Latinx Heritage in Horror: Interview with B.F. Vega
My name is Beulah Vega (she/her), but I write and am listed as a member of the HWA under B.F. Vega. I am both a first-generation American and a descendant of some of the first colonists. My father was an undocumented worker from a small town in Mexico, and he met my mother (who had ancestors on the Mayflower) while they were both migrant workers. I am, of course, mixed race, and I think that’s important to focus on these days. There are so many of us, Mixt, and we rarely get the recognition or belonging that ‘pure’ blood does. My identity as a Mixt and Latine woman is heavily featured in my characters and stories, and all of my horror has that element of being the ‘other’ to them, no matter what genre of horror I am writing (I have had stories published in multiple genres. The only thing I don’t really write is transgressive.) One of the best examples of this was my story printed by Black Ink Fiction for their Trevor Project fundraiser (Over the Rainbow; dark fairy tales: https://www.blackinkfiction.com/books) titled “The Feathered One.” Another great example would be my short story “Pala Hardware” (and character creation) for the online video game Los Suelos which is a horror game/fundraiser for California farm and migrant workers (https://lossuelos.com/pala-hardware/).
What inspired you to start writing?
I’m not sure any one thing inspired me. I have always turned to books when I was trying to find my way through something or as a comfort when things get hard. Writing is a natural progression from reading, and as I got older and better at it, I realized that I could write for other people who needed that comfort and direction (only don’t actually ask me for actual directions, I only know the way to the local bookstore, shoe store, and bakery).
What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it?
Destiny. I share a birthday with Bram Stoker; so obviously, it was required that I become a writer of the gothic and the macabre. In fact, I thank god every day I wasn’t born on January 12 (Jack London) or, even worse, Feb 2 (Ayn Rand)!
Seriously though, horror is a great way to speak about deep truths that otherwise will get ignored or lost. I once heard a writer say that “Horror is the search for the transgressive,” and at first, I disagreed, but the more I think about it, they were absolutely right. In our society, where children are allowed to starve to death in cages and people are shot on the sidewalk because of the color of their skin, actual transgressiveness is revolution, inclusion, and compassion. Horror lets us look at society through extremes to see more clearly what is around us and how to change it (or how to cook a capitalist into a tasty pie if necessary (Turkey gravy, capers, celery, carrots, and white wine btw, Capitalists are white meat (in more ways than one))). It is a freeing, non-judgemental format to look at our own innate fears and to examine our own biases, mores, and prejudice. Plus, it’s really fun!
Do you make a conscious effort to include LatinX characters and themes in your writing and if so, what do you want to portray?
Yes. I want to portray that we are real and normal people who are just as likely to make it to the end of a summer camp slasher as the Caucasian virgin. Seriously though, one of the things I really focus on is Mixt characters. Being Mixt is in and of itself an othering experience, let alone adding any of the things society others us about (neurodivergence, sexuality, gender, class, etc..) Since so many of my characters are Mixt they don’t fit into a lot of the normal horror tropes. When both your sets of grandparents tell you that you don’t belong and never will be, then turning into a werewolf and eating them is no big. Horror allows me to show Mixt people as a non-monolithic community that is full of diversity and usually left out of things. We aren’t even tokenized because nobody sees us enough to think of it (not a please tokenize us, just an observation). So in my worlds all those things that other us (and I mean all the otherness) become strengths and assets for both the antagonists and protagonists. An important point, though, is that you will never see barrio or trauma porn in my work. I hate it with a passion. Latine people exist in those circumstances, yes, but we also exist on college campuses, on fishing boats, in the middle of Nebraska (if that’s a real place which I am not convinced of), and yes, at summer camp.
What has writing horror taught you about the world and yourself?
Honestly, that writing horror makes you a nicer person. In another life under another name, I am a poet (I have published quite a bit, including a book of poetry). I have also been an active theater artist for almost forty years and both of those art forms come with a lot of pretention, gatekeeping, and judgment from peer to peer. I’m not in any way saying that the horror community is perfect (see above about how no community is a monolith), but overall, horror writers tend to be more open to the idea of allowing people just to exist. Whether or not that is because we work through fear and trauma in our work, whether we understand being outsiders, or whether we are studying you for our next story/book might be debatable but the outcome is the same.
How have you seen the horror genre change over the years? And how do you think it will continue to evolve?
You can definitely feel the shift over what worries us as people in our genre. Horror has always been the canary in the coal mine of cultural unease, and that hasn’t changed. But, our cultural, moral compass has shifted, and now the horror is less divine in the ‘God is punishing us’ way of the Exorcist or “life is bleak, and then we die” gothic, or even ‘don’t have sex and you’ll survive the machete’ of the slasher and more about the earth itself rising against us. Our fears have manifested in folk horror, where we examine what we humans have put our land through and the worry of what the consequences of that will be.
We also see more generational horror. I know that someone is going to argue that we have always had generational horror, and that is true. But what we haven’t had are true depictions of the messy interracial/interethnic/interreligious/etc.… branches of what an average American family really looks like. Horror is finally folding in all the rich heritage that we used to exploit (like Voudon or Skinwalkers, or any other religious item appropriated for a bad 80’s schlockfest (nothing against schlockfests, just against appropriation)) And allowing those of us with these backgrounds to tell our own stories of them. I use Aztec gods a lot in my stories, not because it’s ‘novel’ but because I am interested in exploring how those vestiges of my ancestor’s pre-colonial world influence my fears and my hopes even now, and I am seeing a lot more authors doing that.
How do you feel the LatinX community has been represented thus far in the genre and what hopes do you have for representation in the genre going forward?
The easiest way to answer this is with a story: So, I had a friend once ask me why I write horror and I said a lot of what I said above about looking into generational fear etc… and he responded, “But you only really have La Llorona right?” (Two guesses about what color this friend was.)
Another Melanin-challenged person once asked why all LatinX writers had creepy magical elements in their work. (magical realism, he was referring to magical realism.)
The Latine community in the U.S. has been smooshed into a box labeled “The Magical Barrio haunted by the crying woman who kills kids.” This is dumb for many reasons but the most obvious is that we are a hugely diverse populace that comes in every color and speak, between us, literally hundreds of languages.
This is changing, though. There are so many authors now like Silvia Moreno-Gracia, V. Castro, and Carmen Machado (plus way too many more to mention, but they are there, I promise!) who are really looking at where the global majority fits into literature and culture and are working to normalize telling our own stories. Most importantly, they are telling our stories with and without making them into huge socio-economic statements because, again, we exist as full human beings.
Even better is the amount of kids/Mg/YA authors working to tell these stories (Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas is amazing, There’s also Ghost Squad by Claribel Ortega plus so many more!). The Catholics have a saying, “give us a child until they are seven and we will have them for life,” Which sounds really sinister written out (okay, yeah, it’s sinister), but the point is that we get indoctrinated young. If we don’t see ourselves in our fiction, if we never see our stories being given equal weight as other cultures’ stories, then we have a much harder time feeling integrated into our society, and our society has a harder time understanding and accepting us.
Oh, p.s. About that magical realism thing…Gabriel Garcia Marquez once said that magical realism was nothing more than “That’s how life is in Latin America.” It’s part of our culture, which seems weird or horrific if you haven’t been exposed to it but isn’t (Which is why we need more Latine stories!). Magical realism isn’t inherently horror or fantasy any more than a story about nuns working in a church would be. (Or you know American politics…no, I take that back; American politics is inherently both horror and fantasy)
Who are some of your favorite LatinX characters in horror?
I’m not sure I can answer this question. I’ll cheat and talk about horror films because then I can say every single character in Devil’s Backbone, which is a masterpiece of an unsettling ghost story. However, if anyone wants to chime in with who your favorite Mixt characters are, that would be amazing; I’m looking for more!
Who are some LatinX horror authors you recommend our audience check out?
So many! Aiden Thomas Cemetery Boys of course, V. Castro Mestiza Blood, Charlie Vazquez Fantasmas, Cina Pelayo’s Loteria. Also, read all the authors being interviewed for this. (Not just because I am one) There are so many authors, so many perspectives out there that you never know who will surprise you by becoming your new favorite.
What is one piece of advice you would give horror authors today?
Everyone is going to tell you “read,” so since that’s covered. My advice is to find other writers to be around (all types of writers). Go to conventions and workshops, and find a writing group. Grow your network of colleagues. It will help you accomplish whatever you have set out to accomplish in the industry.
And to the LatinX writers out there who are just getting started, what advice would you give them?
Don’t feel like you have to speak for all of us; we are not a monolith, and you don’t have to be our mouthpiece, so you can just tell the story you want to tell. That being said, do seek out other Latine/Mixt authors. The first time I really connected with a Mixt writer, my work got better almost instantly just from the permission it gave me to write what I wanted (because I didn’t have to explain myself to them). Find community; it is the bases for all writing. I promise there are like-minded people out there, and it might be scary to put yourself out there to look for them, but hey, all forms of fear are good inspiration: we are horror writers after all.
