America Chavez
Gender: Female
Orientation: Lesbian
Publisher: Marvel
Character Type: Primary
Alignment: Good
AKA: Miss America
Summary: America Chavez is a dimension-hopping powerhouse from the Utopian Parallel (a dimension outside of the multiverse). She has been a member of multiple teams, including the Young Avengers, Ultimates, and West Coast Avengers. In 2017, an America Chavez solo series, titled America and written by Latin-American LGBTQ novelist Gabby Rivera, was released.
Database Links: Wikipedia, Marvel Wiki
Important Issues: America Chavez discusses her sexuality with her teammates, including Hulkling and Wiccan, in Kieron Gillen's Young Avengers (Vol. 2) #15).
"Combined with her portal-opening abilities that allow her to traverse the Multiverse, Chavez is an embodiment for the displaced, those who sometimes have no choice but to find a new home, yet still want to live their lives to the fullest. Displaced Latinx people can often live in a constant anxiety due to an outside world that can make them feel like they don’t belong, but Chavez is incredibly straightforward. Showing that it’s okay to act alone sometimes, to accept the help from others, experiment, live, and even throw a shark if you feel like it." (Read more)
Nick Valdez, "How America Chavez shaped her Latinx identity," Marvel Comics, October 8, 2019.
"America Chavez, though she’s always read as a Latina on the page, technically has no biological roots in Latin America (see: from another dimension.) But it’s in Latin American communities from the across the world that America finds acceptance and a fictive kinship through things like language and food. In her own way, America is Latinx in the truest sense of the world—an amalgam of cultures that can’t be defined by one static identity." (Read more)
Charles Pulliam-Moore, "Why Marvel's America Chavez, who comes from an alternate dimension, identifies as Latinx," Gizmodo, May 10, 2017.
Should we be worried? Or, is Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige a genius? Marvel Studio recently announced the addition of a new star to one of their upcoming films. Xochitl Gomez, who’s mostly known for starring in Netflix’s The Baby-Sitters Club, was recently announced to be joining Benedict Cumberbatch and Elizabeth Olsen in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. But according to Deadline, Marvel did not comment on what exact role Gomez would be playing. For movie news and comic book fans, however, there’s already a strong rumor in the works. (Read more)
Devin Randall, "Did Marvel Just Cast A Popular Bisexual Young Avenger?," instinct, October 18, 2020.