Books & eBooks
Nonfiction Books and eBooks
Our America by Call Number: E184.S75 F46 2014ISBN: 9780393349825Publication Date: 2014-12-08Overlooking the significance of America's Hispanic past, the United States is typically perceived as an offshoot of Britain, with its history unfolding east to west, beginning with the first settlers in Jamestown. In an absorbing narrative, Felipe Fernández-Armesto begins with the explorers and conquistadors who planted Spain's first colonies in Puerto Rico, Florida and the Southwest in the sixteenth century. Missionaries and rancheros carry Spain's expansive impulse into the late eighteenth century, settling in California, mapping the American interior to the Rockies and charting the Pacific coast. The nineteenth-century triumph of Anglo-America in the West is followed by the twentieth-century Hispanic resurgence, spreading from the West to cities including Chicago, Miami and Boston. Today's plural America is the product of its past.
Modern Latin America by Call Number: F1413 .S55 2010ISBN: 9780195375701Publication Date: 2009-11-25A lively, interpretive history that uses case studies to discuss the major countries and themes of the region over the past 150 years. Modern Latin America covers the continent from 1880 to the present, with a preliminary chapter providing context for the region back to 1492. Organized by region /country as case studies, the reader is guided through the major countries of Latin America, with themes including European-New World interaction, racial mixtures, military takeovers, and U.S. intervention in the area .Companion Website offers:* For students and general readers: a timeline of key events, a series of historical statistics, lists of heads of state, questions for review, suggestions for further reading, and guides to primary sources.* For instructors: sample syllabi, commentary by colleagues who have adopted the book, PowerPoint presentations, a guide to instructional videos and films, and ideas for student paper topics.
Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics by Call Number: PN6725 .A37 2017ISBN: 9780816537082Publication Date: 2017-10-10Winner of the 2018 Eisner Award Winner for Best Scholarly/Academic Work, whether good or evil, beautiful or ugly, smart or downright silly, able-bodied or differently abled, gay or straight, male or female, young or old, Latinx superheroes in mainstream comic book stories are few and far between. It is as if finding the Latinx presence in the DC and Marvel worlds requires activation of superheroic powers. Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics blasts open barriers with a swift kick. It explores deeply and systematically the storyworld spaces inhabited by brown superheroes in mainstream comic book storyworlds: print comic books, animation, TV, and film. It makes visible and lets loose the otherwise occluded and shackled. Leaving nothing to chance, it sheds light on how creators (authors, artists, animators, and directors) make storyworlds that feature Latinos/as, distinguishing between those that we can and should evaluate as well done and those we can and should evaluate as not well done. The foremost expert on Latinx comics, Frederick Luis Aldama guides us through the full archive of all the Latinx superheros in comics since the 1940s. Aldama takes us where the superheroes live--the barrios, the hospitals, the school rooms, the farm fields--and he not only shows us a view to the Latinx content, sometimes deeply embedded, but also provokes critical inquiry into the way storytelling formats distill and reconstruct real Latinos/as. Thoroughly entertaining but seriously undertaken, Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics allows us to truly see how superhero comic book storyworlds are willfully created in ways that make new our perception, thoughts, and feelings.
Latinx Ciné in the Twenty-First Century by ISBN: 9780816537907Publication Date: 2019-09-24Today's Latinx motion pictures are built on the struggles--and victories--of prior decades. Earlier filmmakers threw open doors and cleared new paths for those of the twenty-first century to willfully reconstruct Latinx epics as well as the daily tragedies and triumphs of Latinx lives. Twenty-first-century Latinx film offers much to celebrate, but as noted pop culture critic Frederick Luis Aldama writes, there's still room to be purposefully critical. In "Latinx Ciné in the Twenty-First Century", contributors offer groundbreaking scholarship that does both, bringing together a comprehensive presentation of contemporary film and filmmakers from all corners of Latinx culture. The book's seven sections cover production techniques and evolving genres, profile those behind and in front of the camera, and explore the distribution and consumption of contemporary Latinx films. Chapters delve into issues that are timely, relevant, and influential, including representation or the lack thereof, identity and stereotypes, hybridity, immigration and detention, historical recuperation, and historical amnesia. With its capacious range and depth of vision, this timeless volume of cutting-edge scholarship blazes new paths in understanding the full complexities of twenty-first century Latinx filmmaking. Contributors Contributors; Iván Eusebio Aguirre Darancou, Frederick Luis Aldama, Juan J. Alonzo, Lee Bebout, Debra A. Castillo, Nikolina Dobreva, Paul Espinosa, Mauricio Espinoza, Camilla Fojas, Rosa-Linda Fregoso, Desirée J. Garcia, Enrique García, Clarissa Goldsmith, Matthew David Goodwin, Monica Hanna Sara Veronica Hinojos, Carlos Gabriel Kelly , Jennifer M. Lozano, Manuel M. Martín-Rodríguez J. V. Miranda Valentiná Montero Román, Danielle Alexis Orozco, Henry Puente, John D. "Rio" Riofrio Richard T. Rodríguez, Ariana Ruiz, Samuale Saldívar III Jorge Santos, and Rebecca A. Sheehan
Before Chicano by ISBN: 9781479863969Publication Date: 2018-07-31Uncovers the long history of how Latino manhood was integral to the formation of Latino identity. In the first ever book-length study of Latino manhood before the Civil Rights Movement, "Before Chicano" examines Mexican American print culture to explore how conceptions of citizenship and manhood developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The year 1848 saw both the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the U.S. Mexican War and the year of the Seneca Falls Convention, the first organized conference on women's rights in the United States. These concurrent events signaled new ways of thinking about U.S. citizenship, and placing these historical moments into conversation with the archive of Mexican American print culture, Varon offers an expanded temporal frame for Mexican Americans as long-standing participants in U.S. national projects. Pulling from a wide-variety of familiar and lesser-known works--from fiction and newspapers to government documents, images, and travelogues--Varon illustrates how Mexican Americans during this period envisioned themselves as U.S. citizens through cultural depictions of manhood. Before Chicano reveals how manhood offered a strategy to disparate Latino communities across the nation to imagine themselves as a cohesive whole--as Mexican Americans--and as political agents in the U.S. Though the Civil Rights Movement is typically recognized as the origin point for the study of Latino culture, Varon pushes us to consider an intellectual history that far predates the late twentieth century, one that is both national and transnational. He expands our framework for imagining Latinos' relationship to the U.S. and to a past that is often left behind.
Chicana/o and Latina/o Fiction by ISBN: 9780252039911Publication Date: 2016-03-22In this new study, Ylce Irizarry moves beyond literature that prioritizes assimilation to examine how contemporary fiction depicts being Cuban, Dominican, Mexican, or Puerto Rican within Chicana/o and Latina/o America. Irizarry establishes four dominant categories of narrative--loss, reclamation, fracture, and new memory--that address immigration, gender and sexuality, cultural nationalisms, and neocolonialism. As she shows, narrative concerns have moved away from the weathered notions of arrival and assimilation. Contemporary Chicana/o and Latina/o literatures instead tell stories that have little, if anything, to do with integration into the Anglo-American world. The result is the creation of new memory. This reformulation of cultural membership unmasks the neocolonial story and charts the conscious engagement of cultural memory. It outlines the ways contemporary Chicana/o and Latina/o communities create belonging and memory of their ethnic origins. An engaging contribution to an important literary tradition, Chicana/o and Latina/o Fiction privileges the stories Chicanas/os and Latinas/os remember about themselves rather than the stories of those subjugating them.
Negotiating Latinidad by ISBN: 9780252084539Publication Date: 2019-10-15Longstanding Mexican and Puerto Rican populations have helped make people of mixed nationalities--MexiGuatamalans, CubanRicans, and others--an important part of Chicago's Latina/o scene. Intermarriage between Guatemalans, Colombians, and Cubans have further diversified this community-within-a-community. Yet we seldom consider the lives and works of these Intralatino/as when we discuss Latino/as in the United States.In Negotiating Latinidad, a cross-section of Chicago's second-generation Intralatino/as offer their experiences of negotiating between and among the national communities embedded in their families. Frances R. Aparicio's rich interviews reveal Intralatino/as proud of their multiplicity and particularly skilled at understanding difference and boundaries. Their narratives explore both the ongoing complexities of family life and the challenges of fitting into our larger society, in particular the struggle to claim a space--and a sense of belonging--in a Latina/o America that remains highly segmented in scholarship. The result is an emotionally powerful, theoretically rigorous exploration of culture, hybridity, and transnationalism that points the way forward for future scholarship on Intralatino/a identity.
On Latinidad by ISBN: 9780813030838Publication Date: 2007-09-30This is the first book to address head-on the question of how Latino/a literature wrestles with the pan-ethnic and trans-racial implications of the "Latino" label. Refusing to take latinidad (Latino-ness) for granted, Marta Caminero-Santangelo lays the groundwork for a sophisticated understanding of the various manifestations of "Latino" identity. She examines texts by prominent Chicano/a, Dominican American, Puerto Rican, and Cuban American writers--including Julia Alvarez, Cristina García, Achy Obejas, Piri Thomas, and Ana Castillo--and concludes that a pre-existing "group" does not exist. The author instead argues that much recent Latino/a literature presents a vision of tentative, forged solidarities in the service of particular and sometimes even local struggles. She shows that even magical realism can figure as a threat to collectivity, rather than as a signifier of it, because magical connections--to nature, between characters, and to Latin American origins--can undermine efforts at solidarity and empowerment. In the author's close reading of both fictional and cultural narratives, she suggests the possibility that Latino identity may be even more elastic than the authors under question recognize.
Theories of the Flesh by ISBN: 9780190062965Publication Date: 2020-02-25"A theory in the flesh means one where the physical realities of our lives all fuse to create a politic born of necessity," writes activist Cherrie L. Moraga. This volume of new essays stages an intergenerational dialogue among philosophers to introduce and deepen engagement with U.S Latinxand Latin American feminist philosophy, and to explore their "theories in the flesh." It explores specific intellectual contributions in various topics in U.S. Latinx and Latin American feminisms that stand alone and are unique and valuable; analyzes critical contributions that U.S. Latinx and Latin American interventions have made in feminist thought more generally over the last several decades; and shows the intellectual and transformative value of reading U.S Latinx and Latin American feminist theorizing. The collection features a series of essays analyzing decolonial approaches within U. S. Latinx and Latin American feminist philosophy, including studies of the functions of gender within feminist theory, everyday modes of resistance, and methodological questions regarding the scope and breadth of decolonization as a critical praxis. Additionally, essays examine theoretical contributions to feminist discussions of selfhood, narrativity, and genealogy, as well as novel epistemic and hermeneutical approaches within the field. A number of contributors in the book address themes of aesthetics and embodiment, including issues of visual representation, queer desire, and disability within U. S. Latinx and Latin American feminisms. Together, the essays in this volume are groundbreaking and powerful contributions in the fields of U.S Latinx and Latin American feminist philosophy.
Fiction and Poetry
Drown by Call Number: PS3554.I259 D76 1997ISBN: 9781573226066Publication Date: 1997-07-01From the beloved and award-winning author Junot Díaz, a spellbinding saga of a family's journey through the New World. A coming-of-age story of unparalleled power, "Drown" introduced the world to Junot Díaz's exhilarating talents. It also introduced an unforgettable narrator-- Yunior, the haunted, brilliant young man who tracks his family's precarious journey from the barrios of Santo Domingo to the tenements of industrial New Jersey, and their epic passage from hope to loss to something like love. Here is the soulful, unsparing book that made Díaz a literary sensation.
La Casa en Mango Street by Call Number: PS3553.I78 H618 2009ISBN: 0679755268Publication Date: 1994-10-18Elogiado por la crítica, admirado por lectores de todas las edades, en escuelas y universidades de todo el país y traducido a una multitud de idiomas, La casa en Mango Street es la extraordinaria historia de Esperanza Cordero. Contado a través de una serie de viñetas --a veces desgarradoras, a veces profundamente alegres-- es el relato de una niña latina que crece en un barrio de Chicago, inventando por sí misma en qué y en quién se convertirá. Pocos libros de nuestra era han conmovido a tantos lectores.
Lost Children Archive by ISBN: 0525436464Publication Date: 2020-02-04In Valeria Luiselli's fiercely imaginative follow-up to the American Book Award-winning "Tell Me How It Ends", an artist couple set out with their two children on a road trip from New York to Arizona in the heat of summer. As the family travels west, the bonds between them begin to fray: a fracture is growing between the parents, one the children can almost feel beneath their feet. Through ephemera such as songs, maps and a Polaroid camera, the children try to make sense of both their family's crisis and the larger one engulfing the news: the stories of thousands of kids trying to cross the southwestern border into the United States but getting detained--or lost in the desert along the way. A breath-taking feat of literary virtuosity, ;Lost Children Archive is timely, compassionate, subtly hilarious, and formally inventive--a powerful, urgent story about what it is to be human in an inhuman world.
Signs Preceding the End of the World by Call Number: PQ7298.418.E7986 S4613 2015ISBN: 1908276428Publication Date: 2015-03-10From the author of "A Silent Fury," available Summer 2020. "Signs Preceding the End of the World" is one of the most arresting novels to be published in Spanish in the last ten years. Yuri Herrera does not simply write about the border between Mexico and the United States and those who cross it. He explores the crossings and translations people make in their minds and language as they move from one country to another, especially when there's no going back. Traversing this lonely territory is Makina, a young woman who knows only too well how to survive in a violent, macho world. Leaving behind her life in Mexico to search for her brother, she is smuggled into the USA carrying a pair of secret messages - one from her mother and one from the Mexican underworld.
Where We Come From by ISBN: 9780525655435Publication Date: 2019-05-21A stunning and timely novel about a Mexican-American family in Brownsville, Texas, that reluctantly becomes involved in smuggling immigrants into the United States. From a distance, the towns along the U.S.-Mexican border have dangerous reputations--on one side, drug cartels; on the other, zealous border patrol agents--and Brownsville is no different. But to twelve-year-old Orly, it's simply where his godmother Nina lives--and where he is being forced to stay the summer after his mother's sudden death. For Nina, Brownsville is where she grew up, where she lost her first and only love, and where she stayed as her relatives moved away and her neighborhood deteriorated. It's the place where she has buried all her secrets--and now she has another: she's providing refuge for a young immigrant boy named Daniel, for whom traveling to America has meant trading one set of dangers for another. Separated from the violent human traffickers who brought him across the border and pursued by the authorities, Daniel must stay completely hidden. But Orly's arrival threatens to put them all at risk of exposure. Tackling the crisis of U.S. immigration policy from a deeply human angle, "Where We Come From" explores through an intimate lens the ways that family history shapes us, how secrets can burden us, and how finding compassion and understanding for others can ultimately set us free.
Tan Lejos de Dios by Call Number: PS3553.A8135 S6518 1999ISBN: 0452280044Publication Date: 1999-09-01Tome is a small, outwardly sleepy hamlet in central New Mexico. In Ana Castillo's hands, however, it stands wondrously revealed as a place teeming with life and with all manner of collisions: the past with the present, the real with the supernatural, the comic with the horrific, the Native American with the Latino and the Anglo, and the women with the men. With her talkative, intimate voice and stylistic narrative freedom, Castillo relates the story of two crowded decades in the life of a Chicano family. "Engaging . . . the author tells an important story and she tells it with inventiveness and verve."--Washington Post Book World
Borderlands/la Frontera, Third Edition by ISBN: 9781879960749Publication Date: 2007-06-01Rooted in Gloria Anzaldúa's experience as a Chicana, a lesbian, an activist, and a writer, the groundbreaking essays and poems in this volume profoundly challenged how we think about identity. Borderlands/La Frontera remapped our understanding of what a "border" is, seeing 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. This twentieth-anniversary edition features new commentaries from prominent activists, artists, and teachers on the legacy of Gloria Anzaldúa's visionary work.
The Day of the Dead (El Día de los Muertos) by Call Number: Juvenile Collection 394.264 B26d 2010ISBN: 9780823422142Publication Date: 2010-07-01Follow two children as they celebrate their ancestors on this vibrant holiday. They offer marigolds, sugar skulls, and special bread, and make delicious foods. By spreading marigold petals, they guide the dead home to join the festivities. Finally, after singing and dancing, it's time for bed. Bob Barner's luscious collages incorporate the traditional symbols of Day of the Dead. His poetic text is both English and Spanish. An author's note provides additional information on the holiday.
Some Rivers End on the Day of the Dead by Call Number: Juvenile Collection FIC. G7655s 2010ISBN: 9781453801901Publication Date: 2010-08-01Like "Esperanza Rising" and "Rules of Attraction," this coming-of-age novel, "Some Rivers End on The Day of the Dead" follows a Hispanic teen, Marisol. She and her mother are on the run from their home in Tijuana, Mexico. Her father, investigating the drug wars as a journalist, has been murdered. But Marisol's new home is a riverbed camp in a rich California suburb. A wildfire separates Marisol from her mother and her school. Cut off and alone, she challenges herself to find a way to reunite with her family and to celebrate the Day of the Dead in Mexico to honor her father with the proper traditions.
Funny Bones by Call Number: Juvenile Collection 921 P84t 2015ISBN: 9781419716478Publication Date: 2015-08-25Discover the story behind José Guadalupe Posada's iconic Día de Muertos skeletons in this fascinating picture book from award-winning creator Duncan Tonatiuh A Robert F. Sibert Award Winner, Pura Belpré Illustrator Honor Book, and ALA/ALSC Notable Children's Book! Funny Bones tells the story of how calaveras came to be. The amusing figures are the creation of Mexican artist José Guadalupe (Lupe) Posada (1852-1913). Lupe learned the art of printing at a young age and soon had his own shop. In a country that was not known for freedom of speech, he drew political cartoons, much to the amusement of the local population but not that of the politicians. He continued to draw cartoons, but he is best known today for his calavera drawings. They have become synonymous with Mexico's Día de Muertos festival. Calaveras are skeletons performing all sorts of activities, both everyday and festive: dancing in the streets, playing instruments in a band, pedaling bicycles, promenading in the park, and even sweeping the sidewalks. They are not intended to be frightening, but rather to celebrate the joy of living as well as provide humorous observations about people. Award-winning author and illustrator Duncan Tonatiuh relates the pivotal moments of Lupe's life and explains the different artistic processes he used. Juxtaposing his own artwork with Lupe's, Tonatiuh brings to light the remarkable life and work of a man beloved by many but whose name has remained in obscurity.
