The Libraries celebrate September 15 through October 15 as Latine and Hispanic Heritage Month by highlighting works in our collections by members of the Latine and Hispanic community. This 30-day period celebrates the cultures, histories and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean as well as Central and South America. Our reading list reflects recommendations from the Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACAS) program. These titles provide perspectives on identity, ability, and women’s and queer experiences. We encourage you to read works by and about members of the Latine and Hispanic community this month and throughout the year!
The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo
by Oscar Zeta Acosta
Before his mysterious disappearance and probable death in 1971, Oscar Zeta Acosta was famous as a Robin Hood Chicano layer and notorious as the real-life model for Hunter S. Thompson’s ‘Dr. Gonzo,’ a fat, pugnacious attorney with a gargantuan appetite for food, drugs, and life on the edge. Written with uninhibited candor and manic energy, this book is Acosta’s own account of coming of age as a Chicano in the psychedelic sixties, of taking on impossible cases while breaking all tile rules of courtroom conduct, and of scrambling headlong in search of a personal and cultural identity. It is a landmark of contemporary Hispanic-American literature, at once ribald, surreal, and unmistakably authentic.
Bless Me, Ultima ; Tortuga ; Alburquerque
by Rudolfo A. Anaya
Mythmaker, master storyteller, and a writer powerfully attuned to the land and history of his native New Mexico, Rudolfo Anaya is one of the undisputed fathers of Chicano literature. Writing in an era when Latino voices were marginalized and just beginning to be read and acknowledged, Anaya broke new ground with Bless Me, Ultima (1972), a mythic novel that captures the richness and complexity of history, community, and place in the American Southwest. Bless Me, Ultima, read eagerly and widely before receiving even a single mainstream review, launched Anaya on an acclaimed literary career. Tortuga (1979), drawing on his own experience of suffering and recuperation after a diving accident as a teenager, is set in a rehabilitation center for disabled children. And in the 1992 novel Alburquerque (restoring the original “r” that was removed from the city’s name), a young boxing champion discovers that his white biological mother had given him up for adoption at birth, spurring him to reevaluate everything he had thought himself to be.
Madwoman
by Shara McCallum
Haunting, alarming, transformative, and elusive, these poems bridge together the gaps between development stages: from girl, to woman, and then mother. With the complexities that intertwine them, can you be all three at once? Who shapes our identity, and who is in control here? How do we recognize, acknowledge, and honor the changing of who we are?
The Oval Portrait : Thirty-seven Contemporary Cuban Women Writers and Artists
edited by Soleida Ríos
The Oval Portrait was originally published as El retrato ovalado (Ediciones Union, Havana, Cuba, 2015). Editor Soleida Ríos set a difficult task for herself and nearly three dozen other Cuban women writers, artists, and thinkers. She asked each to “choose a mask. With it she spins her story so that her own image appears in the story as well as the connection (always mysterious) and the symbol with which she has chosen to represent herself.” The result, beyond being a postmodernist tour de force, was “a perfect vehicle for introspection.” As Ríos herself puts it: “The game requires us to go deep … Shall we say: Rather than a portrait, construct a mirror, through which you may touch the difficult and shared places. And then, at the end, ask yourself the question: Which are your favorite lies?”
Sirena Selena
by Mayra Santos-Febres
Discovered By Martha Divine In The Backstreets of San Juan, picking over garbage, drugged out of his mind and singing boleros that transfix the listener, a fifteen year old hustler is transformed into Sirena Selena, a diva whose uncanny beauty and irresistible voice will be their ticket to fame and fortune. Auditioning for one of the luxury hotels in the Dominican Republic, Selena casts her spell over Hugo Graubel, one of the hotel’s rich investors. Graubel is a powerful man in the Republic, married with children. Silena, determined to escape the poverty and abuse she suffered as a child, engages Graubel in a long seduction in this mordant, intensely lyrical tragi-comedy — part masque, part cabaret — about identity (class, race, gender) and “the hunger and desire to be other things.”
Book descriptions based on publisher information