Generation X

N JUNE 2016, Muslim American man entered Orlando’s Pulse nightclub during its weekly Latin Night and gunned down 49 people, most of them gay or bisexual. In the dizzying aftermath of the tragedy, I was assigned to write an opinion piece for about how then-presidential candidate Donald Trump was using the incident to drum up Islamophobia. As I pored over news reports, a word leaped off the page: “Latinx,” pronounced , a gender-neutral way to describe people of Latin American heritage. As a gay Mexican American, I often write about LGBT or Latino issues. But this was the rare occasion that I needed to address both aspects of my identity at once. The word seemed clunky and mathematical, the “x” taking on the function of an algebraic placeholder, its presence chopping up the flow of the prose. I didn’t know how I felt about it.