I recently read Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes’s Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora, which discusses the work of Erika Lopez, a writer whom I had never heard of before. His description of Lopez’s work intrigued me because it involves a character who is a half Puerto Rican, half German Quaker. This hybrid identity is quite close to my Puerto Rican Mennonite one, as my mother’s ancestors came to Pennsylvania from Krefeld, Germany in 1710 and Mennonites are, along with Quakers, one of the historic peace churches. While I have read Mennonite texts depicting characters similar to me because of their queerness (most notably Stephen Beachy’s boneyard), I have never read a text that combines my queer and German identities with my Puerto Rican one, so I am quite excited to read Lopez’s work. I bought the three volumes of her Trilogy of Tomatoes from amazon.com’s network of independent booksellers as an introduction to her oeuvre.
Lopez, Erika. Flaming Iguanas: An Illustrated All-Girl Road Novel Thing. New York: Simon & Schuster Editions, 1997.
—. Hoochie Mama: The Other White Meat. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.
—. They Call Me Mad Dog! A Story for Bitter, Lonely People. New York: Simon & Schuster Editions, 1998.
Daniel Shank Cruz 