You hear that? It’s the sound of publishers hopping onto the Mexican gravy train with tortilla wheels; they’ve decided to take the leap now that all this immigration brouhaha is reaching unheard-of proportions in media coverage. In what we predict to be just the first instance of a Mexican writer cashing in as a publisher’s darling, Gustavo Arrellano has emerged. The author and OC Weekly staffer has inked a two-book deal with a six-figure advance, and is poised to add New York’s the Village Voice to a long list of alternative newsweeklies that syndicate his work. All he did was put together the column loved and loathed as ¡Ask A Mexican!, a call-and-response that dares readers from all over the States to ask their most ignorant questions about Mexicans in complete anonymity. The trademark symbol tagged onto the end of ¡Ask A Mexican! these days proves how lucrative being brown and published has become.

A New York Times profile implies that Arrellano is taking advantage of the immigration debate that started to take root in America less than four years ago, when the former food editor published his first ¡Ask A Mexican! exchange. His smug, carefully-worded, and profanity-laced responses to readers’ curiosity have since covered countless topics. He’s answered questions about the prominence of the Virgin de Guadalupe’s image in every Mexican household (“We can display our saints as comfortably in a cathedral as we do on hubcaps,” he said), his people’s addiction to telenovelas, and the way they embrace the stereotypical icon of a “fat greaser” taking his siesta at the foot of a cactus.
As much as we’re kicking ourselves because we didn’t think of this at first, we know the publishing industry will never be the same again. Spic lit has arrived!

The Mexican Will See You Now [NYTimes]
Image [Village Voice]