Somos Lesbianas: Critical Reflections on Latina/e Lesbian Legacies and Futures

Call for Proposals

Description: Edited by Chicana lesbian Dr. Meagan Solomon, Somos Lesbianas: Critical Reflections on Latina/e¹ Lesbian² Legacies and Futures invites scholarly essays and testimonios that reflect on the activist, literary, and cultural legacies of Latina/e lesbians while also imagining our collective futures in a so-called “post-lesbian” world.³ The first scholarly collection to focus on Latina/e lesbians in over twenty years, Somos Lesbianas will revisit and extend the work of foundational anthologies, including Compañeras: Latina Lesbians edited by Juanita Ramos (Díaz-Cotto) (1987), Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About edited by Carla Trujillo (1991), and Tortilleras: Hispanic and U.S. Latina Lesbian Expression edited by Lourdes Torres and Inmaculada Pertusa (2003). Somos Lesbianas emerges in resistance to intensified political repression of queer, trans, and Latine communities in the United States, necessitating efforts to memorialize Latina/e lesbian existence for generations to come.

Questions: This collection invites scholarly essays and testimonios that meditate on one or more of the following questions: What activist, literary, and cultural legacies have Latina/e lesbians built across generations? How are these legacies archived, lived, and sustained today? What do Latina/e lesbian futures look and feel like? How do these futures resist colonial systems and imagine radical alternatives?

Topics: Submissions may focus on Latina/e lesbian legacies and futures in various contexts, including (but not limited to):

  • Activism and organizing

  • Literature, art, and performance

  • Community archival practices

  • Zines and alternative media

  • Migration and border cultures

  • Digital cultures and transborder networks

  • Lesbian, trans, bisexual, queer/cuir intersections

  • Femme/butch expressions, embodiments, and relations

  • Spirituality and healing

  • Familia, cultures, and kinship

  • Political commitments and global solidarities

Works that center trans, non-binary, Indigenous, Black, Afro-Latina/e, Caribbean, Central American, and/or South American lesbians are especially welcome as these perspectives remain underrepresented in scholarship on Latina/e lesbians. 

Submission: Please send proposals of approximately 250 words and a brief author bio to somoslesbianascollection@gmail.com by March 2, 2026. Full manuscripts will be due in July 2026. Once contributors are determined, the collection will be proposed to presses in early fall 2026. 

Notes:

¹Here, “Latina/e” signifies women and gender-expansive lesbians of Latin American descent based primarily in the US, though it may also encompass those born and based in Latin America. As the boundaries and language of “Latinidad” are vexed by colonialism and anti-Blackness, the term “Latina/e” is employed to account for cultural connections across and through difference, rather than assume a universal or unified identity.

²“Lesbian” includes jotas, marimachas, tortilleras, malfloras, sapataõs, dykes, and more.

³See Lesbian Death: Desire and Danger Between Feminist and Queer (2022) by Mairead Sullivan and the Journal of Lesbian Studies’ special issue, “Is Lesbian Identity Obsolete?” (2022) for recent discourse on the status of “lesbian” and lesbian studies.