We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Carla Peterson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Carla, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

One of the most meaningful projects I co created was Amor en Paginas, translates to Love on pages. This is a passion project with my best friend and co founder where we have an online book club for Latinx romance books. Johanna and I bonded over our love of seeing all sorts of Latinidad in romance stories that we created a “buddy read” Instagram page. We pick one book per month and interview the author on Instagram live at the end of the month to discuss the book and writing process. Reading Latinx romance is important to us because we are more than our trauma stories. We have deep and meaningful stories to say that end with a couple living their happily ever after. Stories that have Latinx leads living and looking for meaningful relationships, seeking understanding with partners, exploring pleasure in safe spaces. The media that we watch leaves Latinx stories out so much, but we find ourselves in these books we talk about. I get to do all this plus create with my best friend, what could be better than that?

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am Carla and I love books. Books and book related conversations helped me find me again and created a community of love and safety to be myself. After having my son (and final child) I completely lost myself, my own personal identity completely about raising my three children was it for me. Then, my cousin made a book club. We would meet monthly, so that meant I was able to get out of the house, tap into my own thoughts and reactions about these wonderful books, and connect on emotional attachments to books with other soon to be life long friends.
Soon after I wanted to publicly share my thoughts and experiences with others, I saw a community of Instagram called, Bookstagram. I then began posting my thoughts, reactions, critically breaking down themes of books. I soon evolved into more. I picked up my first Latinx Romance book called You Had me at Hola by Alexis Daria.
That moment shifted me into a deep sense of need to see my culture represented in books and a manically looked for more of these books. I was pleasantly surprised of what I found.
Not only did I find epic love stories featuring leads that look and sound like me and my family, through documenting my experience, I have built and founded a community of readers searching for the same impression.
Whether the book is fiction, non-fiction, romance, thriller, historical, there is a profound sense of belonging when there are characters that look and sound like us. Something the community and I agree on is it is powerful to see our stories.
As I continued to post about my experiences with stories my book services also began to branch out. I have partnered with various publishers to review and promote books. I also offer diversity editing to authors that are non-Latinx and are looking to respectfully represent Latinx culture in books.
I tap into my creativity when I make recommendations for specific needs or niches. I get motivated when I see mainstream Bookstagram hype a book (by a non BIPOC author) speak on all the tropes and wonderful details of books, and I know the exact same counterpart with a diverse cast by a BIPOC author.
Each time any books by marginalized authors get overlooked and discounted that spikes my drive to make sure I get “this” book in your hands.
My fight for representation is just a small corner in such a big story, there are so many other creators like me as well making sure marginalized identities get to be seen.
One of my greatest accomplishments has been to work with NYT best selling author, Kennedy Ryan on her second book in the SKyland series, This Could be Us. Kennedy Ryan has a main character that is Puerto Rican and she reached out to a group of Puerto Rican book readers for help in respectfully representing the culture. I along with others sat via zoom and discussed all our traditions and details, we then got to read through an early manuscript to make sure all was written appropriately. Being part of this book, even in my own minuscule way has been such an honor and a wonderful learning opportunity. This continues to fuel my efforts in representation in books.
I mainly read the romance genre as well, I love big feelings and happily ever afters. There is no greater escape of what is happening in the real world than a swooping romance novel. I want people to know that there is no shame in loving the romance genre. It is not a cheap genre, it is art. As a Puerto Rican woman in society, reading stories of women like me, managing careers and falling in love is very grounding. When you follow me you’ll be both educated and entertained. I both don’t take myself too seriously but also work with integrity to create relatable posts. Connecting with other humans even on social media has taught me that even at my silliest, I help people feel seen, there is no greater accomplishment than that.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The connections with people. I belong to several marginalized identities, being plus size, Latina, was a teen mom. Whenever I share stories or snippets of my journey and relate it to the book I am speaking about, its all the personal messages thanking me for my vulnerability. People asking me where to find the book that just evoked these feelings for me. I have had people tell me, I bought this dress because your post on body positivity and book recommendation really motivated me. That to me makes it all worth it.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

When you are deeply rooted in the art of what you do, you start to see a lot of the behind the scenes of how things are made. Eventually connections with authors and publishers will be made and this leads to deeply knowing the values of the people, the authors. Eventually I have learned that it is VERY difficult to separate the art from the artist. The more I have learned and unlearned about marginalized identities, the Black experience and how it is so pivotal to intersectionality, there is simply no looking back. I have to move forward with what I know now, that means I had to let go of lots of bodies of work that did not respect this. It can be very painful to do so. So many books and media have shaped me, but once you learn something you cannot let it go. The goal is to use this lesson and engage with media in a wiser form the next time. So when you see creatives not using the same forms of media or examples to convey messages, know that something was learned.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: www.instagram.com/carla_is_reading; www.instagram.com/latinasreadromance
• Tiktok: @carla_is_reading I also have published book reviews on www.thelitbuzz.com

Image Credits
All images are by me. Please feel free to edit them, crop the book stacks from my hands to showcase some Latinx Romance books if needed.