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Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month

Print Books on Display

See the library's Hispanic Heritage Month display at the entrance for additional print books!

Select Print Books

An African American and Latinx History of the United States

Incisive and timely, this bottom-up history, told from the interconnected vantage points of Latinx and African Americans, reveals the radically different ways that people of the diaspora have addressed issues still plaguing the United States today, and it offers a way forward in the continued struggle for universal civil rights.

Reel Latinxs: representation in U.S. film and TV

The authors provide a roadmap through the history of Latinx misrepresentation, including character types, sexuality, and casting issues, and discuss the disproportionate appearance of Latinx in films and TV despite their growing demographic in the United States.

De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century

This book presents a radical Latina perspective on race, liberation and identity. The author describes the provocative ideas and new movements created by the rapidly expanding US Latina/o community as it confronts intensified exploitation and racism.

Razabilly: Transforming Sights, Sounds, and History in the Los Angeles Latina/o Rockabilly Scene

A close examination of the sights, sounds, and sensibilities of the Latina/o Rockabilly scene in Los Angeles, its ties to working-class communities, and its dissemination through the post-NAFTA global landscape.

Altermundos: Latin@ Speculative literature, film, and popular culture

Speculative fiction -- encompassing both science fiction and fantasy -- has emerged as a dynamic field within Chicana/o and Latina/o studies, producing new critical vocabularies and approaches to topics that include colonialism and modernity, immigration and globalization, race and gender. The first collection engaging a Chicana/o and Latina/o speculative cultural production, Altermundos provides a comprehensive alternative to the view of speculative fiction as a largely white, male, Eurocentric, and heteronormative genre. It features original essays from more than twenty-five scholars as well as interviews, manifestos, short fiction, and new works from Chicana/o and Latina/o artists.

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau

From the bestselling author of Mexican Gothic and Velvet Was the Night comes a dreamy reimagining of The Island of Doctor Moreau set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century Mexico. Carlota Moreau: A young woman growing up on a distant and luxuriant estate, safe from the conflict and strife of the Yucatán peninsula. The only daughter of a researcher who is either a genius or a madman. Montgomery Laughton: A melancholic overseer with a tragic past and a propensity for alcohol. An outcast who assists Dr. Moreau with his experiments, which are financed by the Lizaldes, owners of magnificent haciendas and plentiful coffers. The hybrids: The fruits of the doctor's labor, destined to blindly obey their creator and remain in the shadows. A motley group of part human, part animal monstrosities. All of them live in a perfectly balanced and static world, which is jolted by the abrupt arrival of Eduardo Lizalde, the charming and careless son of Dr. Moreau's patron, who will unwittingly begin a dangerous chain reaction. For Moreau keeps secrets, Carlota has questions, and, in the sweltering heat of the jungle, passions may ignite. The Daughter of Doctor Moreau is both a dazzling historical novel and a daring science fiction journey.

Decolonizing Latinx Masculinities

Decolonizing Latinx Masculinities presents scholarly chapters that 'address the complex issues of racialized masculinities in the Latinx communities'. Building on Chicana feminist theories and decolonial gender studies, the manuscript explores such issues as machismo, patriarchy, and compulsory heteronormativities; how these issues are reinforced; and how 'Latinx men are criminalized by the dominant discourse'. Arturo Aldama and Frederick Aldama take a hemispheric approach to their content in order to place Latinx masculinities within the broader context of the Américas. According to reviewer Richard T. Rodríguez: 'By examining recent films, historical and contemporary novels, political phenomena, theater and performance, short stories, and various popular cultural forms, the 18 essays assembled here and written by established and emergent scholars make a significant contribution to the literature on manhood, queer sexualities, and gender roles.

Latinx: the new force in American politics and culture

In this groundbreaking discussion, Ed Morales explains how Latin political identities are tied to a long Latin American history of mestizaje, translatable as "mixedness" or "hybridity", and that this border thinking is both a key to understanding bilingual, bicultural Latin cultures and politics and a challenge to America's infamously black/white racial regime.

Juliet Takes a Breath

Juliet Milagros Palante is leaving the Bronx and headed to Portland, Oregon. She just came out to her family and isn't sure if her mom will ever speak to her again. But Juliet has a plan, sort of, one that's going to help her figure out this whole "Puerto Rican lesbian" thing. She's interning with the author of her favorite book: Harlowe Brisbane, the ultimate authority on feminism, women's bodies, and other gay-sounding stuff. Will Juliet be able to figure out her life over the course of one magical summer? Is that even possible? Or is she running away from all the problems that seem too big to handle? With more questions than answers, Juliet takes on Portland, Harlowe, and most importantly, herself.

Playing America's Game: Baseball, Latinos and the Color Line

Although largely ignored by historians of both baseball in general and the Negro leagues in particular, Latinos have been a significant presence in organized baseball from the beginning. In this benchmark study on Latinos and professional baseball from the 1880s to the present, Adrian Burgos tells a compelling story of the men who negotiated the color line at every turn--passing as "Spanish" in the major leagues or seeking respect and acceptance in the Negro leagues. Burgos draws on archival materials from the U.S., Cuba, and Puerto Rico, as well as Spanish- and English-language publications and interviews with Negro league and major league players. He demonstrates how the manipulation of racial distinctions that allowed management to recruit and sign Latino players provided a template for Brooklyn Dodgers' general manager Branch Rickey when he initiated the dismantling of the color line by signing Jackie Robinson in 1947. Burgos's extensive examination of Latino participation before and after Robinson's debut documents the ways in which inclusion did not signify equality and shows how notions of racialized difference have persisted for darker-skinned Latinos like Orestes ("Minnie") Minoso, Roberto Clemente, and Sammy Sosa.

eBooks

Black Cuban, Black American

Arte Publico Press's landmark series Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage has traditionally been devoted to long-lost and historic works by Hispanics of decades and even centuries past. The publications of Black Cuban, Black American mark the first original work by a living author to become part of this notable series. The reason for this unprecedented honor can be seen in Evilio Grillo's path-breaking life. Ybor City was once a thriving factory town populated by cigar-makers, mostly emigrants from Cuba. Growing up in Ybor City (now part of Tampa) in the early twentieth century, the young Evilio experienced the complexities and sometimes the difficulties of life in a horse-and-buggy society demarcated by both racial and linguistic lines. Life was different depending on whether you were Spanish- or English-speaking, a white or, black Cuban a Cuban-American or a native-born U.S. citizen, well off or poor. (Even U.S.-born blacks did not always get along with their Hispanic counterparts.) Grillo captures the joys and sorrows of this unique world that slowly faded away as he grew to adulthood and was absorbed into the African-American community during the Depression. He then tells of his eye-opening experiences as a soldier in an all-black unit serving in the China-Burma-India theatre of operations during World War II. Booklovers may have read of Ybor City in the novels of Jose Yglesias, but never before has the colorful locale been portrayed from this perspective.

Alternative Communities in Hispanic Literature and Culture

What are Hispanic alternative communities and how are they represented in literature, film, and popular music? This book studies the fictional representation of circles of artists and intellectuals, youth gangs, musical bands, packs of marginal urban dwellers, groups of immigrants, and other diverse associations that share the common trait of being small and subversive collectives, perhaps akin to secret societies plotting to take control of society. These groups usually exist within a larger and established community - typically, the nation-state - though maintaining with it complicated relations of rivalry, criticism, outright violence, and other forms of antagonism. Thus "alternative communities" represent the "other side" of official institutions, by constituting dystopias that condemn the status quo, or by building utopias that point to new social arrangements. In the Hispanic world - a broad, transatlantic space that includes Spain and Spanish America - alternative communities have existed since the 19th century, a time of nation-building for Spanish American countries, all the way to the 21st century, when hybrid, postnational, and cosmopolitan communities begin to appear. The seventeen chapters brought together in this volume, which constitutes the first systematic approach to Hispanic alternative communities, tackle this complex cultural phenomenon from diverse critical perspectives. 

Dance and the Hollywood Latina: Race, Sex, and Stardom

Dance and the Hollywood Latina asks why every Latina star in Hollywood history, from Dolores Del Rio in the 1920s to Jennifer Lopez in the 2000s, began as a dancer or danced onscreen. While cinematic depictions of women and minorities have seemingly improved, a century of representing brown women as natural dancers has popularized the notion that Latinas are inherently passionate and promiscuous. Yet some Latina actresses became stars by embracing and manipulating these stereotypical fantasies.

Rewriting the Chicano Movement: New Histories of Mexican American Activism in the Civil Rights Era

Rewriting the Chicano Movement is an insightful new history of the Chicano Movement that expands the meaning and understanding of this seminal historical period in Chicano history. The essays introduce new individuals and struggles previously omitted from Chicano Movement history.

Civil Rights and Beyond: African American and Latino/a Activism in the Twentieth Century United States

 

Civil Right and Beyond examines the dynamic relationships between African American and Latino/a activists in the United States from the 1930's to the present day. Building on recent scholarship, this book pushes the time frame for the study of interactions between blacks and a variety of Latino/a groups beyond the standard chronology of the civil rights era. As such, the book merges a host of community histories· each with their own distinct historical experiences and activisms· to explore group dynamics, differing strategies and activist moments, and the broader quests of these communities.

Decolonizing Epistemologies: Latina/o Theology and Philosophy

This anthology gathers the work of three generations of Latina/o theologians and philosopher who have taken up the task of transforming their respective disciplines from the standpoint of liberation and what has been called the "decolonial turn" in social theory, theology, and philosophy. It articulates a new point of departure for the self-understanding of not simply Latina/os, but also US citizens in this new age of post-colonialism and globalisation.

Oye Como Va! Hybridity and Identity in Latino Popular Music

 

Oye Como Va! provides an incisive historical and contemporary overview of all the major popular musical genres defined as Latin. Pacini Hernandez presents an insightful, coherent, eloquent, and engaging analysis of the hybridity of Latino musical practices, carefully documenting the ?transnational? musical interactions between Latinos in the United States and in their countries of origin.

Inventing Latinos: a new story of American racism

Gómez, a leading expert on race, law, and society, illuminates the fascinating race-making, unmaking, and re-making of Latino identity that has spanned centuries, leaving a permanent imprint on how race operates in the United States today.

Queer Brown Voices: personal narratives of Latina/o LGBT activism

Comprising essays and oral history interviews that present the experiences of fourteen activists across the United States and in Puerto Rico, the book offers a new perspective on the history of LGBT mobilization and activism. The activists discuss subjects that shed light not only on the organizations they helped to create and operate, but also on their broad-ranging experiences of being racialized and discriminated against, fighting for access to health care during the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and struggling for awareness.