Hispanic Heritage Month honors the histories and cultures of Latino/Latina/Latinx Americans with ancestry in Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. It is celebrated annually from September 15 to October 15. Librarians at the Seattle Public Library have created some lists to help readers discover and celebrate these voices, with select titles featured below.
Along Came Amor by Alexis Daria
Ava and Roman are clear on the rules of a one-night-stand, until they’re thrown together at her cousin’s wedding and their feelings turn serious, but complicated. (fiction)
Alligator Tears by Edgar Gomez
In this humorous memoir, Nicaraguan American Gomez recounts growing up poor in Florida, trying to keep his gay identity hidden from family who would disown him. (memoir)
Dreaming of Home: How We Turn Fear Into Pride, Power, and Real Change by Cristina Jiménez
Ecuadorian immigrant Jiménez recounts her family’s immigration to the United States when she was a child, her years spent undocumented, and her path to becoming a community organizer and American citizen. (memoir)
Moon Mirrored Indivisible by Farid Matuk
Matuk reflects on his mixed Syrian and Peruvian heritage, examining identity and the notion of the possible in four sections of poems, each of which challenge systems of power that would keep one contained and isolated from a collective. (poetry)
Archive of Unknown Universes by Ruben Reyes Jr.
In Cuba to do research on her thesis, Ana and boyfriend Luis use the Defractor, a tool that lets them see alternate versions of their lives – but which also allows them to discover the hidden life of Luis’s great-uncle Neto during El Salvador’s civil war. (fiction)
Every Sound Is Not a Wolf by Alberto Ríos
Ríos, Arizona’s first poet laureate, uses couplets to examine the duality of harmony/disharmony manifested throughout existence, from a speaker who balances two languages, to living on a border, to life and death, and beyond. (poetry)
~ posted by Andrea G.