According to NationalToday.com, in May 2004, the Rhode Island Latino Arts organization coined the month of May as “Latino Books Month“.
Latino Books Month was sponsored by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the initiative was to encourage booksellers, librarians, and teachers to promote books by and for Latino people and urge their communities to read these books.
I came across this information while doing the market research for Jefa in Training, and quickly realized that Latino Books Month was not widely known, nor am I sure when the last time it was celebrated. Well that changes AHORA.
Here’s the thing - I’ll take any chance I can get to brag about our comunidad - because we deserve it and also because do we really have to wait for other people to notice us until September? 🙃
There is a huge lack of Latina authors being published - especially when it comes to nonfiction - but that is slowly starting to change. Just in the last year, so many incredible books have come out FOR US and BY US, and I am so proud that mine is one of them. <3
So STAY TUNED for some upcoming events I’m curating with some incredible authors but in the meantime, here are 5 books by powerful mujeres that are on my current reading list and I hope you will add them to yours!
PS: If you’re running to buy these, please support your local Latina-owned bookstore and order them through Bookshop.
In Valeria Aloe’s Uncolonized Latinas: Transforming our Mindsets and Rising Together we discover that, in order to improve the world, we must first start with ourselves. This book takes us on a journey to do just that. Along the way we meet immigrant Latinas and daughters of immigrants who, through trials and tribulations, have uncolonized their limiting mindsets and have found their true selves.
This book guides us to:
Embrace our individual and collective greatness, as we honor our stories and our ancestry.
Become more aware of the limiting cultural narratives that have been running us.
As a Latina, thrive in your career and life from a place of self-esteem, as you learn from those Latinas who figured out how to navigate the system.
As an Ally, feel confident and become more effective when mentoring diverse talent.
Through this journey we can learn how to experience transformational change—open our heart, mind, and eyes.
Read the preview on Google Books here.
This “electrifying debut” (Los Angeles Times) arms women of color with the tools and knowledge they need to find success on their own terms
For generations, Brown girls have had to push against powerful forces of sexism, racism, and classism, often feeling alone in the struggle. By founding Latina Rebels, Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez has created a community to help women fight together. In For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts, she offers wisdom and a liberating path forward for all women of color. She crafts powerful ways to address the challenges Brown girls face, from imposter syndrome to colorism. She empowers women to decolonize their worldview, and defy “universal” white narratives, by telling their own stories. Her book guides women of color toward a sense of pride and sisterhood and offers essential tools to energize a movement.
May it spark a fire within you.
Read the preview on Google Books here.
Edited by The Bronx Is Reading founder Saraciea J. Fennell and featuring an all-star cast of Latinx contributors, Wild Tongues Can’t Be Tamed is a ground-breaking anthology that will spark dialogue and inspire hope
In Wild Tongues Can’t Be Tamed, bestselling and award-winning authors as well as up-and-coming voices interrogate the different myths and stereotypes about the Latinx diaspora. These fifteen original pieces delve into everything from ghost stories and superheroes, to memories in the kitchen and travels around the world, to addiction and grief, to identity and anti-Blackness, to finding love and speaking your truth. Full of both sorrow and joy, Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed is an essential celebration of this rich and diverse community.
The bestselling and award-winning contributors include Elizabeth Acevedo, Cristina Arreola, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Naima Coster, Natasha Diaz, Saraciea J. Fennell, Kahlil Haywood, Zakiya Jamal, Janel Martinez, Jasminne Mendez, Meg Medina, Mark Oshiro, Julian Randall, Lilliam Rivera, and Ibi Zoboi.
Read the preview on Google Books here.
We think we have the answers, but we need to be asking a lot more questions. Journalist Mónica Guzmán is the loving liberal daughter of Mexican immigrants who voted—twice—for Donald Trump. When the country could no longer see straight across the political divide, Mónica set out to find what was blinding us and discovered the most eye-opening tool we’re not using: our own built-in curiosity. Partisanship is up, trust is down, and our social media feeds make us sure we’re right and everyone else is ignorant (or worse). But avoiding one another is hurting our relationships and our society.
In this timely, personal guide, Mónica, the chief storyteller for the national cross-partisan depolarization organization Braver Angels, takes you to the real front lines of a crisis that threatens to grind America to a halt—broken conversations among confounded people. She shows you how to overcome the fear and certainty that surround us to finally do what only seems impossible: understand and even learn from people in your life whose whole worldview is different from or even opposed to yours. Drawing from cross-partisan conversations she’s had, organized, or witnessed everywhere from the echo chambers on social media to the wheat fields in Oregon to raw, unfiltered fights with her own family on election night, Mónica shows how you can put your natural sense of wonder to work for you immediately, finding the answers you need by talking with people—rather than about them—and asking the questions you want, curiously.
In these pages, you’ll learn:
• How to ask what you really want to know (even if you’re afraid to)
• How to grow smarter from even the most tense interactions, online or off
• How to cross boundaries and find common ground—with anyone
Whether you’re left, right, center, or not a fan of labels: If you’re ready to fight back against the confusion, heartbreak, and madness of our dangerously divided times—in your own life, at least—Mónica’s got the tools and fresh, surprising insights to prove that seeing where people are coming from isn’t just possible. It’s easier than you think.
Read the preview on Google Books here.
Funeral for Flaca is an exploration of things lost and found-love, identity, family-and the traumas that transcend bodies, borders, cultures, and generations.
Emilly Prado retraces her experience coming of age as a prep-turned-chola-turned-punk in this collection that is one-part memoir-in-essays, and one-part playlist, zigzagging across genres and decades, much like the rapidly changing and varied tastes of her youth. Emilly spends the late 90's and early aughts looking for acceptance as a young Chicana growing up in the mostly-white suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area before moving to Portland, Oregon in 2008. Ni de aquí, ni de allá, she tries to find her place in the in between.
Growing up, the boys reject her, her father cheats on her mother, then the boys cheat on her and she cheats on them. At 21-years-old, Emilly checks herself into a psychiatric ward after a mental breakdown. One year later, she becomes a survivor of sexual assault. A few years after that, she survives another attempted assault. She searches for the antidote that will cure her, cycling through love, heartbreak, sex, an eating disorder, alcohol, an ever-evolving style, and, of course, music.
She captures the painful reality of what it means to lose and find your identity, many times over again. For anyone who has ever lost their way as a child or as an adult, Funeral for Flaca unravels the complex layers of an unpredictable life, inviting us into an intimate and honest journey profoundly told with humor and heart by Emilly Prado.
Stay tuned for upcoming events with some of these mujeres and por favor - tell me, what books do I need to add to my list?!