Hispanic Heritage Month: Books

Hispanic Heritage Month is a holiday in the United States that celebrates Hispanic culture. It gives Latin Americans and their families a special time to remember their roots, and it is also a chance for all Americans to recognize the contributions of Latin Americans. This book goes over the history of the holiday, gives suggestions on how to connect with Hispanic culture, and highlights well-known Latinos in the United States and their achievements. Readers will love the chance to learn about the beautiful culture of Latin America in this age-appropriate and engaging book.

Join Pepe as he celebrates his Mexican-American heritage by participating in a Hispanic Day parade. Children will delight in seeing many Hispanic cultures proudly honored in this joyous picture book. Pepe wakes up energized to attend his first Hispanic Day parade. With new food to taste, music to dance to, and a parade to watch, Pepe couldn't be more excited to celebrate and share his Hispanic heritage. Many of Pepe's friends also attend the festival, celebrating their own Hispanic ties. Mexican, Dominican, Panamanian, Colombian, Honduran, Nicaraguan, Chilean, Puerto Rican, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, and Cuban cultures are all represented in the parade. A day filled with joy and pride, Pepe and the Parade is a jubilant celebration of culture and identity. With Spanish words effortlessly included throughout, this title is a great introduction to the Spanish language. A glossary of Spanish words, complete with English translations, and an educational author's note provide useful tools for further learning and discussion.

An NPR Best Book of the Year, exploring the impact of Latinos' new collective racial identity on the way Americans understand race, with a new afterword by the author Who are Latinos and where do they fit in America's racial order? In this "timely and important examination of Latinx identity" (Ms.), Laura E. Gómez, a leading critical race scholar, argues that it is only recently that Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, Central Americans, and others are seeing themselves (and being seen by others) under the banner of a cohesive racial identity. And the catalyst for this emergent identity, she argues, has been the ferocity of anti-Latino racism. In what Booklist calls "an incisive study of history, complex interrogation of racial construction, and sophisticated legal argument," Gómez "packs a knockout punch" (Publishers Weekly), illuminating for readers the fascinating race-making, unmaking, and re-making processes that Latinos have undergone over time, indelibly changing the way race functions in this country. Building on the "insightful and well-researched" (Kirkus Reviews) material of the original, the paperback features a new afterword in which the author analyzes results of the 2020 Census, providing brilliant, timely insight about how Latinos have come to self-identify.

The history of Hispanic Americans is inextricably linked to the colonization and territorial expansion of contemporary America. In the 19th century, Florida, Texas, New Mexico, and much of California-all geographic regions with significant Spanish and Hispanic populations-were annexed as part of what was to become the United States. Immigrants from Mexico, Central America, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic have also contributed to the Hispanic American community and have thereby complicated as well as enriched any single definition of that ethnic group. Written in an engaging and informative manner, The Hispanic Americans focuses on the social history, customs, and traditions of Hispanic Americans in this country. Ideal for history buffs, this brand-new volume boasts black-and-white photographs, an index, glossary, and box features.

Although the United States has always been a nation of immigrants, the recent demographic shifts resulting in burgeoning young Latino and Asian populations have literally changed the face of the nation. This wave of massive immigration has led to a nationwide struggle with the need to become bicultural, a difficult and sometimes painful process of navigating between ethnic cultures. While some Latino adolescents become alienated and turn to antisocial behavior and substance use, others go on to excel in school, have successful careers, and build healthy families. Drawing on both quantitative and qualitative data ranging from surveys to extensive interviews with immigrant families, Becoming Bicultural explores the individual psychology, family dynamics, and societal messages behind bicultural development and sheds light on the factors that lead to positive or negative consequences for immigrant youth. Paul R. Smokowski and Martica Bacallao illuminate how immigrant families, and American communities in general, become bicultural and use their bicultural skills to succeed in their new surroundings The volume concludes by offering a model for intervention with immigrant teens and their families which enhances their bicultural skills.

Hispanics account for more than half the population growth in the United States over the last decade. With this surge has come a dramatic spike in the number of Hispanic-owned businesses. Hispanic Entrepreneurs in the 2000s is a pioneering study of this nascent demographic. Drawing on rich quantitative data, authors Alberto Dávila and Marie T. Mora examine key economic issues facing Hispanic entrepreneurs, such as access to financial capital and the adoption and vitality of digital technology. They analyze the varying effects that these factors have on subsets of the Hispanic community, such as Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Salvadorans, while considering gender and immigrant status. This account highlights key policies to drive the success of Hispanic entrepreneurs, while drawing out strategies that entrepreneurs can use in order to cultivate their businesses. Far-reaching and nuanced, Hispanic Entrepreneurs in the 2000s is an important study of a population that is quickly becoming a vital component of American job creation.

Winner of the 2018 Pura Belpre Award! "A book for anyone mending from childhood wounds."--Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street   In this unforgettable multicultural coming-of-age narrative--based on the author's childhood in the 1960s--a young Cuban-Jewish immigrant girl is adjusting to her new life in New York City when her American dream is suddenly derailed. Ruthie's plight will intrigue readers, and her powerful story of strength and resilience, full of color, light, and poignancy, will stay with them for a long time.   Ruthie Mizrahi and her family recently emigrated from Castro's Cuba to New York City. Just when she's finally beginning to gain confidence in her mastery of English--and enjoying her reign as her neighborhood's hopscotch queen--a horrific car accident leaves her in a body cast and confined her to her bed for a long recovery. As Ruthie's world shrinks because of her inability to move, her powers of observation and her heart grow larger and she comes to understand how fragile life is, how vulnerable we all are as human beings, and how friends, neighbors, and the power of the arts can sweeten even the worst of times.

"Poignant . . . Powerful . . . Beautifully captures the threshold experience of the new immigrant, where the past is not yet a memory." --The New York Times Book Review Acclaimed writer Julia Alvarez's beloved first novel gives voice to four sisters as they grow up in two cultures. The García sisters--Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofía--and their family must flee their home in the Dominican Republic after their father's role in an attempt to overthrow brutal dictator Rafael Trujillo is discovered. They arrive in New York City in 1960 to a life far removed from their existence in the Caribbean. In the wondrous but not always welcoming U.S.A., their parents try to hold on to their old ways as the girls try find new lives: by straightening their hair and wearing American fashions, and by forgetting their Spanish. For them, it is at once liberating and excruciating to be caught between the old world and the new. Here they tell their stories about being at home--and not at home--in America. Julia Alvarez's new novel, Afterlife, is available now.

In Chica Lit: Popular Latina Fiction and Americanization in the Twenty-First Century, Tace Hedrick illuminates how discourses of Americanization, ethnicity, gender, class, and commodification shape the genre of "chica lit," popular fiction written by Latina authors with Latina characters. She argues that chica lit is produced and marketed in the same ways as contemporary romance and chick lit fiction, and aimed at an audience of twenty- to thirty-something upwardly mobile Latina readers. Its stories about young women's ethnic class mobility and gendered romantic success tend to celebrate twenty-first century neoliberal narratives about Americanization, hard work, and individual success. However, Hedrick emphasizes, its focus on Latina characters necessarily inflects this celebratory mode: the elusiveness of meaning in its use of the very term "Latina" empties out the differences among and between Latina/o and Chicano/a groups in the United States. Of necessity, chica lit also struggles with questions about the actual social and economic "place" of Latinas and Chicanas in this same neoliberal landscape; these questions unsettle its reliance on the tried-and-true formulas of chick lit and romance writing. Looking at chica lit's market-driven representations of difference, poverty, and Americanization, Hedrick shows how this writing functions within the larger arena of struggles over popular representation of Latinas and Chicanas.

"Equal parts pee-your-pants hilarity and break your heart poignancy- like the perfect brunch date you never want to end!"--America Ferrera, Emmy award-winning actress in Ugly Betty From the New York Times bestselling author of I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, an utterly original memoir-in-essays that is as deeply moving as it is disarmingly funny Growing up as the daughter of Mexican immigrants in Chicago in the '90s, Erika L. Sánchez was a self-described pariah, misfit, and disappointment--a foul-mouthed, melancholic rabble-rouser who painted her nails black but also loved comedy and dreamed of an unlikely life as a poet. Twenty-five years later, she's now an award-winning novelist, poet, and essayist, but she's still got an irrepressible laugh, an acerbic wit, and singular powers of perception about the world around her. In these essays about everything from sex to white feminism to debilitating depression to the redemptive pursuits of spirituality, art, and travel, Sánchez reveals an interior life that is rich with ideas, self-awareness, and perception--that of a woman who charted a path entirely of her own making. Raunchy, insightful, unapologetic, and brutally honest, Crying in the Bathroom is Sánchez at her best: a book that will make you feel that post-confessional high that comes from talking for hours with your best friend.