New York from the Margins: Esteban Escalona and the Urban Poetics of No Loitering-Prohibido Hanguear

Within a literary trajectory marked by the exploration of the city, identity, and urban margins, Esteban Escalona published last October Prohibido Hanguear Aquí (No Loitering)—his second collection of short stories—a book that observes New York from those spaces that rarely enter the official narrative. Recently awarded at the XIX International Book Fair in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Escalona’s work consolidates a narrative gaze attentive to the everyday, to displacement, and to the quiet forms of resistance that run through the migrant experience in the city.

In this interview, the author reflects on his urban poetics, the intersection between chronicle and fiction, the English-language publication of No Loitering-Prohibido Hanguear, and the place this work occupies within his broader literary project on urban life. He also offers a preview of his forthcoming novel, Music for Rats, to be published simultaneously in English and Spanish.

The English edition will appear under the title No Loitering. What drew you to that expression —so urban and regulatory— as a cultural and symbolic equivalent of the original title?

“No loitering” is a harsh, blunt, deeply urban phrase. I think it captures the current climate in the United States very well. The translation was done by Aurelie Cotugno, a translator for Five Points, and we worked through several possible options together. She was especially drawn to it because, in English, it sounds even more normative, more authoritarian. In conversations with friends from my Spanish-language reading workshop, some mentioned that the phrase has even been used as a symbol of racism. I believe No Loitering is not merely a literal translation; it is a cultural equivalent that preserves the symbolic weight of exclusion, control, and surveillance over public space in societies determined to draw lines between the “good” and the “bad.”

No Loitering-Prohibido Hanguear, presents a New York seen from the margins. What were you interested in capturing about the city that does not usually appear in more official or touristic narratives?

I have always been interested in capturing the city that does not appear in official discourse, in brochures and photographs: the city of those who are passing through but never quite leave, of tired bodies, invisible jobs, and routines that remain anonymous yet are essential to sustaining urban life. New York is often narrated from the vantage point of Wall Street’s financial success or the spectacle of Broadway. From my earliest writings in this city—through literary chronicles—I have sought the other side of the story, where displacement emerges and, at the same time, that quiet and poetic form of resistance.

The title evokes an urban warning, almost bureaucratic in tone. How does that idea of prohibition interact with the characters who inhabit the stories?

When I arrived in New York, I discovered Spanglish, and it was a fascinating encounter because it precisely reflects that process of adaptation. As for the stories in my book, I believe prohibition functions as a constant backdrop. “No Loitering-Prohibido hanguear” is not merely a phrase from street signage, it is a way of determining who is allowed to occupy space and who is not. The characters in the book exist precisely within that friction. They do not challenge the system in any epic sense, but they erode it through their mere presence, through the act of staying, of observing, of insisting on existing. I think the title resonates strongly with the current times, especially in relation to Hispanic immigration.

Many of the stories seem to move between chronicle and fiction. How did you work that boundary, and what does fiction allow you to say that chronicle cannot?

My first stories in New York were the chronicles I wrote while living my experiences on the city’s streets: jobs I held cleaning buildings, painting apartments, hauling bags of cement at Home Depot—experiences that later gave life to my book Maybe Manhattan. Chronicle thrives on detail, because its purpose is not only to narrate but also to document events. At the same time that I was writing those chronicles, I was drafting the first versions of the stories that would become No Loitering-Prohibido Hanguear. Once the book was published, I realized that the wild chronicler was present in many passages of those stories. How to restrain him? That boundary is like a porous zone.

Chronicle gives me the pulse of the real, the city’s texture; fiction, by contrast, allows me to enter what cannot be seen: the silences, the inner contradictions, what goes unrecorded. Fiction does not seek to verify facts, but to reveal an emotional truth that chronicle can often only graze.

There is a particular attention to minimal gestures, to scenes that seem insignificant. What role does the everyday play in your narrative poetics?

Lingering over the everyday perhaps comes from my deeply curious spirit and from the chronicler in me who observes the city in detail in order to tell it in his own way. I believe that within such observation lies the total urban experience. In the first story, There’s Something in Your Basement, the protagonist seeks friendship in a mouse, leaving food by the door and drawing pictures of his new companion. That image symbolizes the marginality and the tenderness that can be found anywhere —even in a mouse— if one is willing to look for it. The act of drawing his friend is a way of holding on to what will soon disappear, a gesture of memory and dignity. Another image I cherish is that of the man who studies the reflection of his face in a CVS window. It is not merely a physical reflection. It is a man trying to recognize himself in a city that returns him distorted, framed by Christmas discounts and a dancing Snoopy. That reflection is a suspended identity.

My vision of literature rests on that idea: that what appears insignificant is, in fact, profoundly revealing. It is there that weariness, tenderness, solitude and also dignity and humor, manifest themselves. Piglia once said that “literature is an act of faith in others.” That sentence gives deep meaning to my work, which I see as a kaleidoscope of small revelations.

In several stories the city seems to be more than a setting—almost a character that shapes destinies. How did you construct that New York, suspended between hostility and tenderness?

In my stories, the city is not a backdrop: it is a living force that breathes, watches, and pushes the characters toward decisions, even extreme ones. I built that New York from the experience of someone who arrives without a map, from basements, late-night trains, precarious jobs, stumbling accents. The great Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, in his Meditations —which I read almost obsessively during the pandemic— taught me that the city has a life of its own, and that to feel it, one must know how to listen. Other writers, such as Paul Auster and Don DeLillo, have also turned the city into a character. Valeria Luiselli, too, portrays a spectral city in Faces in the Crowd.

New York can be harsh, even cruel. But I believe tenderness is a form of resistance against that hostility. My characters do not defeat the city; they learn to breathe within it. They search for small refuges: a brief conversation, an embrace, an unexpected presence that makes them feel less alone. Some find that tenderness. Others only manage to brush against it. Yet even in that search, there is a form of hope.

From a strategic perspective, what does publishing No Loitering at this moment mean for your literary career, and why is this the right time?

It is a natural and necessary step in my body of work. My book of chronicles Maybe Manhattan was published in a bilingual edition. From the beginning, one of my aims has been for non–Spanish-speaking readers to be able to empathize with the experience of displacement and immigration. At the same time, New York is a profoundly bilingual, multicultural city, and I felt that these stories were asking for that crossing. Publishing No Loitering now allows the book to enter into dialogue with readers who inhabit the same city, but from another language.

At a moment when policies and rhetoric that criminalize Hispanic communities are intensifying, I believe No Loitering is an invitation to persist—to persevere and not surrender what one truly longs for.

What would you like an English-speaking reader to understand—or feel—about the Latino experience in New York after reading these stories?

I would like them to feel closeness and empathy, not exoticism or pamphleteering clichés about the image of the immigrant. I hope they understand that the immigrant experience in New York is not a homogeneous block, but a sum of complex lives shaped by displacement, labor, memory, and the desire to belong and to live fully. Above all, I want them to recognize that these stories are also an essential part of this city. I want them to feel an urban experience —told with touches of fantasy, irony, and social critique— an invitation to see New York from a different perspective: that of someone who is arriving.

Finally, what are your upcoming projects?

I am currently working with the team at Five Points on the final editing and translation of my first novel, Music for Rats. It is a particularly challenging project from a writing standpoint: the story reimagines the Pied Piper of Hamelin arriving in New York to exterminate the city’s rats. It is a kind of New York magical realism, where the everyday and the fantastic coexist naturally.

The novel will be published this spring, and I feel deeply proud of the work accomplished, as it is the result of my previous publications as well as the commitment and professionalism of the Five Points team at every stage of the process.