For National Hispanic Heritage Month, observed annually from September 15 to October 15, we asked our members to share with us some of the literature they recommend reading in celebration. (Learn more about National Hispanic Heritage Month here.)
Drama, Hybrid & Nonfiction
The Hurricane Book: A Lyric Essay by Claudia Acevedo-Quiñones
Rose Metal Press | 2023
In her debut, Acevedo-Quiñones “pieces together the story of her family and Puerto Rico using a captivating combination of historical facts, poems, maps, overheard conversations, and flash essays.”
Micrograms by Jorge Carrera Andrade
Translated from the Spanish by Alejandro de Acosta and Joshua Beckman
Wave Books | 2011
A book “equal parts essay, anthology, and poetry,” Micrograms illustrates Carrera Andrade’s “claim that the impulse toward the microgram has always existed” and “points to the richness of possibility contained therein.”
53rd State Press | 2024
Baisch’s play is “a twisting, twisted work of intricacy, density, and despair netted in kidnap, virtual utopias, upended borders, and Freddy Krueger cosplay.”
Lost Cities Go to Paradise / Las Ciudades Perdidas Van al Paraíso by Alicia Borinsky
Translated from the Spanish by Regina Galasso with Alicia Borinsky
Swan Isle Press | 2015
This collection of poetry and short fiction “mixes deceit and conceit with moments of tenderness and the elusive nature of humanity, asking if identity is more than a festival of masks and self-invention.”
Eating Moors and Christians by Sandra M. Castillo
CavanKerry Press | 2016
This memoir “utilizes the Cuban Revolution as a springboard from which to discuss what is at the center of exile literature—liminality.”
Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn’t My Rapist by Cecilia Gentili
LittlePuss Press | 2023
This book is “a rich and moving epistolary memoir about transgender childhood, sexual trauma, motherhood, and a young queer life in 1970s Argentina.”
The Javier Plays by Carlos Murillo
53rd State Press | 2016
According to Todd London, these five essays and three plays “fold and unfold like America itself—its violence, its identity crises, its homegrown art, its shape in the eye of the immigrant.”
Los Cedros: A Tejana Memoir by Dorotea Reyna
Flowersong Press | 2024
In her memoir, Reyna “attempts to recover the wholeness she felt as a child from the violence and demagoguery of today’s political discourse.”
Spit and Passion by Cristy C. Road
Feminist Press | 2012
This graphic memoir is about “the transformative moment when music crashes into a stifling adolescent bedroom and saves you.”
Watcha by Stalina Emmanuelle Villarreal
Deep Vellum | 2024
Through “free verse, personal photographs, and prosaic gestures,” this collection charts “a vast terrain that ranges from an artistic standpoint, to border crossing, to belonging, to portraiture, to self-portraiture, to abstraction, to death, to a call for action.”
Fiction
Spirits of the Ordinary, A Tale of Casas Grandes by Kathleen Alcalá
Raven Chronicles Press | 2021
Originally published in 1997, the new edition of this award-winning novel “weaves the stories of women struggling against societal constraints, Mexican Jews practicing their religion in secret, and a gold prospector turned spiritual seeker in a spectacular desert landscape.”
The Flower in the Skull by Kathleen Alcalá
Raven Chronicles Press | 2023
The second edition of a novel spanning 130 years, The Flower in the Skull “opens in the 1870s with Concha, an Ópata Indian woman who has fled to Tucson, where she works as a housekeeper and clings to memories of her old way of life.”
American Abductions by Mauro Javier Cárdenas
Dalkey Archive Press | 2024
Cárdenas’s novel “unfurls into a layered, poignant, and unflinching portrait of how family separations have impacted the minds of Latin American deportees in a technology-bound 21st century.”
Cómo no ahogarse en un vaso de agua by Angie Cruz
Translated to the Spanish by Kianny N. Antigua
Seven Stories Press | 2024
Cruz’s novel, presented here in a Spanish-language edition, follows “a woman who has lost everything but the chance to finally tell her story.”
Slant Books | 2019
In this YA novel, “Llorona is the only girl Güero has ever loved. A wounded soul, she has adopted the name of a ghost from Mexican folklore.”
Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas by Fernando A. Flores
Host Publications | 2018
This is a collection of “ten punk rock fairy-tales about artists and misfits trying to make noise and live forever in the unforgiving landscape of the Rio Grande Valley.”
I’m Not Hungry But I Could Eat by Christopher Gonzalez
Santa Fe Writers Project | 2021
According to Ruth Joffre, this short fiction collection “captures all the messy joys and crackling anxieties of modern queer life, inviting readers to join its Puerto Rican characters on journeys punctuated by desire, shame, and grace.”
Mona At Sea by Elizabeth Gonzalez James
Santa Fe Writers Project | 2021
Gonzalez James’s novel tells the story of Mona Mireles, who “faces down unemployment, underemployment, the complexities of adult relationships, and the downward spiral of her parents’ shattering marriage.”
Captain Chicano Draws a Line in the American Sand by Stephen D. Gutierrez
University of Tampa Press | 2024
In this novella, “Captain Chicano is out to save the country! White supremacy is on the rise and he is the only one capable of beating it with a secret weapon. Love. But will it work?”
I’ll Give You a Reason by Annell López
Feminist Press | 2024
The characters in these stories “tread the waters of political unrest, sexuality, religion, body image, Blackness, colorism, and gentrification—searching for their identities and a sliver of joy and intimacy.”
Green Writers Press | 2020
Set on Staten Island in the 1970s, Meola’s novel centers “the life of a boy confronting changes in his family, his community, and himself at a time of social confusion and turmoil.”
The Ballad of Gato Guerrero by Manuel Ramos
Arte Público Press | 2024
Originally published in 1994, this second installment in the Luis Montez Mystery series “takes readers on a wild ride through Denver’s mean streets and deadly encounters with young gangbangers.”
Urban Folk Tales by Y. Rodriguez
Read Furiously | 2023
These short stories explore “the miraculous and the mundane scenes that play up and down the avenues of New York City, giving meaning to our lives.”
Litany of Saints: A Triptych by Diana Rojas
Arte Público Press | 2024
In this debut collection, “Rojas’ characters grapple with their self-perception as they consider what they’re supposed to be and who they want to be.”
Secret Memories / Recuerdos secretos by Carlos Rubio
Gival Press | 2005
According to Hope Maxell Snyder, in this bilingual novel “the reader feels pulled into the narrator’s world and observes, along with him, a delicate, beautiful and vulnerable universe as personal and intimate as a conversation between lovers.”
Rain Revolutions by Bessie Flores Zaldívar
Long Day Press | 2021
According to Matthew Salesses, in these three stories Flores Zaldívar “connects the dots between individual characters and the failures of the systems that define the parameters of their agency.”
Poetry
Dream of Xibalba by Stephanie Adams-Santos
Orison Books | 2023
According to Rebecca Morgan Frank, this collection “maps an uncanny journey into a watery Mayan underworld populated with ancestors and scented by the ‘perfume of the underworld.’”
Sonnets from the Puerto Rican by Jack Agüeros
Hanging Loose Press | 1996
According to Lorna Dee Cervantes, in this collection Agüeros “extends the range of poetic possibility in these stunning sonnets from real life.”
Futurepoem | 2017
In this collection, Alcalá “uses empty spaces, hesitations and semantic difficulties to address mothers and daughters, herself as mother and herself as daughter, and the messy emotions and miscommunications that move between languages.”
An Empty Pot’s Darkness by José Angel Araguz
Airlie Press | 2019
According to Vincent Cooper, Araguz’s fourth full-length poetry collection “brings stunning moments of beauty to notions of what if, death, the moon, and lost relationships.”
Prayers of Little Consequence by Gilbert Arzola
Passager | 2020
Arzola invites us into his story “with poems about growing up poor and Mexican in an all-white neighborhood as well as poems about family, the self, and people in his life he has lost.”
Now in Color by Jacqueline Balderrama
Perugia Press | 2020
Balderrama’s debut poetry collection “explores the multigenerational immigrant experience of Mexican-Americans who have escaped violence, faced pressures to assimilate, and now seek to reconnect to a fragmented past.”
Flood Editions | 2022
This debut collection shows us “vivid glimpses of a life spent between Puerto Rico and New York: a moment undressing beside a tarn in the rural barrio of Limaní, the loneliness of buses and taxis, dead bees in the corner of an apartment in Brooklyn.”
Translated from the Spanish by Robin Myers
Wave Books | 2022
Copy is “a prose poem sequence that insinuates an experience of violent removal: a person’s disappearance from a country, from normal life, and forcible reintegration into a new social and existential configuration.”
Sea Crow Press | 2023
According to Madeleine F. White, this collection—shortlisted for the 2023 Eyelands Book Award in poetry—explores the search for identity, “surrendering to what cannot be changed and confronting the mercurial temperament of relationships.”
I Don’t Want to Be Understood by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza
Alice James Books | 2024
According to Donika Kelly, Espinoza’s fourth collection “charts the cosmology of a woman come into herself in a world of violence, a world that would undo the wonder of this speaker.”
Learning to Love a Western Sky by Amelia Díaz Ettinger
Airlie Press | 2020
Díaz Ettinger’s collection is “a reflection of the assimilation of the immigrant into the host landscape.”
These Hollowed Bones by Amelia Díaz Ettinger
Sea Crow Press | 2024
The voices in these poems “speak of the isolation felt by both avian and human due to migration and loss of habitat, loss of home.”
All the Places We Love Have Been Left in Ruins / Todos Los Sitios Que Amamos Han Quedado en Ruinas by Ariel Francisco
Burrow Press | 2024
Francisco “mourns a Miami already ruined by climate change and development, and meditates on the future ruins of a city reclaimed by the sea.”
Black Lawrence Press | 2024
“Using modes of confession, ekphrasis, and biblical persona,” Garcia’s debut collection “excavates a queerness entangled in one’s faith tradition.”
Dirt and Honey by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland
Green Writers Press | 2018
This collection is a place where “ancient lineages are drawn with breast milk, seduction begins with feasts of peppers, and ‘fisherchildren’ displaced by wars are always welcomed into new lands.”
Arsenal with Praise Song by Rodney Gómez
Orison Books | 2021
These poems “scrutinize human bodies and the body of the earth as the sites of great injustices and violences—political, social, and spiritual.”
Mayapple Press | 2007
This collection makes real “the struggles of war, becoming an expatriate and the alienation that accompanies the immersion in a new culture.”
Mother Is a Body by Brandi Katherine Herrera
Fonograf Editions | 2021
This book-length poem “renounces and reveres the notion of the sacred feminine, to illustrate ‘mother’ in her many actualities—a complex figure, at times unsightly, that both is and isn’t what we most often ascribe to her.”
Trio House Press | 2022
Hincapie’s poems “pull us into a hazardous and tropical swampland of a speaker consistently confronted by the violence and wonderment of being alive.”
The Book Eaters by Carolina Hotchandani
Perugia Press | 2023
Hotchandani’s debut poetry collection “is a study in shifting cultural and personal identities as well as in belonging—to our bodies, our memories, our stories, ourselves, our families, our cultures.”
We Borrowed Gentleness by J. Estanislao Lopez
Alice James Books | 2022
According to Vanessa Angélica Villareal, Lopez’s book “shows us how power is terrifying to hold, how tender a child’s world is, how vulnerable one must be to take the lessons of history, to ‘converse with Time.’”
Nerve Curriculum by Manuel Paul López
Futurepoem | 2023
Sawako Nakayasu calls this hybrid collection “a punk playbook for survival with such deep, ferocious love for the world and its inhabitants.”
Architects of the Imaginary / Los arquitectos del imaginario by Marta López-Luaces
Translated from the Spanish by G. J. Racz
Gival Press | 2022
According to Peter Gizzi, in this bilingual poetry collection “the world and its phenomena are respected, named, and given their proper occupation.”
Shadow in Silver / Sombra en Plata by Olivia Maciel
Translated from the Spanish by Kelly Austin
Swan Isle Press | 2005
The poems in Maciel’s fourth collection are “catalysts for transformation, challenging the reader with a vision of a world where myth and the quotidian are intimately intertwined.”
Fernwood Press | 2023
According to Martín Espada, these poems “spring from a deep well of compassion, nowhere better illustrated than by the title poem about a mouse that meets a miserable fate at the hands of the poet, who cannot bear the suffering he has inflicted.”
Sea of Broken Mirrors by Pablo Medina
Hanging Loose Press | 2024
Medina’s new poems “explore how the diminishment of self (indeed, its ultimate disappearance) can be a way of engaging with the world.”
Receta by Mario José Pagán Morales
great weather for MEDIA | 2022
According to Violeta Orozco, this book “chronicles the lives of jíbaros in the island and títeres in the mainland, the hood savants of Nueva Yol, those equipped to survive the daily hustle in the city of dreams deferred en Español y en Spanglish.”
A Ten Peso Burial for Which Truth I Sign by Gabriel Palacios
Fonograf Editions | 2024
In his debut collection, Palacios “reckons with the cultural heritage of the Southwest border region by sifting through its detritus.”
Poemas Callejeros / Streetwise Poems by Johanny Vázquez Paz
Mayapple Press | 2007
These poems explore “one of the many strands of contemporary Latino immigrant experience, dancing the tropical sensibility of Puerto Rico among Chicago’s concrete and broken glass.”
Gemini Gospel by Bianca Alyssa Pérez
Host Publications | 2023
In these poems, “the inherited self is entwined with the one that is discovered, loss is braided with luminous love, and no matter how deep grief runs, it brings us always back to tenderness.”
All Women Are Born Wailing by Nen G Ramirez
Nomadic Press & Black Lawrence Press | 2023
In this collection, Ramirez “challenges the ‘crazy Latina’ stereotype and examines the ways it has been used to belittle and dehumanize people who deserve treatment and care.”
Cells by Lucianna Chixaro Ramos
Burrow Press | 2023
This collection of verse and visual poetry “explores how language acts as imperfect material for building not only poems, but also laws and institutions.”
The Blue Mimes by Sara Daniele Rivera
Graywolf Press | 2024
Rivera’s debut is “a collection of sprawling elegy in the face of catastrophic grief, both personal and public.”
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez by Iliana Rocha
Tupelo Press | 2022
This collection “chronicles an obsession with the 1971 unsolved murder of Rocha’s grandfather while interrogating the true crime genre, tabloid culture, immigrant identity, the phenomena of missing and murdered women, troubled relationships with law enforcement, and the intersection of prose and poetry.”
Study of the Raft by Leonora Simonovis
Colorado Review/Center for Literary Publishing | 2021
Simonovis’s poems “weave the outer world of a failed political revolution in her native country, Venezuela, with an inner journey into the memories of migration and exile, of a home long gone, and of family relations.”
The City She Was by Carmen Giménez Smith
Colorado Review/Center for Literary Publishing | 2011
According to Thomas Sayers Ellis, this collection “reroutes the architecture of experience so effectively that the reader is awarded a new unnamed sense, a soft power, one that reprioritizes our outdated reality.”
In Inheritance of Drowning by Dorsía Smith Silva
CavanKerry Press | 2024
Smith Silva’s debut collection “confronts the ‘drowning’ of BIPOC communities as they are displaced, exploited, and robbed of their identities and witnesses their resistance and resilience.”
Sweet Beast by Gabriella R. Tallmadge
Trio House Press | 2021
This collection “strips away our soft exteriors and exposes the feral desires which escape from their cages when facing the possibility of death.”
Against the Regime of the Fluent by Natasha Tiniacos
Translated from the Spanish by Rebeca Alderete Baca
Ugly Duckling Presse | 2024
The poems in this collection are “fragments that dream of becoming ruins of a present still unfolding against the systems of power, (the) body, language or all the systems.”
Literary Magazines
The Hopkins Review | 2024
The poem “While Your Fathers Did Second Shifts” begins, “Because your fathers fled a dictatorship only to set up their own, / and took with them the belief that a woman shouldn’t enter a bar / unless…”
“Why Don’t You Write About Joy?” by Yael Valencia Aldana
West Trestle Review | 2024
This poem begins, “Why do you keep writing about all this brown girl suffering? / Because when my mother was last pregnant, fate bathed her in blood…”
Review of Jaime Cortez’s Gordo by Allysson Casais
Full Stop | 2022
This review begins, “Watching Jaime Cortez read aloud an excerpt from his debut short-story collection Gordo, published by Grove Atlantic Press earlier this year, is a pleasure.”
SmokeLong Quarterly | 2023
This story begins, “It started like any other dumb relationship. No particular red flags. • I’m reading this book on Afro-pessimism, he said. A white guy.”
“We’re Running Through the Sprinklers Again” by Michaela Chairez
Exposition Review | 2024
This flash piece begins, “We’re running through the sprinklers saying we should run through the sprinklers again. Saying we’re best friends forever.”
Three Poems by Jose Hernandez Diaz
The Cincinnati Review | 2023
The poem “The Coyote Who Was Once a Dragon” begins, “A rugged coyote wandered close by the oceanside communities. Tired, it sat beneath a palm tree and took a / nap.”
Exposition Review | 2024
This short story begins, “Suzie is lying sideways on the gray love seat so that her legs dangle over the armrest. She’s a thin girl, all knees and elbows and long, thick dark hair.”
South Florida Poetry Journal | 2024
This special edition features forty Latinx poets including Yael Valencia Aldana, LC Gutierrez, Angela Narciso Torres, and more.
“All You Need Is Love” by Luis Lopez-Maldonado
phoebe | 2023
This poem begins, “I am made of water Soy agua fresca agua caliente ardiente agua that feeds the dry / dry deserts, floods the pebbled roads in Michoacán Mejico…”
“To the Man Who Killed My Poem” by Rolando André López
Off Assignment | 2022
This essay begins, “We meet on a rainy evening in early March. Earlier that week, I had been lying in Dolores Park listening to a John Lennon song, and I thought of Kahlil Gibran…”
“To the Cruise Ship Dancer” by Sara Luzuriaga
Off Assignment | 2023
This essay begins, “I spotted you walking past our table. You were with a friend, both holding graffitied skateboards and wearing cuffed pants and Vans.”
“Golden” by Rita Maria Martinez
West Trestle Review | 2024
This poem begins, “Summer after neurostimulator surgery life / is golden. Imitrex injections expire unused. / The Doc praises…”
“The Sea, the Shell, & the Pearl: Through Embodiment to Poetry” by Jael Montellano
ANMLY | 2023
This essay begins, “This essay is a treatment. It tracks the predominant physiological responses of your traumatized past, the way your body remembers, the way your therapist guides you to presence, and the way presence unlocks a treasure house of language.”
“Parked Car Prayer” by Jaclyn Navar
Wellspringwords | 2024
This poem begins, “I grew up in funeral homes. I know my eulogy will not be about me but what others think. My family won’t know who / to call.”
“Study in Pink” by Jaclyn Navar
Wellspringwords | 2024
This poem begins, “It’s not called baby pink. For a quinceanera dress, it’s called champagne. / It will finally be thrown out in a pandemic.”
Harvard Review | 2024
The first of these two poems begins, “The bull tilts its head until the garlands that hang from its horns touch the street’s / pavement, paying attention to the finches singing…”
“Detour in the Canopy” by María Ospina
Translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary
Adi Magazine | 2023
This novel excerpt begins, “The journey is southward and also ascending. Accompanying the jungle as it climbs the first buds of the cordillera. Rising along the impatient layers from deep in the earth…”
“in the belly of a whale” by jj peña
SmokeLong Quarterly | 2023
This story begins, “we live in salt now, you say, & then lick my cheek. once, twice, three times doggish.”
Translated from the Diidxazá (Isthmus Zapotec) and the Spanish by Wendy Call
Adi Magazine | 2020
The first of these five poems begins, “I clawed a path underground / with my fingernails, no light, no air / The only thing that kept me alive / was the hope of seeing you…”
ANMLY | 2019
This anthology features “45 contemporary Puerto Rican poets, both emerging and established, writing in both English and Spanish, living both on la isla and in the diaspora, afro-boricua, white, mixed, indigenx, and of all genders.”
Review of Fernando Vallejo’s The Abyss by Bruno Franco
Full Stop | 2024
This review begins, “Fernando Vallejo’s novel The Abyss, newly translated into English by Yvette Siegert, opens with the Colombian writer returning to his native country after a long voluntary exile.”
“An Intergenerational Journey Through Food Insecurity” by Nilsa Ada Rivera
Tahoma Literary Review | 2024
This essay begins, “Tuesday morning. I’m at Publix Supermarket. The self-checkout register has asked for an amount I do not have. My heart sinks into my solar plexus.”
“Aloes” by Edward Sambrano III
The Cincinnati Review | 2024
This poem begins, “We are sitting on the porch, staring / At our respective screens, pixels / Constructing disparate scenes / In our cortices.”
“Skin Tones” by Cordelia Scoville
Polyphony Lit | 2024
This piece begins, “My grandmother’s features look as if they might lift from her any moment, on a gust of wind or / up to the sky, evaporating under an orange sun.”
“Vuelve a Casa” by Zanna Vasquez
Polyphony Lit | 2024
This piece begins, “I didn’t know why I was here. It was the war I wanted to flee to, not an old house in the slums. I wanted to be a pilot. Or a nurse. Anything to get away from my life.”
“Today I Bought La Casa de Bernarda Alba” by Brendon Villalobos
The Hopkins Review | 2024
This short story begins, “My husband told me he was going to kill himself, and then he did.”
ANMLY | 2023
This poem begins, “and cheeseburgers; glinting / red car. I only recently / learned your wrong pro- / nunciation. An idol / of a group I thought excluded / me.”
Writing & Art from the Farmworker Community
The Common | 2024
This portfolio features fiction by Helena María Viramontes, nonfiction by Nora Rodriguez Camagna, poetry by Miguel M. Morales, and more.