Talking Dirty

A former reporter at The Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times, where she covered Latino issues and the Latin music industry, Valdes-Rodriguez caused a splash when she pulled a real-life Jerry Maguire two years ago. Ill with a pregnancy-related condition, she fired off a 3,400-word resignation to her Times editors. The e-mail, which was posted online, inspired another round of rumors, including one that she had accused the Times of genocide. Valdes-Rodriguez disputes that she ever used the word genocide. She does confirm she took issue with the paper's use of the word Latino (as a single ethnic category used to describe only brown-skinned native Americans from Spanish-speaking countries). Postings of the now-infamous e-mail quote her as saying, ''Now, we simply rob people of their heritage and force a new one upon them.''

These sorts of ethnic generalizations are challenged in ''Dirty Girls.'' ''If somebody asked me what my message is,'' says Valdes-Rodriguez, ''I would say that it's that Latinos are as diverse as the world.'' She makes that clear: The book's characters include Sara, a Jewish Cuban housewife; Lauren, a ''half-Cuban, half-white trash'' newspaper columnist; Rebecca, a Spanish-American Indian editor; Amber, a Mexican-American Valley Girl-turned-rock star; Elizabeth, a black Colombian TV anchor; and Usnavys, a Puerto Rican executive.

''My dad said, 'You are proposing a paradigm shift in the way Americans look at Latinos,''' Valdes-Rodriguez says. ''He's anticipating a lot of resistance.'' It certainly hasn't come from the publishing world, which recognized the book's potential from the start. ''This is a landmark, a big commercial Latina novel,'' says St. Martin's publisher Sally Richardson. The company hopes to capture an untapped Spanish-speaking market. ''Dirty Girls'' will appear in two editions: 120,000 copies have been printed in English, 10,000 in Spanish.

Whether or not ''Dirty Girls'' will live up to St. Martin's hopes, it has already had a major impact on Valdes-Rodriguez's life. ''You're about to see how big a change,'' she says. We have arrived in the tiny town of Bosque, N.M. (pop. 276), where we pull up to a boarded-up store in front of a scruffy little house. This is where Valdes-Rodriguez spent the first four years of her life and where she used to ride her 12-speed and dream about becoming a novelist. It's only a 45-minute drive from the three-bedroom adobe home she shares with her husband, Patrick, and son, Alexander, but it feels like another world. ''I really wanted to come back [to New Mexico] and write,'' she says. ''So, I decided to take a chance. It was probably the worst time to do it.'' Later on, she reconsiders. ''I was speaking at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists the same week the book sold,'' she recalls, as we head back to Albuquerque. ''They wanted me to speak about newsroom politics -- about how badly I had screwed up. And I was like, 'I'd like to tell you that this ruined my life, but...'''