Dominicanos y Boricuas no saben cómo hablar" (which translates to "Dominicans and Puerto Ricans don't know how to speak") are piercing words that traditionally stand not as a mere opinion or statement, but as a fact. We are told that the way we speak our colonizer's tongue is incorrect, improper, and distorted, and that it has no space in corporate…

Read more

4 months ago · 3 likes · 2 comments · Jennifer Mota

✧✏✧,

Dayna

Sub280~

✶ Maddy Perez Edition: We all know she’s the real reason we’re tuning into this last season of Euphoria. In 280 words or less, write an alternative Maddy Perez scene or storyline.

Non-Fiction~

Seeking the following that center Latine perspectives...

✶ Essays on divorce, tradwives and/or reviews on the books Yesteryear or Strangers 

✶ In honor of the 2026 Broadway revival of The Rocky Horror Show at Studio 54 featuring Harvey Guillén (as Dr. Scott/Eddie) and Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, personal essays on The Rocky Horror Picture Show and/or the Broadway show.

Submit here.

Guidelines

✶ Sub280 must not exceed 280 words.

✶ Non-fiction submission must not exceed 1,500 words.

✶ Please do not submit work that has been previously published.

✶ We’re cool with simultaneous submissions but please let us know if your work is accepted elsewhere.

✶ No AI generated work (obvi)

Formatting

✶ Standard (12 pt font, double spaced, pdf or word)

✶ Title should include genre (Fiction_This Story is Fire).

Rights

We ask for first serial rights and the right to archive your piece on our website. All rights revert to you upon publication. If your piece is reprinted elsewhere, we’d love an acknowledgment of SubeStack as the original publisher.

Welcome to SubeStack’s Last Supper Series where we ask our amiguis to assemble their dream table of 12 guests and curate the vibes.

This idea was inspired by this dream Shoe Palace holiday campaign that captured the essence of a Last Supper.

Our first one features Julissa Arce, guest judge for our first PALABRAS prize and one of the OGs providing her editorial guidance to SubeStack. When I read her first answer, I clutched my rosary, but it all made sense by the end. Check out her responses below

Julissa Arce’s Last Supper

Who is at your table?

△ Yolanda Saldivar- every last supper needs a Judas.

△ Cantinflas- I loved watching his movies with my dad when I was growing up. He’d be great comedic relief.

△ Bad Bunny- he needs to be there. I want to ask him so many questions about his politics, and how he’s navigated being so outspoken without being afraid of losing his star, or not caring if he did.

△ La Malinche- I want her to set the record straight. What really happened? Was she a traitor, or just a survivor?

△ My great grandmother Luisa- I met her when I was a child, but she passed when I was young, and I’d love to ask her about her life. She was remarried by the time I was born, and in those days that was very scandalous, but I think it was brave. I’d want to ask her about my mom’s biological grandfather and what led to her second love story.

△ Jovita Idar Vivero- She’s such an unsung heroine. She was a journalist and activist in the early 1900s, at a time when women couldn’t even vote. I’d learn so much from her.

△ Gregg Popovich- he’s honorary. I’m a big Spurs fan, and I’ve become an even bigger Coach Pop fan as he’s used his platform to stand up to injustice. It’s rare to see that in an NBA coach, and he’s been doing it for a long time.

△ The Totonac Vanilla Princess- few people know this (I didn’t until my friend Reyna told me about it) but vanilla is native to Mexico. The Totonacs, from present-day Veracruz, were the first to cultivate it. There’s a legend about a Totonac demi-goddess princess who became the vanilla vine to be with her human lover. I’d like to meet her.

△ My friend Jazmin (and her husband, Carlos)- She has the wildest takes! And Carlos likes to add to the fire. But they both really challenge my thinking. We have the best conversations, and the dinner would just be so much more interesting with their insights.

△ My husband, Fernando- this is going to sound cheesy, but yes, I’d want my husband to be there. He’s quiet, but when you least expect it, he says something so incredibly smart, or so incredibly funny. Either way, it makes for a great time.

△ And I’d be the 12^th guest.

There is no Jesus at our dinner. No one dies and no one is there to save us.

What is the dinner conversation?

The main topic of conversation would be how we lead a revolution.

Set the scene for us. What are you eating? What’s the decor? What’s on the AUX?

This is a three-course dinner with candles, and fragrant, colorful flowers. I imagine some people don’t eat meat, so we’re having a Japanese inspired menu with sushi and also Kobe beef for those that want. The wine worthy of the presence of our demi-goddess. Everyone is wearing whatever they want. Shorts, or a gown.

Our playlist is totally eclectic. Selena, Pink Floyd, Yo-Yo Ma, the La La Land score (I know, ugh), Jose Alfredo Jiminez and Joan Sebastian. The Buena Vista Social Club and Aventura. Celia. Willie Colón and all the boleros.

Who becomes unexpected friends?

I think the princess and Yolanda become friends. Maybe she can offer some redemption.

At my dinners I always like to go around the table and for people to say one thing they are grateful for and one thing they hope for—we’d do the same.

Fast forward two decades later and here I am deciding to start another one, except this time on Substack.

The intent was simple; to create an online collective, a hub for Latine writers, creators, and readers at the intersection of storytelling, pop culture, literature through the lens of contemporary Latine identities.

In a world where pop stars run book clubs, actors battle over rights to stories they want to adapt, and where high fashion brands convene influencers for literary moments, the distinctions between industries and genres are becoming increasingly blurred.

As an entertainment executive, pop culture enthusiast, former social scientist, writer, and Latina lit girl, it only seemed natural than to create a space for literature and culture to converge under the umbrella of storytelling. So why not our perspectives and stories at the center of it. We’ve always been privy to what Benito unveiled to the rest of the world, qué rico es ser Latino, but not until of late has the rest of the world caught on.

Enter SubeStack, the coolest place for Latine stories and POVs on culture on Substack.

Outside of curating this publication, I’m a mom (aka Sad Mami on Substack) and work in entertainment. I’ve previously participated in Voices of Our Nation (VONA), Tin House, and Kenyon Summer Workshop and have had my words featured in PANK, The Seventh Wave, Gulf Coast, and The Masters Review. I currently serve on the associates’ board of 826LA, a youth creative writing program, and previously served as a non-fiction reader for The Rumpus. In between my day job, tee ball practice, and planning for Coachella, I’m also working on a story collection and novel. A third gen Angelena, I reside in LA with my family.

Estoy muy excited to curate content and build this collective alongside you.

hasta la raiz,

Dayna

As part of SubeStack’s launch, we are excited to announce: PALABRAS: a fiction & essay prize.

Winning submission in each category will receive:

✶ $375 and publication on SubeStack

✶ A consultation with Literary Agent Amanda Orozco from Transatlantic Agency

✶ 1-year subscription

✶ Copies of books from each judge

Second and third runners up for each category will receive:

✶ $100/$75

✶ 1-year subscription

✶ Written feedback from the editorial committee

✶ Copies of books from each judge

✶ All submissions will be considered for publication.

Our Judges

Natalie Guerrero (Fiction)

Natalie Guerrero is a writer from New York. Her debut novel, My Train Leaves at Three (One World, 2025), was named as a finalist for the 2025 California Book Award in First Fiction and is shortlisted for the REFORMA National Book Award in Fiction. Her writing has appeared in Electric Literature, Literary Hub, Byline, and Goop, among other publications.

She writes “Books Are For People” a Substack newsletter about people and the books that built them.

Julissa Arce (Non-fiction)

Julissa Arce is a bestselling author, sought-after speaker, producer, and public thinker whose writing interrogates the myths of the American Dream and the cost of assimilation. Her acclaimed books, including My (Underground) American Dream, Someone Like Me, and You Sound Like a White Girl, blend memoir, social critique, and cultural analysis to reframe conversations around immigration, identity, and what it means to truly belong.

Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, TIME Magazine, CNBC, Vogue, and BuzzFeed News. Julissa’s storytelling and advocacy have earned her recognition as one of People en Español’s 25 Most Powerful Women of 2017 and 2022, and she was honored as the 2019 Woman of the Year by the City of Los Angeles.

She writes the Substack “La Historia Uncovered” that highlights the stories, news, history that’s been overlooked.

How to Submit

To create a model that allows us to both pay writers while keeping all work free to be discovered (and without a paywall), specific submission opportunities (like contests) are exclusive to paying subscribers. We will also offer open calls for non-paying subscribers as well.

This opportunity is open to all including free subscribers. Submit here.

Guidelines

✶ Deadline is May 30

✶ Fiction submissions must not exceed 4,500 words in length.

✶ Non-fiction submission must not exceed 1,500 words.

✶ Please do not submit work that has been previously published.

✶ Multiple submissions in the same category are not allowed. However, you may submit one entry in fiction and another in non-fiction. We invite you to submit again once you’ve heard from us.

✶ We’re cool with simultaneous submissions but please let us know if your work is accepted elsewhere.

✶ No AI generated work (obvi)

Formatting

✶ Standard (12 pt font, double spaced, pdf or word)

✶ Please do not include your name on your submission.

✶ Title should include genre (Fiction_This Story is Fire).

Rights

We ask for first serial rights and the right to archive your piece on our website. All rights revert to you upon publication. If your piece is reprinted elsewhere, we’d love an acknowledgment of SubeStack as the original publisher.

Questions? Hit us up at sube@subemag.com

What We’re Looking For:

✶ Personal essays or cultural critiques that position Latine perspectives in the center of the zeitgeist. Sharp, insightful, and fresh pieces that move between the personal, political and pop cultural, drawing unexpected through lines between seemingly disparate ideas.

✶ Fiction with drippy (or quippy) prose, unforgettable characters, and storylines that A24 would (or should) die for.

We are seeking writing in the vein of…..

A non-exhaustive list of other authors we fan girl over (in addition to our judges): Alejandro Varela, Alejandro Heredia, Edgar Gomez, Erika Sanchez, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Jared Lemus, John Manuel Arias, John Paul Brammer, Justin Torres, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, Marlowe Granados, Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Naima Coster, Ruben Reyes Jr., Sandra Cisneros, and Xochitl Gonzalez.

You can also revisit more details in our introduction.

We are a culture + literary publication highlighting distinctive Latine voices at the intersection of pop culture, art, politics, and diaspora. SUBE is for anyone craving cool, 3D content from Latine creators that pushes beyond the borders of traditional media, entertainment & publishing.

That all sounds so serious but imagine us as the online version of Benito’s Casita.

Picture this as a place you can read or contribute:

• Personal essays or cultural critiques that position Latine perspectives in the center of the zeitgeist. Sharp, insightful, and fresh pieces that move between the personal, political and pop cultural, drawing unexpected through lines between seemingly disparate ideas.

• Fiction with drippy (or quippy) prose, unforgettable characters, and storylines that A24 would (or should) die for.

• Group chat conversation starters that solicit your hot takes and creative opinions.

We are here to curate content that expands our collective imagination of the Latine experience, interrogating the status quo with clarity, style, nuance, and a dash of levity.

What to Expect

Estacked: Round-ups of writing by Latine creators on Substack we think you should know

Fiction/Essays: Short stories, personal essays + hybrid work

Culture & Community Chat: Interviews, culture reviews and recs, interactive chats, hot takes, etc.

What We Publish

We’re interested in narratives that move beyond the literal and the expected, nostalgic, but not sentimental; familiar, but not flat as a tortilla. If we revisit familiar symbols (chanclas, abuelitas, no sabo kids, ni aquí ni allá), we do so with a twist, something we haven’t heard before.

We highlight work that engages directly with identity and culture, and we also make space for Latine creators whose presence in the conversation is itself expansive: tastemakers, thinkers, and experts shaping culture, whether or not identity is the subject at hand.

We publish essays, fiction, culture reviews, etc. from creators equally comfortable discussing pop culture, media & entertainment, fashion, critical race and/or feminist theory, and literature.

Our goal is not to define Latinidad, but to stretch it.

We’re here to highlight the next generation of Latine cultural voices.

The Deets

Our aim is to keep all written work free as we don’t want a paywall to keep you from discovering your next favorite writer or creator. We also intend to compensate writers. To support this, we will create submission opportunities specifically for paid subscribers.

Monthly & Annual Subscribers have the opportunity to be part of the Sube community via comments & chat function in addition to muy especial opportunities like workshops, curation opps, etc.

Our Vibe

If you want a sense of our vibe, check out some examples of writing we admire on this platform. We aspire to publish work in this vein.

READING SUCKS with mlo by Melissa Lozada-Oliva Lena Dunham’s Apologies (and mine)

Overlocked: I saw the best mind of my generation destroyed by a private school boy

Touch Her And Die! by Haili Bassingame: why are we so obsessed with white women’s marriages???

Mish Mashy by Danya Issawi: Looksmaxxing at the end of the world

Got an idea for us? Want to collab? Hit us up at sube@subemag.com

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