Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month: What We’re Reading
From expanding our policy fight to becoming a more inclusive and belonging organization, Food Bankers always seem to have our noses in books, blogs, and articles that help us be more effective in our work. Below is a list of recommendations that some Food Bankers have found helpful (or just really liked). We hope you find them helpful, too.
Please consider supporting one of our amazing local bookstores!
Bandung Books
Oakland
Marcus Book Stores
Oakland
Moe’s Books
Berkeley
Pegasus Books
Berkeley & Oakland
Fruit of the Drunken Tree
Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Seven-year-old Chula lives a carefree life in her gated community in Bogotá, but the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside her walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar reigns, capturing the attention of the nation.
When her mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city’s guerrilla-occupied slum, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona’s mysterious ways.
The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child
Francisco Jimenez
“The Circuit,” the story of young Panchito and his trumpet, is one of the most widely anthologized stories in Chicano literature. At long last, Jiménez offers more about the wise, sensitive little boy who has grown into a role model for subsequent generations of immigrants. These independent but intertwined stories follow the family through their circuit, from picking cotton and strawberries to topping carrots–and back again–over a number of years.
The House on Mango Street
Sandra Cisneros
“The House on Mango Street” is the remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero, a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become. Told in a series of vignettes-sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous-Sandra Cisneros’ masterpiece is a classic story of childhood and self-discovery. Few other books in our time have touched so many readers.
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
Charles C. Mann
In this groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology, Charles C. Mann radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492.
Enrique’s Journey
Sonia Nazario
Story about a boy from Honduras traveling to the US to find him mother who left her family behind in search of work in order to provide for them.
In The Country We Love
Diane Guerrero
Diane tells her life experience living in the US without her parents after they were detained and deported. Great demonstration of resilience!
Open Veins of Latin America
Eduardo Galeano
Eduardo Galeano covers various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation of it natural resources and how US and Europe profited.
Decolonize Wealth
Edgar Villanueva
In Decolonizing Wealth, Edgar Villanueva looks past philanthropy’s glamorous, altruistic façade and into its shadows: white supremacy, savior complexes, and internalized oppression.
Decolonize Your Diet
Catrióna Rueda Esquibel and Luz Calvo
More than just a cookbook, Decolonize Your Diet redefines what is meant by “traditional” Mexican food by reaching back through centuries of history to reclaim heritage crops as a source of protection from modern diseases.
Like Water for Chocolate
Laura Esquivel
This classic love story takes place on the De la Garza ranch, as the tyrannical owner, Mama Elena, chops onions at the kitchen table in her final days of pregnancy. While still in her mother’s womb, her daughter to be weeps so violently she causes an early labor, and little Tita slips out amid the spices and fixings for noodle soup.
Caramelo
Sandra Cisneros
Told in language of blazing originality, Caramelo is a multi-generational story of a Mexican-American family whose voices create a dazzling weave of humor, passion, and poignancy—the very stuff of life.
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
Julia Alvarez
The García sisters—Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofía—and their family must flee their home in the Dominican Republic after the discovery of their father’s role in an attempt to overthrow the brutal dictator Rafael Trujillo. They arrive in New York City in 1960 to a life far removed from their existence in the Caribbean.
The Devil’s Highway
Luis Alberto Urrea
The Devil’s Highway is a devastating story, but Urrea also makes it a humane one, a short book about hope and death, which presents an enduring argument for the need for U.S. border policy change.
Luis Alberto Urrea
The definitive Mexican-American immigrant story, a sprawling and deeply felt portrait of a Mexican-American family occasioned by the impending loss of its patriarch, from one of the country’s most beloved authors.
Carla Trujillo
Marci Cruz wants God to do two things: change her into a boy, and get rid of her father. What Night Brings is the unforgettable story of Marci’s struggle to find and maintain her identity against all odds – a perilous home life, an incomprehensible Church, and a largely indifferent world.
The Inheritance of Orquídia Divina
Carla Trujillo
Perfect for fans of Alice Hoffman, Isabel Allende, and Sarah Addison Allen, this is a gorgeously written novel about a family searching for the truth hidden in their past and the power they’ve inherited, from the author of the acclaimed and “giddily exciting” (The New York Times Book Review) Brooklyn Brujas series.
Esmeralda Santiago
In a childhood full of tropical beauty and domestic strife, poverty and tenderness, Esmeralda Santiago learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of tree frogs, the taste of morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby’s soul to heaven. But when her mother, Mami, a force of nature, takes off to New York with her seven, soon to be eleven children, Esmeralda, the oldest, must learn new rules, a new language, and eventually a new identity.
Esmeralda Santiago
While helping her parents make the tamales for Christmas dinner, Maria sees her mother set her precious diamond ring to the side. It’s so beautiful! And Maria only means to try it on for a minute. Then, all of a sudden, the ring is gone. Does she spy it in the tamale dough? When Maria loses sight of it completely, she realizes what has happened.
Julissa Arce
In You Sound Like a White Girl, Julissa offers a bold new promise: Belonging only comes through celebrating yourself, your history, your culture, and everything that makes you uniquely you. Only in turning away from the white gaze can we truly make America beautiful. An America where difference is celebrated, heritage is shared and embraced, and belonging is for everyone. Through unearthing veiled history and reclaiming her own identity, Julissa shows us how to do this.
Gabriel García Márquez
The brilliant, bestselling, landmark novel that tells the story of the Buendia family, and chronicles the irreconcilable conflict between the desire for solitude and the need for love—in rich, imaginative prose that has come to define an entire genre known as “magical realism.”
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Borderlands/La Frontera remaps our understanding of what a “border” is, presenting it not as a simple divide between here and there, us and them, but as a psychic, social, and cultural terrain that we inhabit, and that inhabits all of us.
You can also see what we are reading for …
Black History Month | Women’s History Month | Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month | Pride Month | Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month | Native American Heritage Month | Equity, Justice, Racism, Inclusion …
