The state of contemporary Latino literature

The state of contemporary Latino literature

What is the state of contemporary Latino literature?  Sad to say that I'm not entirely sure.  It is MUCH better than it used to be, but it's still a long way off from what it should be.  Contemporary black/African-American literature was at this same point several years ago when agents and publishers didn't take the work of (new) black writers seriously.  I mean, let's face it, for the publishing industry it's mostly about the bottom line.  They're a business and they need to make money.  For a long time, the publishing industry didn't see black writing as financially worth the trouble.  Then, when black readers turned to books written by black authors that were forced to seek alternative forms of publication, traditional publishing houses took a second look and started wooing the same black writers that they had largely heretofore ignored.  This spawned not only several new genres of writing, but also ignited a kind of renaissance of contemporary black writing.  Still, those same writers are hampered by the narrow and somewhat racist view that the publishing industry has of black writing and writers.  The success, financially and critically, of many of the books written by contemporary black writers has had the effect of having many agents and publishers pigeon-holing them into only those genres they helped create.  For many black writers trying to break into the industry by becoming traditionally published writers, if they write outside of the expected or accepted genres, their work is often rejected, misinterpreted, misunderstood, or if it does get published, it doesn't receive the promotion or categorization it deserves.  Case in point: an African-American woman writes a cookbook, but when she goes to a bookstore that is carrying it, she cannot find it in the shelves or displays with the other cookbooks. She finds it shelved in the African-American section even though the only thing black about the book was its author.  Because the publishing industry still doesn't understand or care to understand writers of color, they feel safer keeping them in tiny, well-defined boxes.  The same holds true for Latino(a) writers.  I wrote a crime fiction novel in which the main protagonist is Puerto Rican.  A major New York City based publishing
house was considering my novel but turned it down because they said that they could not figure out if it was actually a crime novel or an ethnic novel, and so would have trouble marketing it.  I've had several agents suggest that I make the main protagonist other than Puerto Rican since most readers equate Puerto Ricans with committing crimes rather than solving them!  And of course I have had agents and publishers suggest that I had write "magic realism" instead ala Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  Not too long ago Latin America did see a literary movement known as the "Latin American Boom in which many writers in the region emulated Garcia Marquez with the publication of many fine works that were associated with this style or genre of writing.  But I'm talking the good ol' USA, right here and right now.  In a about a decade, Latinos are going to be the majority here, and there are so many non-Latinos that just don't or don't care to understand their neighbors, and this of course goes for the publishing industry as well.  People of color write science-fiction, Fantasy, Romance, Mysteries... and yes cookbooks, and their work should be accepted or rejected solely on its merits, and works that do see publication should not be relegated to those shelves in bookstores that are the literary equivalent of ghettos.