Hispanic Heritage Month Reading Recommendations

Living Beyond Borders by Margarita Longoria

"Veinte cuentos, ensayos, poemas y cómics de autores célebres y galardonados componen esta antología juvenil que explora la experiencia mexicoamericana. En esta colección que mezcla diferentes géneros: cuentos, ensayos personales, poesía y cómics, este grupo célebre de autores comparte las fronteras que han cruzado, los obstáculos que han atravesado y las dos culturas por las que continúan navegando como mexicoamericanos. Más allá de la frontera es a la vez una carta de amor reveladora, desgarradora y esperanzadora de la comunidad mexicoamericana a los lectores jóvenes de hoy.

In this mixed-media collection of short stories, personal essays, poetry, and comics, this celebrated group of authors share the borders they have crossed, the struggles they have pushed through, and the two cultures they continue to navigate as Mexican Americans. Living Beyond Borders is at once an eye-opening, heart-wrenching, and hopeful love letter from the Mexican American community to today's young readers."

Spanish print copy available through the Merrill-Cazier Library

We Remember, We Celebrate, We Believe = Recuerdo, Celebración, y Esperanza: Latinos in Utah by Armando Solorzano

The history of Mexican Americans in Utah is complex, but it is also a history that is neither well represented in mainstream recounting nor well recognized in the mainstream understanding of Utah’s past. Convoluted interactions among Native Americans, Spaniards, French, Mexicans, Anglos, and others shaped the story of Utah. Awareness of the long presence of Hispanics in Utah is essential to understanding the history of the state. This volume is an attempt to piece together that history through photos and oral histories.

As Armando Solórzano and other researchers conducted oral history interviews with Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and other Latinos throughout the state, a number of participants began giving the team photographs, some dating back to 1895, which provided an opportunity to begin reconstructing a history through pictures, as a community project. Within two years, Solórzano and his colleagues were able to create the pictorial history of Mexican-Americans and Latinos in Utah and launched their efforts as a photo-documentary exhibit. This book collects photographs to represent different historical periods and the manifold contributions of Latinos to the state of Utah.

Readers who delve into this book may see these photos as artistic expressions or artifacts of history and photographic technique. Some readers will see images of their relatives and precursors who labored to create a better life in Utah. The images evoke both nostalgia for a time gone by and the possibility of reconstructing history with a fairer premise. The book does not tell the full story of Latinos in Utah but should prove to be a catalyst, inspiring others to continue documenting and reconstructing the neglected threads of Utah’s history, making it truly the history of all of us.

Print copies available through the Merrill-Cazier Library

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

Esperanza Cordero, a young girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago, whose neighborhood is one of harsh realities and harsh beauty. Esperanza doesn't want to belong, not to her run-down neighborhood, and not to the low expectations the world has for her. Capturing her thoughts and emotions in poems and stories, she is able to rise above hopelessness and create a quiet space for herself in the midst of her oppressive surroundings. Esperanza's story is that of a young girl coming into her power, and inventing for herself what she will become.

Print copy available through the Merrill-Cazier Library

Trust by Hernán Diaz

An award-winning writer of absorbing, sophisticated fiction delivers a stylish and propulsive novel rooted in early 20th century New York, about wealth and talent, trust and intimacy, truth and perception. In glamorous 1920s New York City, two characters of sophisticated taste come together. One is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; the other, the brilliant daughter of penniless aristocrats. Steeped in affluence and grandeur, their marriage excites gossip and allows a continued ascent--all at a moment when the country is undergoing a great transformation. This is the story at the center of Harold Vanner's novel Bonds, which everyone in 1938 New York seems to have read. But it isn't the only version. The result is an overarching novel that becomes more exhilarating and profound with each new layer and revelation, engaging the reader in a treasure hunt for the truth that confronts the reality-warping gravitational pull of money, and how power often manipulates facts."

Print copy available through the Merrill-Cazier Library

Claire of the Sea Light by Edwidge Danticat

Just as her father makes the wrenching decision to send her away for a chance at a better life, Claire Limyè Lanmè—Claire of the Sea Light—suddenly disappears. As the people of the Haitian seaside community of Ville Rose search for her, painful secrets, haunting memories, and startling truths are unearthed. In this stunning novel about intertwined lives, Edwidge Danticat crafts a tightly woven, breathtaking tapestry that explores the mysterious bonds we share—with the natural world and with one another.

Print copy available through the Merrill-Cazier Library

In the Heights: Finding Home by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Quiara Alegria Hudes, Jeremy McCarter

In 2008, In the Heights, a new musical from up-and-coming young artists, electrified Broadway. The show’s vibrant mix of Latin music and hip-hop captured life in Washington Heights, the Latino neighborhood in upper Manhattan. The characters chase their dreams and ask a universal question: Where do I belong?

E-Book Available

A Nation of Women: An Early Feminist Speaks Out by Luisa Capetillo

In 1915, Puerto Rican activist Luisa Capetillo was arrested and acquitted for being the first woman to wear men’s trousers publicly. While this act of gender-nonconforming rebellion elevated her to feminist icon status in modern pop culture, it also overshadowed the significant contributions she made to the women’s movement and anarchist labor movements of the early twentieth century–both in her native Puerto Rico and in the migrant labor belt in the eastern United States. With the volume A Nation of Women, Capetillo’s socialist and feminist activism is given the spotlight it deserves with its inclusion of the first English translation of Capetillo’s landmark Mi opinión sobre las libertades, derechos y deberes de la mujer. Originally published in Spanish in 1911, Mi opinión is considered by many to be the first feminist treatise in Puerto Rico and one of the first in Latin America and the Caribbean.

E-Book Available

The Adventures of China Iron by Gaberiela Cabezón Cámara

Cabezón Cámara reimagines the tale of Martin Fierro from the point of view of China Iron, the wife Fierro abandoned in order to pursue a life of adventure on the Argentine frontier. The plot develops as a sort of Bildungsroman, with China's development paralleling that of the nascent country she inhabits.

E-Book Available

Leer y Escribir en Femenino by Maria Ángeles Cabré

A estas alturas de la Historia de la Cultura y, en particular, de la Historia de la Literatura, resulta innegable que en el pasado a las mujeres se les intentó sustraer al festín del goce lector y, en consecuencia, también a la escritura. Siempre con viento adverso, siempre contracorriente, a codazos tuvieron que abrirse paso hacia esos placeres del intelecto como si de un preciado grial se tratara. Esas valientes mujeres lidiaron contra los prejuicios de su época y muchas de ellas escribieron sin contar con el beneplácito de sus familias; por no hablar de las que lo hicieron bajo un pseudónimo masculino e incluso a la sombra de sus maridos, es decir, en lugar de estos. De las poetas de la Grecia clásica a las novelistas decimonónicas, pasando por la eclosión mística medieval, el suyo fue un largo peregrinaje que tuvo mucho de travesía por el desierto. Pero el talento femenino acabó por imponerse, alumbrando una literatura de gran riqueza, que hoy se despliega a lo largo y ancho de la geografía en multitud de lenguas. Ahora, en pleno siglo XXI, todavía lejos de la paridad en el mundo de las letras, mientras el patriarcado aún se resiste a admitir sus culpas y así pues a enmendar el canon, este ensayo quiere ser una invitación a la reflexión y, ante todo, un ameno paseo por los caminos que llevaron a la literatura escrita "en femenino".

E-Book Available

Adiós Muchachos: A Memoir of the Sandinista Revolution by Sergio Ramírez

During the 1970s, Sergio Ramírez led prominent intellectuals, priests, and business leaders to support the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), against Anastasio Somoza’s dictatorship. After the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza regime in 1979, Ramírez served as vice-president under Daniel Ortega from 1985 until 1990, when the FSLN lost power in a national election. Disillusioned by his former comrades’ increasing intolerance of dissent and resistance to democratization, Ramírez defected from the Sandinistas in 1995 and founded the Sandinista Renovation Movement. In Adiós Muchachos, he describes the utopian aspirations for liberation and reform that motivated the Sandinista revolution against the Somoza regime, as well as the triumphs and shortcomings of the movement’s leadership as it struggled to turn an insurrection into a government, reconstruct a country beset by poverty and internal conflict, and defend the revolution against the Contras, an armed counterinsurgency supported by the United States.

E-Book Available