CARRIBEAN FRAGOZA

WRITER-CURATOR

Fragoza has been reinventing Latino tropes one project at a time. In her work as an author, editor, journalist and artist, she’s dedicated to telling stories ignored in dominant historical narratives. Just last year, her debut shortstory collection, “Eat the Mouth That Feeds You,” about Latinas navigating a male-dominated world, established Fragoza as an essential new voice in American fiction. But her editing work — at Huizache and at Boom — has been further seeding the landscape with the fruit of emerging Latino writers. Fragoza coedited the radical essay collection “East of East: The Making of Greater El Monte,” which traces more than 300 years in the history of her hometown — where she intends to open a physical art space in the near future as co-director of multidisciplinary collective the South El Monte Arts Posse. But her original work is equally vital, pushing back against machismo across cultures. Poet and activist Vickie Vértiz credits her “dangerous and creative” stories with “challenging the tropes of the virginwhore dichotomy, which is still in so much of our literature and culture in the United States — and that as Mexican Americans we are still struggling with or pushing back against.” — D.P.