Latinx Heritage Month 2024: Latinx Books of Interest

Farm labor leader and civil rights advocate Dolores Huerta first worked with César Chávez as a community organizer in Mexican American areas of southern California in the mid-1950s. Chávez dreamed of organizing farm workers, and in 1962 he started the National Farm Workers Association. He asked Huerta to work with them, and in the next three years they recruited a number of members. In 1965 the NFWA joined the AFL-CIO-affiliated Agricultural Workers' Committee in a strike against large grape growers in the San Joaquin Valley--a five-year strike that raised national awareness of the dismal treatment of the workers and led to the formation of the United Farm Workers union. Huerta's contributions to these efforts were invaluable in recruiting women for the cause, in keeping the union focused on nonviolent actions, and in gaining support in the eastern United States for the effective grape boycott that led to contracts for the union. Ten years after they started, they celebrated the passage of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act. They had made history. This is the first book to focus on Dolores Huerta. Throughout six decades of activism, she has made her own history and has been part of major events in the history of the country, standing alongside Robert Kennedy the night he was assassinated. Often called la Pasionaria, the passionate one, she continues to speak out on labor, environmental, antiwar, and women's issues. A Dolores Huerta Reader includes an informative biographical introduction, articles and book excerpts written about her, her own writing and speeches, and a recent interview with Mario García where she expresses her unbending dedication to social justice. Anyone who wants to know more about Dolores Huerta should start with this book.

NAMED ONE OF AUGUST'S BEST NEW BOOKS BY CNN | ON Cosmo's LIST OF 12 BOOKS YOU'LL BE DESPERATE TO READ THIS SUMMER | ONE OF Autostraddle's 60 QUEER & FEMINIST BOOKS COMING YOUR WAY THIS SUMMER | A 2020 TITLE TO WATCH BY Library Journal | LISTED ON Marie Claire's POLITICAL BOOKS TO READ With a preface by Keegan-Michael Key In the vein of Notorious RBG, seventeen writers explore the multiple meanings of a young Latina politician who has already made history. From the moment Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez beat a ten-term incumbent in the primary election for New York's 14th, her journey to the national, if not world, stage, was fast-tracked. Six months later, as the youngest Congresswoman ever elected, AOC became one of a handful of Latina politicians in Washington, D.C. Just thirty, she represents her generation, the millennials, in many groundbreaking ways: proudly working class, Democratic Socialist, of Puerto Rican descent, master of social media, not to mention of the Bronx, feminist--and a great dancer. AOC investigates her symbolic and personal significance for so many, from her willingness to use her imperfect bi-lingualism, to why men are so threatened by her power, to the long history of Puerto Rican activism that she joins. Contributors span a wide range of voices and ages, from media to the arts and politics: Keegan-Michael Key -- Preface Lynda Lopez -- Introduction: "The Meaning of AOC" Jennine Capó Crucet -- "An Open Letter to Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez" Andrea González-Ramírez -- "Women Like Me Aren't Supposed to Run for Office" Patricia Reynoso -- "'The First Latina to . . .'" Pedro Regalado -- "'Pa'lante!': The Long History of Puerto Rican Activism in New York City" Rebecca Traister -- "The Imagined Threat of a Woman Who Governs Like a Man" Natalia Sylvester -- "In No Uncertain Terms" Erin Aubry Kaplan -- "The Center Will Not Hold. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Counting on It" Tracey Ross -- "A Just Society" Carmen Rita Wong -- "Latinas Are So Money" Mariana Atencio -- "AOC the Influencer" Wendy Carrillo -- "What AOC and I Learned at Standing Rock" Nathan J. Robinson -- "The Democratic Socialism of AOC" Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodriguez -- "On Being an Indignant Brown Girl" Elizabeth Yeampierre -- "Making the Green New Deal the Real Deal" María Cristina "MC" González Noguera -- "The Hustle"

America is browning. As politicians, schoolteachers, and grandparents attempt to decipher what that might mean, Richard Rodriguez argues America has been brown from its inception, as he himself is. As a brown man, I think . . . (But do we really think that color colors thought?) In his two previous memoirs, Hunger of Memoryand Days of Obligation, Rodriguez wrote about the intersection of his private life with public issues of class and ethnicity. With Brown, his consideration of race, Rodriguez completes his "trilogy on American public life." For Rodriguez, brown is not a singular color. Brown is evidence of mixture. Brown is a shade created by desire-an emblem of the erotic history of America, which began the moment the African and the European met within the Indian eye. Rodriguez reflects on various cultural associations of the color brown-toil, decay, impurity, time-arranging dazzling juxtapositions for which he is justly famous: Alexis de Tocqueville, Malcolm X, minstrel shows, Broadway musicals, Puritanism, the Sistine Chapel, Cubism, homosexuality, and the influence on his life of two federal figures-Ben Franklin and Richard Nixon ("the dark father of Hispanicity"). At the core of the book is an assessment of the meaning of Hispanics to the life of America. Reflecting upon the new demographic profile of our country, Rodriguez observes that Hispanics are becoming Americanized at the same rate that the United States is becoming Latinized. Hispanics are coloring an American identity that traditionally has chosen to describe itself as black and white.

In this groundbreaking analysis, Marco Portales examines the way in which education and the media act as immobilizing social forces to shape the Latino world that exists despite the best efforts of many Mexican Americans and other Latinos. The delicate relationships between what Latinos are and what they seem to be, as perceived both by the larger society and by Latinos themselves, create and craft a culture that students of American culture have not sufficiently studied or understood. As bandidos or gigolos, drug users or unwed mothers, Latinos continue to figure in the public consciousness primarily as undesirables. Despite decades of effort by Spanish-speaking Americans to improve their image in the United States, Mexican Americans and other resident Latinos are still largely perceived by other Americans as poverty-stricken immigrants and second-class citizens. Accordingly, the great majority of Latino citizens receive substandard educations, equipping them for substandard jobs in substandard living environments. The lives of Mexican Americans and other Latinos, Portales contends, can best be illuminated by looking at the history of Chicanos and particularly Chicano literature, which dramatizes the impact of education and the media on Latinos. Like Irish literature, Chicano literature has sought to articulate and to establish itself as a postcolonial voice that has struggles for national attention. Through psychological and sociopolitical representations, Chicano writers have variously used anger, indifference, fear, accommodation, and other conflicting emotions and attitudes to express how it feels to be seen as an immigrant or a foreigner in one's own country. Portales looks at four Chicano literary works -- Americo Paredes' George Washington Gomez, Anthony Quinn's The Original Sin, Sandra Cisnero's House on Mango Street, and Ana Castillo's Massacre of the Dreamers -- to focus attention on social issues that impede the progress of Latinos. By doing so, he hopes to engage both Latino and non-Latino Americans in an overdue dialogue about the power of education and the media to form perceptions that can either empower or repress Latino citizens.

As the populations of Latin American and Caribbean background in the USA proliferate, it becomes all the more important to understand the distinctions among nationalities and regional groups. To this end, this text investigates the historical experience of Puerto Ricans in New York.

In this eye-opening and poignant true story about the experiences of four young Mexican women coming of age in Denver--two who have legal documentation, two who don't--Helen Thorpe "puts a human face on a frequently obtuse conversation" (O, The Oprah Magazine), exploring themes of identity and friendship and exposing the reality of life for many undocumented immigrants seeking the American dream. Just Like Us tells the story of four high school students whose parents entered this country illegally from Mexico. We meet the girls on the eve of their senior prom in Denver, Colorado. All four of the girls have grown up in the United States, and all four want to live the American dream, but only two have documents. As the girls attempt to make it into college, they discover that only the legal pair sees a clear path forward. Their friendships start to divide along lines of immigration status. Then the political firestorm begins. A Mexican immigrant shoots and kills a police officer. The author happens to be married to the Mayor of Denver, a businessman who made his fortune in the restaurant business. In a bizarre twist, the murderer works at one of the Mayor's restaurants--under a fake Social Security number. A local Congressman seizes upon the murder as proof of all that is wrong with American society and Colorado becomes the place where national arguments over immigration rage most fiercely. The rest of the girls' lives play out against this backdrop of intense debate over whether they have any right to live here. Just Like Us is a coming-of-age story about girlhood and friendship, as well as the resilience required to transcend poverty. It is also a book about identity--what it means to steal an identity, what it means to have a public identity, what it means to inherit an identity from parents. The girls, their families, and the critics who object to their presence allow the reader to watch one of the most complicated social issues of our times unfurl in a major American city. And the perspective of the author gives the reader insight into both the most powerful and the most vulnerable members of American society as they grapple with the same dilemma: Who gets to live in America? And what happens when we don't agree?

A new ethnic identity is being constructed in the United States: the Hispanic nation. Overcoming age-old racial, regional, and political differences, Americans of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and other Spanish-language origins are beginning to imagine themselves as a single ethnic community - which by the turn of the century may become the United States' largest and most influential minority." "Only in recent years have great numbers of Hispanics begun to consider themselves as related within a single culture. Hispanics are redefining their own images and agendas, shaping a population, and paving wider pathways to power. In the process, they are changing both themselves and the culture, government, and urban habits of the communities around them. In this ground-breaking book, Geoffrey Fox shows how and why Hispanics are changing the United States." "Based on interviews, observations, and extensive research, Hispanic Nation examines why such diverse people are imagining themselves as one; the politics of turning a statistical fiction into a social reality; the impact of the Spanish-language media on Hispanics' self-images; ethnic consciousness and political movements (Cesar Chavez and the farm workers movement, the Young Lords and La Raza Unida, Puerto Rican and Mexican encounters in the Midwest); controversies surrounding "high" and popular Hispanic/Latino art, music, and literature; and the institutionalization of the movement everywhere - from local school boards to the U.S. Congress."

De la presentadora del show de MSNBC, "Field Report with Paola Ramos" El primer paso hacia el cambio es reconocer que nuestro poder nace de nuestra identidad.   Los jóvenes latinos en los Estados Unidos están redefiniendo su identidad, rompiendo moldes establecidos, y despertando políticamente de maneras sorprendentes y poderosas. Muchos de ellos--afrolatinos, indígenas, musulmanes, queer e indocumentados tanto en zonas urbanas como rurales--representan voces históricamente ignoradas en el modo en que la diversa población de casi seis millones de latinos en los Estados Unidos ha sido representada. Hasta ahora.   En esta inspiradora crónica de viaje de costa a costa, la periodista y activista Paola Ramos emprende una búsqueda de los individuos y comunidades que dan vida a un nuevo movimiento que esta definiendo el término controversial "Latinx". Ramos nos presenta a un grupo de indígenas originarios de Oaxaca que ha reinventado la calle mayor de un pueblo industrial en el estado de Nueva York, a las "Las Poderosas", que luchan por los derechos reproductivos en Texas, a unos músicos en Milwaukee que con sus ritmos confortan a otros sobre sus raíces... A lo largo de este viaje encontraremos también a activistas ambientales, trabajadores de campo, drag queens, e inmigrantes detenidos en la frontera. A partir de su trabajo periodístico sobre el terreno, así como de su historia personal, Ramos ilustra como el término "Latinx" ha dado paso a un sentimiento de pertenencia y solidaridad sin precedentes entre los latinos de este país.   Relevante e inspirador, Latinx nos invita a expandir nuestra conciencia de lo que significa ser latino y ser estadounidense, y como ambas identidades conviven dentro y fuera de esta comunidad. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION By the anchor of MSNBC's show "Field Report with Paola Ramos" Young Latinos across the United States are redefining their identities, pushing boundaries, and awakening politically in powerful and surprising ways. Many of them--Afrolatino, indigenous, Muslim, queer and undocumented, living in large cities and small towns--are voices who have been chronically overlooked in how the diverse population of almost sixty million Latinos in the U.S. has been represented. No longer. In this empowering cross-country travelogue, journalist and activist Paola Ramos embarks on a journey to find the communities of people defining the controversial term, "Latinx." She introduces us to the indigenous Oaxacans who rebuilt the main street in a post-industrial town in upstate New York, the "Las Poderosas" who fight for reproductive rights in Texas, the musicians in Milwaukee whose beats reassure others of their belonging, as well as drag queens, environmental activists, farmworkers, and the migrants detained at our border. Drawing on intensive field research as well as her own personal story, Ramos chronicles how "Latinx" has given rise to a sense of collectivity and solidarity among Latinos unseen in this country for decades. A vital and inspiring work of reportage, Finding Latinx calls on all of us to expand our understanding of what it means to be Latino and what it means to be American. The first step towards change, writes Ramos, is for us to recognize who we are.

NPR's Best Books of 2020 BookPage's Best Books of 2020 Real Simple's Best Books of 2020 Boston.com readers voted one of Best Books of 2020 "Anyone striving to understand and improve this country should read her story." --Gloria Steinem, author of My Life on the Road The Emmy Award-winning journalist and anchor of NPR's Latino USA tells the story of immigration in America through her family's experiences and decades of reporting, painting an unflinching portrait of a country in crisis in this memoir that is "quite simply beautiful, written in Maria Hinojosa's honest, passionate voice" (BookPage). Maria Hinojosa is an award-winning journalist who, for nearly thirty years, has reported on stories and communities in America that often go ignored by the mainstream media--from tales of hope in the South Bronx to the unseen victims of the War on Terror and the first detention camps in the US. Bestselling author Julia Álvarez has called her "one of the most important, respected, and beloved cultural leaders in the Latinx community." In Once I Was You, Maria shares her intimate experience growing up Mexican American on the South Side of Chicago. She offers a personal and illuminating account of how the rhetoric around immigration has not only long informed American attitudes toward outsiders, but also sanctioned willful negligence and profiteering at the expense of our country's most vulnerable populations--charging us with the broken system we have today. An urgent call to fellow Americans to open their eyes to the immigration crisis and understand that it affects us all, this honest and heartrending memoir paints a vivid portrait of how we got here and what it means to be a survivor, a feminist, a citizen, and a journalist who owns her voice while striving for the truth. Also available in Spanish as Una vez fui tú.

This book offers a historical and comparative overview of the evolution of racial classifications in the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The Hispanicization of America is precipitating a paradigm shift in racial thinking in which race is no longer defined by distinct characteristics but rather is becoming synonymous with ethnic/cultural identity. Traditionally, assimilation has been conceived of as a unidirectional and racialized phenomenon. Newly arrived immigrant groups or longstanding minority/indigenous populations were "Americanized" in confining their racial and ethnic natures to the private sphere and adopting, in the public sphere, the cultural mores, norms, and values of the dominant cultural/racial group. In contrast, the Hispanicization of America entails the horizontal assimilation of various groups from Spanish-speaking countries throughout the Western Hemisphere and Caribbean into a pan-ethnic, Hispanic/Latino identity that also challenges the privileged position of whiteness as the primary and exclusive referent for American identity. Instead of focusing on one Hispanic group, ethnic identity, or region, this book chronicles the development of racial identity across the largest Hispanic groups throughout the United States.

In this collection of firsthand accounts by those who knew Cesar Chavez best, a portrait of an uncommonly complex man, both driven and focused, yet humble, empathic and exceedingly principled, emerges. The reader gains an understanding of the yoke Chavez chose to place upon his own shoulders, as well as the ideals he employed to accomplish for the migrant farmworkers what many predicted would be impossible. The 45+ contributors range from the famous -- Edward James Olmos, Henry Cisneros, Martin Sheen, Coretta Scott King, Jerry Brown and others -- to members of the Chavez family, to UFW staff, to the farmworkers themselves. Illustrated by the compelling black and white photographs of George Elfie Ballis, who began photographing the farmworker movement in the 1950s.

2023 Outstanding Book Award​, National Association for Ethnic Studies Finalist, 2024 Charles Rufus Morey Book Award, College Art Association How Latinx artists around the US adopted the medium of printmaking to reclaim the lands of the Americas. Printmakers have conspired, historically, to illustrate the maps created by European colonizers that were used to chart and claim their expanding territories. Over the last three decades, Latinx artists and print studios have reclaimed this printed art form for their own spatial discourse. This book examines the limited editions produced at four art studios around the US that span everything from sly critiques of Manifest Destiny to printed portraits of Dreamers in Texas. Reclaiming the Americas is the visual history of Latinx printmaking in the US. Tatiana Reinoza employs a pan-ethnic comparative model for this interdisciplinary study of graphic art, drawing on art history, Latinx studies, and geography in her discussions. The book contests printmaking's historical complicity in the logics of colonization and restores the art form and the lands it once illustrated to the Indigenous, migrant, mestiza/o, and Afro-descendant people of the Americas.

WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE FOR NONFICTION Named One of The New York Times' 100 Notable Books of 2023 One of Time's 100 Must-Read Books of 2023 | A Top Ten Book of 2023 at Chicago Public Library A new book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer about the twenty-first-century Latino experience and identity. In Our Migrant Souls, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Héctor Tobar delivers a definitive and personal exploration of what it means to be Latino in the United States right now. "Latino" is the most open-ended and loosely defined of the major race categories in the United States, and also one of the most rapidly growing. Composed as a direct address to the young people who identify or have been classified as "Latino," Our Migrant Souls is the first account of the historical and social forces that define Latino identity. Taking on the impacts of colonialism, public policy, immigration, media, and pop culture, Our Migrant Souls decodes the meaning of "Latino" as a racial and ethnic identity in the modern United States, and gives voice to the anger and the hopes of young Latino people who have seen Latinidad transformed into hateful tropes and who have faced insult and division--a story as old as this country itself. Tobar translates his experience as not only a journalist and novelist but also a mentor, a leader, and an educator. He interweaves his own story, and that of his parents' migration to the United States from Guatemala, into his account of his journey across the country to uncover something expansive, inspiring, true, and alive about the meaning of "Latino" in the twenty-first century. A new book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer about the twenty-first-century Latino experience and identity. In Our Migrant Souls, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Héctor Tobar delivers a definitive and personal exploration of what it means to be Latino in the United States right now. "Latino" is the most open-ended and loosely defined of the major race categories in the United States, and also one of the most rapidly growing. Composed as a direct address to the young people who identify or have been classified as "Latino," Our Migrant Souls is the first account of the historical and social forces that define Latino identity. Taking on the impacts of colonialism, public policy, immigration, media, and pop culture, Our Migrant Souls decodes the meaning of "Latino" as a racial and ethnic identity in the modern United States, and gives voice to the anger and the hopes of young Latino people who have seen Latinidad transformed into hateful tropes and who have faced insult and division--a story as old as this country itself. Tobar translates his experience as not only a journalist and novelist but also a mentor, a leader, and an educator. He interweaves his own story, and that of his parents' migration to the United States from Guatemala, into his account of his journey across the country to uncover something expansive, inspiring, true, and alive about the meaning of "Latino" in the twenty-first century.

"The self-help book Latinas have been waiting for. The ultimate reminder for us all to make time to better our lives, joy, and self-care routines." --Hip Latina Prioritize your well-being with more than 100 exercises designed specifically to help Latinas revitalize their outlook on life, improve their mental health, eliminate stress, and self-advocate. Between micro- and macro-aggressions at school, the workplace, and even the grocery store, a constant news cycle highlighting Latine trauma, and a general lack of resources for women of color, it's tough to be a Latina woman and prioritize your wellness, both physically and mentally. With Self-Care for Latinas, you'll find more than 100 exercises to radically choose to put yourself first. Whether you need a quick pick-me-up in the middle of the day, you're working through feelings of burnout, or you need to process a microaggression, this book is for you. In a world that works to devalue Latinas, it's time to make the radical decision to prioritize you: your life, your joy, and your self-care.

Beginning with the early 1800s and extending to the modern era, Rosales collects illuminating documents that shed light on the Mexican-American quest for life, liberty, and justice. Documents include petitions, correspondence, government reports, political proclamations, newspaper items, congressional testimony, memoirs, and even international treaties.

In the national bestseller "Translation Nation," Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hector Tobar takes us on the definitive tour of the Spanish-speaking United States--a parallel nation, 35 million strong, that is changing the very notion of what it means to be an American in unprecedented and unexpected ways. Tobar begins on familiar terrain, in his native Los Angeles, with his family's story, along with that of two brothers of Mexican origin with very different interpretations of Americanismo, or American identity as seen through a Latin American lens--one headed for U.S. citizenship and the other for the wrong side of the law and the south side of the border. But this is just a jumping-off point. Soon we are in Dalton, Georgia, the most Spanish-speaking town in the Deep South, and in Rupert, Idaho, where the most popular radio DJ is known as "El Chupacabras." By the end of the book, we have traveled from the geographical extremes into the heartland, exploring the familiar complexities of Cuban Miami and the brand-new ones of a busy Omaha INS station. Sophisticated, provocative, and deeply human, "Translation Nation" uncovers the ways that Hispanic Americans are forging new identities, redefining the experience of the American immigrant, and reinventing the American community. It is a book that rises, brilliantly, to meet one of the most profound shifts in American identity.