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The Latina Crime Fighter: Beyond Stereotypes
Melanie Vargas,
the main character of my debut thriller, Most
Wanted, is a young, half–Puerto Rican federal
prosecutor in New York City who’s investigating a
brutal high-society murder at a moment when her
personal life is spinning out of control. She has a
new baby at home. She’s just caught her
good-looking, smooth-talking husband having an
affair and kicked him out of the house. Her
nightmare of a boss is coming down on her for not
putting in enough hours at the same time that her
babysitter is threatening to quit. Yet when the case
of a lifetime comes along, she goes for it. She
takes the assignment, putting herself smack in the
killer’s sights (and agreeing to work with one very
sexy FBI agent who’s certain to cause angst of
another kind), because she’s ambitious. |
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Michele
Martinez, a former federal
prosecutor in New York City, is the
author of Most Wanted. |
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Readers have embraced Melanie. I get a lot of
comments about how real and fresh and modern she is.
But what’s surprised me is how many readers are
truly delighted about Melanie’s Latina heritage—and
I hear this from people of all backgrounds. They
tell me they’ve been dying to read about a Latina
who’s tough, smart, and professional, and that they
think publishers aren’t showcasing enough of these
characters. I’ve also been asked how I managed to
avoid stereotypes when writing a professional Latina
character like Melanie.
The answer to that question seems easy at first
glance. I’m not a stereotype, so why would she be
one? You could say Melanie is my fictional alter
ego. Like her, I had the privilege of serving as a
federal prosecutor in New York City, specializing in
narcotics and gang cases. (We're not talking about
busting high-school kids selling pot, either. My
district included the airports and the ports serving
New York City, so I had jurisdiction over the
biggest narcotics organizations in the world.) Also
like Melanie, I grew up in modest circumstances but
ended up going to an Ivy League college, getting a
law degree, and practicing law in some very
high-powered settings. Which, again like Melanie,
meant that I often felt like I didn’t fit in my own
life. It wasn’t lost on me, for example, that my own
background was usually closer to that of the
defendants I prosecuted than it was to the other
lawyers I worked with.
Which I guess brings us back to the question of
stereotypes, both in real life and in fiction. I
think what many Latinas encounter in the
professional world these days is not so much overt
discrimination but rather a more subtle awareness of
difference. In Most Wanted, for example, nobody
discriminates against Melanie because she’s
Hispanic. To the contrary, her boss gives her a plum
assignment partly because she is Puerto Rican. It
looks better to the news media to have Melanie
prosecuting a high-profile murder case against
Puerto Rican defendants than to have a white
prosecutor doing it. That kind of attention to her
background feels wrong to Melanie and makes her
uncomfortable. But her difference is already
something she can never forget. She came up from
humble beginnings, and she remembers where she’s
from. She has both a great love for hard work and a
tremendous sympathy for the underdog. And she’s an
educated, independent, professional woman to boot.
She’s a multifaceted character, and she embraces who
she is, as we all should.
Most Wanted is being widely read in English now by
people of all backgrounds, and this fall it will
become available in Spanish in the United States and
Puerto Rico under the title Se Busca. Melanie will
continue to fight the good fight in future books as
well—in the courtroom, on the streets investigating
killers and drug-dealers, and dealing with the
issues we all face in our day-to-day lives.
Ultimately, it’s my hope that by writing a character
like Melanie Vargas, I can play some small part in
breaking down any stereotypes that remain and hinder
Latinas in professional settings.
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