Sept. 16, 2024 – National Hispanic American Heritage Month is September 15 to October 15. Started in 1969 as Hispanic Heritage Week under President Lyndon B. Johnson, it expended to the 30-day Hispanic Heritage Month in 1988 under President Ronald Reagan.
The month starts Sept. 15 because it is the the independence day of five Central American countries. Within the month, other Latin American countries celebrate their independence as well. National Hispanic Heritage Month traditionally honors the cultures and contributions of both Hispanic and Latino Americans and celebrates heritage rooted in all Latin American countries.
Cedar Rapids Public Library Materials Librarian Allison Zordell pulled together a list of novels, short story collections, and memoirs, along with a recently published cookbook, written by Hispanic authors, to read these this Hispanic Heritage Month – and the rest of the year.
"Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil" by Ananda Lima (2024)
A collection of short stories as told by a Brazilian-American writer who slept with the devil at a Halloween party in 1999 and who spends the rest of her life describing to him beautiful and impossible things.
"The Bullet Swallower" by Elizabeth Gonzalez James (2024)
In 1895, Antonio Sonoro is the latest in a long line of ruthless men. He's good with his gun and is drawn to trouble but he's also out of money and out of options. A drought has ravaged the town of Dorado, Mexico, where he lives with his wife and children, and so when he hears about a train laden with gold and other treasures, he sets off for Houston to rob it, with his younger brother Hugo in tow. But when the heist goes awry and Hugo is killed by the Texas Rangers, Antonio finds himself launched into a quest for revenge that endangers not only his life and his family, but his eternal soul. Jaime Sonoro is Mexico's most renowned actor and singer. But his comfortable life is disrupted when he discovers a book that purports to tell the entire history of his family beginning with Cain and Abel. In its ancient pages, Jaime learns about the multitude of horrific crimes committed by his ancestors. And when the same mysterious figure from Antonio's timeline shows up in Mexico City, Jaime realizes that he may be the one who has to pay for his ancestors' crimes, unless he can discover the true story of his grandfather Antonio, the legendary bandido El Tragabalas, The Bullet Swallower.
"The Great Divide" by Cristina Henriquez (2024)
An epic novel of the construction of the Panama Canal, casting light on the unsung people who lived, loved, and labored there, by the acclaimed author of "The Book of Unknown Americans."
"There is a Rio Grande in Heaven: Stories" by Ruben Reyes, Jr. (2024)
A debut story collection about Central American identity spans past, present, and future worlds to reveal what happens when your life is no longer your own.
"My Side of the River: A Memoir" by Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez (2024)
Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez reveals her experience as the U.S. born daughter of immigrants and what happened when, at fifteen, her parents were forced back to Mexico in this galvanizing yet tender memoir. Born to Mexican immigrants south of the Rillito River in Tucson, Arizona, Elizabeth had the world at her fingertips as she entered her freshman year of high school as the number one student. But suddenly, Elizabeth's own country took away the most important right a child has: a right to have a family. As her parents' visas expired, they were forced to return to Mexico, leaving Elizabeth responsible for her younger brother, as well as her education. Determined to break the cycle of being "a statistic," she knew that even though her parents couldn't stay, there was no way she could let go of the opportunities the U.S. could provide. Armed with only her passport and sheer teenage determination, Elizabeth became what her school would eventually describe as an unaccompanied, homeless youth, one of thousands of underage victims affected by family separation due to broken immigration laws.
"Sun of Blood and Ruin" by Mariely Lares (2024)
In sixteenth-century New Spain, witchcraft is punishable by death, indigenous temples have been destroyed, and tales of mythical creatures that once roamed the land have become whispers in the night. Hidden behind a mask, Pantera uses her magic and legendary swordplay skills to fight the tyranny of Spanish rule. To all who know her, Leonora de Las Casas Tlazohtzin never leaves the palace and is promised to the heir of the Spanish throne. The respectable, law-abiding Lady Leonora faints at the sight of blood and would rather be caught dead than meddle in court affairs. No one suspects that Leonora and Pantera are the same person. Leonora's charade is tragically good, and with magic running through her veins, she is nearly invincible. Nearly. Despite her mastery, she is destined to die young in battle, as predicted by a seer. When an ancient prophecy of destruction threatens to come true, Leonora, and therefore Pantera, is forced to decide: surrender the mask or fight to the end. Knowing she is doomed to a short life, she is tempted to take the former option. But the legendary Pantera is destined for more than an early grave, and once she discovers the truth of her origins, not even death will stop her.
"The Volcano Daughters" by Gina Maria Balibrera (2024)
El Salvador, 1923. Graciela, a young girl growing up on a volcano in a community of Indigenous women, is summoned to the capital, where she is claimed as an oracle for a rising dictator. There she meets Consuelo, the sister she has never known, who was stolen from their home before Graciela was born. The two spend years under the cruel El Gran Pendejo’s regime, unwillingly helping his reign of terror, until genocide strikes the community from which they hail. Each believing the other to be dead, they escape, fleeing across the globe, reinventing themselves until fate ultimately brings them back together in the most unlikely of ways.
"The SalviSoul Cookbook: Salvadoran Recipes & the Women who Preserve Them" by Karla Tatiana Vasquez (2024)
A beautifully photographed cookbook that celebrates the vibrant culture and community of El Salvador through eighty recipes and stories from twenty-five Salvadoran women.
"Tías and Primas: On Knowing and Loving the Women who Raise Us" by Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodriguez (2024)
Born into a large, close-knit family in Nicaragua, Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez grew up surrounded by strong, kind, funny, sensitive, resilient, judgmental, messy, beautiful women. Whether blood relatives or chosen family, these tías and primas fundamentally shaped her view of the world – and so did the labels used to talk about them. The tía loca who is shunned for defying gender roles. The pretty prima put on a pedestal for her European features. The matriarch who is the core of her community but hides all her pain. In "Tías and Primas," the follow-up to her acclaimed debut "For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts," Mojica Rodríguez explores these archetypes. Fearlessly grappling with the effects of intergenerational trauma, centuries of colonization, and sexism, she attempts to heal the pain that is so often embodied in female family lines. "Tías and Primas" is a deeply felt love letter to family, community, and Latinas everywhere.
"The Sons of El Rey" by Alex Espinoza (2024)
Ernesto Vega has lived many lives, from pig farmer to construction worker to famed luchador El Rey Coyote, yet he has always worn a mask. He was discovered by a local lucha libre trainer at a time when luchadores – Mexican wrestlers donning flamboyant masks and capes – were treated as daredevils or rock stars. Ernesto found fame, rapidly gaining name recognition across Mexico, but at great expense, nearly costing him his marriage to his wife Elena. Years later, in East Los Angeles, his son, Freddy Vega, is struggling to save his father's gym while Freddy's own son, Julian, is searching for professional and romantic fulfillment as a Mexican American gay man refusing to be defined by stereotypes. With alternating perspectives, Ernesto and Elena take you from the ranches of Michoacan to the makeshift colonias of Mexico City. Freddy describes life in the suburban streets of 1980s Los Angeles and the community their family built, as Julian descends deep into our present-day culture of hook-up apps, lucha burlesque shows, and the dark underbelly of West Hollywood.
"Catalina" by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio (2024)
Catalina is trying to work out her own life as she leaves her undocumented family behind to enter Harvard. Suffering from bouts of PTSD, she struggles to connect to her new world just as she struggled to make sense of her old one. She infiltrates the subcultures of elite undergrads-internships and college newspapers, parties and secret societies – and observes them like an anthropologist, but then falls in love, or something like love, with a fellow student, an actual anthropology scholar who wants to teach her about the Andean world she was born in but never knew. They are drawn to each other by the strange attraction of exocticized fascination – she, a real live Latin American, becomes a subject of academic interest; he, in turns, draws her fascination as a white legacy admit born into the strange world she now navigates. Catalina is uncertain: should she let herself become what he wants her to be and take up residence in his secure and privileged world? Or should she return to the life she's known, with all its thorny precarity? Who is she anyway?