Beyond Borders: When Big Stories Meet Little Stories at MSU!

Recently, I had the privilege of bringing my talk "Beyond Borders: Imagination, Identity & Latinx Storytelling" to the Michigan State University's Museum and Multicultural Center. And let me tell you—the energy in that auditorium was electric.

The local news caught wind of what we were up to. I sat down for interviews with both Channel 6 WLNS for a longer feature story and appeared live on WILX Channel 10, talking about why Latinx storytelling matters and how we're building spaces where our narratives can breathe, grow, and thrive.

The Big "S" Stories vs. the Little "s" Stories

Here's the thing. When the BIG STORIES push out the little stories, we lose something vital. We lose us.

You know those Big "S" Stories—the ones Hollywood and mainstream media love to tell about Latinx folks. The hypersexualized bombshell. The hot-headed criminal. The bumbling buffoon. The border threat narrative that reduces millions of complex human beings to a single, tired trope.

These stories get all the oxygen in the room. They dominate screens, conversations, and—most damaging—they shape how young Latinx kids see themselves and their possibilities.

But what about our stories? The ones about:

• A parent and child sharing magical moments before bedtime

• Teens navigating identity, family, and first love in the borderlands

• Afrolatina heroines commanding respect in steampunk worlds

• Queer Latinx youth building chosen families

• Kids discovering that their tongues aren't "dirty," their cultures aren't deficits, and their stories matter

These are the little "s" stories that I create, curate, and champion through my work—in picture books like Con Papá: With Papá and The Adventures of Chupacabra Charlie, in YA graphic novels like Through Fences, in my anthologies and scholarship, and through the Latinx Pop Lab and Latinx Pop Magazine.

Why Comics? Why Now?

As I shared at the with the MSU and Lansing crowd, Latinx comics have been doing radical work since before anyone was paying attention. From pioneers like Gus Arriola, Judge Garza, and George Pérez breaking through gatekeepers in the mid-20th century, to the explosion of Latinx alternative, autobiographical, queer, punk, and sci-fi comics in the '70s and '80s, to today's renaissance with creators across every genre imaginable—we've been telling our stories our way.

As I've discussed and theorized elsewhere in my work, word-drawn narratives let us:

• Dynamize space through character design, clothing, setting, and cultural specificity

• Spatialize time through panel layout, framing, pacing, and page design

• Make new our perceptions, thoughts, and feelings about the world

Comics don't just communicate information. They explore possible worlds. They let us imagine counterfactuals—the way things might be. They're tools for storythinking, not just storytelling.

Storythinking in Action: The Beyond Borders Workshop

The day after my talk, we took these ideas from theory to practice in a hands-on Beyond Borders workshop. I wanted participants to experience firsthand what it means to be storythinking agents—to feel the creative power that comes from building worlds anchored in place but unbound by time.

I broke the attendees into pods of 3-4. I gave everyone a deceptively simple challenge: Take the MSU campus map and identify one location—built or natural—that connects you to a person, place, or object. Then build a storyworld there.

But here's where it got interesting. I asked them to:

1. Create plot, characters, actions, and interactions anchored in that present-day location

2. Engage all five senses—what do your characters see, hear, feel, taste, touch?

3. Stay anchored to that same place on the map, but shift your storyworld to the distant past

4. Shift it again to the future

Watching the groups work was magic. Some anchored their stories at Beaumont Tower, others at the Red Cedar River, still others at the Museum and other corners of campus. As they moved through time, their storythinking kicked in.

One pod realized that their "present day" assumptions about who belonged in a space would be radically different in 1855 versus 2155. Another discovered that the natural landscape they'd anchored their fantastical story to had its own history—the Red Cedar River transformed from a natural border that divided people to a borderland that, through joy and play, connected people, and deeply,

This is the power of storythinking as practice, not just theory. When you're forced to hold place constant while varying time, you start asking the kinds of questions that matter: Who gets to occupy space? Whose stories get remembered? What possibilities exist in the gaps between past, present, and future?

Together, we co-created new living breathing stories where:

• Community voices were documented and amplified

• Past, present, and future stories converged

• Exercised our right to shape our own narratives

• Created narrative moments when lived experience and scholarly knowledge converged, and where little "s" stories became a movement.

So What's Your Story?

That's the question I asked MSU and the question I leave you with now:

What's your little "s" story?

Because here's what I know: We all deserve the right to shape our stories—yesterday, today, and tomorrow. To grow and realize our storythinking capacities as educators, curators, storytellers, archivists, parents, kids. To storymake in literature, comics, TV, film, video games, multimedia arts. . . .and in stories and forms yet to be imagined.

The Big "S" Stories have had their turn for too long. Let's make room for the multitudes of little "s" stories—the ones that actually reflect who we are and who we're becoming.

¡Gracias to the Michigan State University Museum, Michigan State University's Chicano/Latino Studies Program, Nicole at WILX Studio 10, WKAR PBS, Sean Graney at WLNS Channel 10 News, and everyone who came out to share this conversation and workshop! Special shoutout to Diana Huizar Rivera and Pedro Rivera & the DO Mexican American Culture Endowment (MACE) for making this possible.

Want to dive deeper into Latinx storytelling? Check out my books, follow @professorlatinx on Instagram, and visit the Latinx Pop Lab and Latinx Pop Magazine and beyond.