This article examines the practices of place-making in 21st-century Latinx romance. In specific locations characters feel safe and connected within a thriving intergenerational social world indissociable from civic engagement rooted in local histories. Through the lens of geographical theories of place-making, I examine the Love & Tacos series by Alana Quintana Albertson, the Vega Family series by Natalie Caña and the Milagro Street series by Angelina M. Lopez, in which gentrification and agroindustry threaten to erase the many historical traces that make places meaningful when culture and context intersect, to argue that the romantic plot is a reclamation story which locates Latinx communities at the heart of urban life and economic activity in the US.
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After Hours on Milagro Street (2022) and Full Moon Over Freedom (2023) by Angelina M. Lopez, Ramón and Julieta (2022), Kiss Me, Mi Amor (2023) and My Fair Señor (2025) by Alana Quintana Albertson and Natalie Caña’s A Proposal They Can’t Refuse (2022), A Dish Best Served Hot (2023) and Sleeping With the Frenemy (2024) depict the experience of MillenniGenZ Latinx men and women who reach a happy ending by resolving the conflict between a quest for self-realisation and a preoccupation with the prosperity of their workplaces and neighbourhoods. (78)
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Latinx romance demonstrates that the friction between Latinidad and mainstream US (white) culture cannot be resolved through a process of integration because individual agency alone will not transform structural racism, sexism or economic exploitation. Thus, two phenomena frame contemporary Latinx romance: the racialisation and criminalisation of Latinx since the first Trump administration and the fictionalisation of the Latinx MillenniGenZ “fight to belong” to an ethnic community rather than American mainstream culture. (79)
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the most oppressive forms of violence in the novels are patriarchal. Be they white, Mexican or Puerto Rican, patriarchs enact an out-moded manhood manifested as machismo (Cowan 2017). Caught between the stereotype of the hypersexed, criminalised “bad hombre” (Canizales & Vallejo 2021, 151) and the “ever-present yet totally absent” (Aldama & Aldama 2020, 3) Latin American family patriarch, the journey of Latinx male characters fashions a different masculinity. The exploration of caregiving and caretaking masculinities may be one answer to the questions: “What will it take for Latinx folx, families, and communities to decolonize toxic/macho masculinities? [...] When will Latinx boys be encouraged to practice ways of being that are ‘strong’ and ‘down’ with a deep politics of caring, compassion, and love for all humans and nonhumans in a world of ever-increasing racist, misogynistic, and homo/transphobic violence(s)?” (Aldama & Aldama 2020, 5). Latinx romance fiction is one step in this direction. (81)
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Couples fall in love in specific places as they simultaneously fall in love with those places, two apparently independent processes that become inseparable emotions elicited by memories and new experiences. Although their love of place may initially differ or indeed conflict, by the end it is shared as the couples join forces to protect communities. So, place is not merely a backdrop to their encounter. (87)
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