Latino Heritage Month: Fiction & Literature

This multi-layered story follows 100 years in the life of the Buendia family in the jungle settlement of Macondo. Translated from Spanish.

A man investigates the death of an acquaintance, and in the process explores the experiences of a generation of Colombians impacted by Escobar and the drug trade.

A lively collection of short stories by Bolivian writers, some of whom warrant more readers.

Dominican Republic

Details the experiences of Oscar and his family and friends in New Jersey and the Dominican Republic, exposing you to a rich mix of the cultures in both locations.

 

Pregnant and abandoned in Chile by her lover who is lured by the California gold rush, sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Sommers heads to San Francisco herself.  Disguised as a boy, she spends four years searching for the man she thought she loved, all the while being guided and cared for by Tao Chi-en, a Chinese healer.This is a sweeping historical novel that follows the adventures of its heroine from her childhood in Chile to the gold fields of California as she searches for her first love.

 

All the men have left Tres Camarones for the United States, leaving its residents vulnerable to abuse from local bandidos. But after 19-year-old Nayeli watches The Magnificent Seven, she and her friends hatch a plan to take back their village.

In an affluent Los Angeles community, a Mexican live-in maid, Araceli, discovers that her employers are gone, and she is left in a sprawling house with the owners' two little boys. So begins an adventure in today's Los Angeles, as Araceli takes the two children on a search for their grandfather Señor Torres.

This book takes a realistic and gritty look at a band of fighters during the Mexican Revolution.

Thwarted love, magic, family traditions and recipes are part of this best-selling lovely novel set in turn of the century Mexico.  As the youngest daughter of tyrannical Mama Elena, Tita cannot marry before her older sisters do. Tita and Pedro are madly in love, but Mama Elena has another plan--for Pedro to marry Rosaura, and Tita is to prepare the wedding dinner.

In an apartment building in Delaware, nine families of immigrants from Central and South America have taken up residence in the hopes of creating new and better lives in America. Told in alternating voices, the many stories center around the budding—and tragic—romance between two teenagers. This beautiful, powerful book is a must-read.

Junot Diaz, known for two other books: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Drown continues the story of Yunior in this candid, funny, poignant set of short stories about the heartache between men and women as the result of the love/lust that fuels but rarely sustains relationships. Several stories are told in the first-person narrative, in Diaz's unique raw and chilling style which hits at the bone-marrow truth of people's lives.

A deeply involving look at South America's political turmoil during the 1960s and 1970s, when several nations' left-leaning governments were toppled by the military, with the covert assistance of the CIA, and many people lost their careers and possessions, or simply "disappeared".  In a "Citizen Kane"-style narrative spanning forty years, a Brazilian diplomat obsessively tracks the involvement of Max, his onetime friend, mentor and colleague, in the intrigues that destroyed the lives of thousands of people in Chile, Uruguay, and their own country.

Sanchez's steamy and lyrical collection also includes platonic love poems for Ella Fitzgerald, Tupac Shakur, and Gwendolyn Brooks.

A beloved collection by the Nobel Prize-winning author. "You are mine, mine, woman with sweet lips/and in your life my infinite dreams live." -Pablo Neruda

After his marriage falters, Urrea takes a long car ride, wandering cross-country from east to west, writing lyrically about the land, his life, and his past.

Written by writers from all over the world this collection of poems pays tribute to Che Guevara

The 25th anniversay edition of Luis J. Rodriguez's first published poetry collection,  when he was "a 35-year old unknown writer hungry for the power of words, metaphors, and images, for the purposeful agreements that keep people in life, in art, in the realms of meaning and connection."

When Horsell Common is invaded by strange ships from another world, Scotland Yard seeks out H.G. Wells, whose new novel The War of the Worlds bears an uncanny resemblance to recent occurrences. Did Wells know about the Martian invasion prior to its happening? In the second book of a planned trilogy, following up 2011's The Map of Time, Felix Palma spins a gripping tale of alien invasion and time travel.

Palma has won the following awards: Cadiz Latin American Story Award, 2003, for the short story "Los Arácnidos" ("The Arachnids"); Luis Berenguer Award for Novel, 2005, for Las Corrientes Oceánicas; Ateneo de Sevilla XL Prize, 2008, for El Mapa del Tiempo.  [Contemporary Authors Online 2012, Literature and Resource Center]

 

An early book of poetry from the current Poet Laureate of the United States, which chronicles a short torrid love affair, melding it with artistic, literary, social allusions, and life in the barrio.

Young Anthony Márez tells the tale of his boyhood, his friends, his religious stirrings, the events of his small community, and the wisdom of Ultima, a curandera who became his teacher, in this lyrical novel.

A complete collection, for the first time in English, of Clarice Lispector's short stories. She is one of South America's recently "discovered" major writers.

From today's news and headlines, Acevedo depicts a love story set within the history of Castro's Cuba; about those who dare to leave and those who do not; and Maria Sirena's story about her incredible family of fiercely strong, independent people.

In this award-winning debut novel, tough life-altering decisions face Lizet, daughter of Cuban immigrants, who is about to enter college, and leave her immediate family.  A hard-won opportunity for advancement in a new country is not necessarily the answer to all of life's questions.

One of Mexico's exceptional new writers (Faces in the crowd) Luiselli has created a humorous and challenging novel which combines literary references with the story of Highway, a combination of fabulist and soothsayer, who claims to possess the teeth of various famous people.

 

A fine selection of thirty-one women writers from fourteen Latin American countries. This collection brings awareness to writers whose works may not be well-known and deserve attention.

Ana Castillo, novelist, poet, journalist, and social critic, recounts the challenges, joys in this collection of personal essays.

Short bilingual prose poems/flash fiction portray Buenos Aires in all of its glitz, sadness, hope and unbroken political turmoil.

Eduardo Galeano is best known for the trilogy Memory of Fire, which is a searing denunciation of colonialism throughout the Americas. Using poetic prose Galeano created 333 vignettes that should be read very carefully. All of them are beautiful but are loaded with political, social and ethical irony.

Richard Blanco was the fifth poet selected to read an original poem for a United States Presidential Inauguration. As an openly gay man and Cuban immigrant this was a very special event, which he recounts with humor, insight and reverence. 

Sandra Cisneros is best known for: The house on Mango Street and Woman hollering creek and other stories. Through a collection of non-fiction pieces, she weaves together the story of her life and work.

The autobiography of the first Latino and openly gay presidential inaugural poet.  

Political cartoons are charged with commentary, but their artist has an advantage as a satirist, and may also have tremendous power to influence an entire country.  "The living legend," political cartoonist Javier Mallarino, has his conscience and position rattled by a young woman who forces him to examine his life and work.

Santiago Roncagliolo has written a very sassy, funny and touching short story collection about relationships and communication. 

Roncagliolo was the youngest recipient of the Alfaguara Prize for this political thriller about a murder in Peru, possibly by the brutal terrorist group the Shining Path, and the equally brutual reaction by the Fujimori government. While trying to take the just course of action, a district prosecutor is pulled into a society trapped in chaos and anarchy.

Writer, editor, playwright, poet, essayist, feminist, and lesbian activist, Chicana Cherrie Moraga presents a deeply felt autobiography. It is, in great part, a loving homage to her mother,r with whom she had a complicated and inspiring relationship.

A collection of the poetic works of fifteen modern Latina poets.

Through his poetry Rigoberto González lyrically confronts harrowing cultural, political and moral issues.

Brazilian novelist, short story writer, and journalist, Clarice Lispector is well known for her innovative style of writing. Born in the Ukraine in 1920, she was brought to Brazil after World War I. Beautiful and brainy, her life was peripatetic and turbulent. This biography is based upon years of reserach and brings attention to a major writer.

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1945 "for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world"

This novel is considered to be the master work of Guatemalan novelist Miguel Angel Asturias, who was awarded the 1967 Nobel Prize in Literature. This experimental work is based on the Mayan people who believed corn was sacred. 

In this new edition of a classic work of poetry, Gary Soto draws upon his own Chicano heritage and of others who labored as immigrant agricultural workers in the San Joaquin Valley.

Elements of realism, magical realism and surrealism are found in the numerous novellas and short stories of César Aira. He is the master of the short take, weaving philsophical questions about existence and being with humor and magic. This collection of 20 short stories takes its title from one short story that deciphers the birth of a municipal library in the author's hometown of Coronel Pringles. Recommended for readers who like Jorge Luis Borges

These are the combined stories about the adventurer Maqroll, known as "el Gaviero" or the Lookout. The stories are in the picaresque tradition--humorous and ribald. The life of the author, Álvaro Mutis, was an adventure as documented in his obituary.

A collection of the short stories of Brazilian writer Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, whose work has influenced writers throughout the world. The grandson of freed slaves, Machado de Assis had a discerning eye in observing people of all social classes and wrote about humanity with empathy and satire.

Acclaimed novelist Carlos Fuentes makes a foray into short fiction with this stellar collection that explores the lives of many different Mexican families.

The first English translation of Ocampo's poetry brings attention to the clear and lyrical work of this highly regarded Latino writer.

A small town so isolated there could be a wall around it. There is an insularity that has created a world where truth is based on suspicion, rumor and myths. Is there a way out if there is no hope? Told in brilliant, raw prose, this is a town that could be anywhere in the world.

A family (mother, father, and their son and daughter) drive from New York to Arizona in search of the Apacheria, the land of the Apaches. On the radio, there is news of the immigration crisis at the southwestern border, and the plight of children being detained, or worse getting lost in the desert. This story of discovery is brilliantly written from unique perspectives. Valeria Luiselli was the recipient of the 2021 Dublin Literary Award.

  

Salvadoran poet Yesika Salgado is based in Los Angeles and writes about her family and her culture.

A compilation of writings that analyzes Puro Chicanx which is about Mexican ancestral heritage that might overlap with other Latinx cultures. Many topics are examined, from "rasquache to the refined."

Ada Limón’s poetry is direct, sensual, earthy and personal as she writes about her desires, fears and pleasures. She is the new U.S. Poet Laureate, 2022 - 2023. The Carrying won the National Book Critics Circle Award. 

  

Chilean writer Luis Sepúlveda’s bittersweet novel is a triumph of magical realism that foretells the oncoming ecological and humanitarian crises of today.

 

An immersive historical fiction/horror novel about working in the film industry in Mexico City in the 1990s. Montserrat has often been pushed aside and left out even though she's a superb sound editor, but when her best friend,Tristán, meets his new neighbor, a cult horror director, a vortex of filmmaking, Nazis, and magic converge.

A monumental collection of writing by women, the author designates as Latine, the gender-inclusive form of “Latino” and “Latina.”  Included are “140 Daughters of Latin America, recent and past, from 50 nations."

Based on his mother’s Red Cross service during World War II, Urrea portrays the lives of women who volunteered to be of service at the frontlines of the war, and brings to light the untold bravery, camaraderie and assistance of those who served.

 

This supernatural historical novel, set in 1840s Mexico, involves Nena, a daughter of a rancher who lived through a vampire attack when she was a teen and Néstor, who thought it was all his fault and ran away. They are reunited after nine years and must get over their hurt fellings in order to face what is coming in the future.