Hispanic Heritage Month 2019: Circulating Books

"If you want to know who you are and where you come from, follow the maiz." That was the advice given to author and scholar Roberto Cintili Rodrigues when he was investigating the origins and migrations of Mexican peoples in the Four Corners region of the United States. Follow it he did, and his book changes the way we look at Mexican Americans. Rodriguez brings together scholarly and traditional knowledge to show that Mexican Americans are not so much peoples created as a result of war or invasion, but people of the corn, connected through a seven-thousand-year-old maiz culture to other Indigenous inhabitants of the continent.

Over 50 million Latinos live in the United States, and it’s estimated that by 2050 one in three of the US population will be Hispanic. What does it take to lead such a varied and vibrant people who hail from twenty-two different countries and are a blend of different races? And what can leaders of all cultures and ethnicities learn from how Latinos lead?

Fleshing the Spirit brings together established and new writers exploring the relationships between the physical body, the spirit and spirituality, and social justice activism. Examining the complex and dynamic connections among these concepts, the writers emphasize the value of “flesh and blood experience” as a site of knowledge. They argue that spirituality—something quite different from institutional religious practice—can heal the mind/body split and set the stage for social change. Spirituality, they argue, is a necessary component of an alternative political agenda focused on equitable social and ecological change.

Voices from the Ancestors brings together the reflective writings and spiritual practices of Xicanx, Latinx, and Afro-Latinx womxn and male allies in the United States who seek to heal from the historical traumas of colonization by returning to ancestral traditions and knowledge.

Latinos are on the way to being one-third of the U.S. population by 2050. They're changing the country's talent, marketplace, and political landscapes in unprecedented ways. So why is it that there are so few Latino executives and senior leaders?


It's what authors Dr. Robert Rodriguez and Andrés Tomás Tapia call the "4% Shame"—the low percentage of Latino corporate executives today. Autentico: The Definitive Guide to Latino Career Success digs deep to understand the external forces of conscious and unconscious biases, and the internal forces that create tensions for many Latinos about whether to assimilate, opt out, or double down on their cultural identities in their quest to get ahead.

The United States is still typically conceived of as an offshoot of England, with our history unfolding east to west beginning with the first English settlers in Jamestown. This view overlooks the significance of America’s Hispanic past. With the profile of the United States increasingly Hispanic, the importance of recovering the Hispanic dimension to our national story has never been greater.