In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 to October 15), this list recognizes Latin authors that are available to you at Murrieta Public Library.
by Rudolfo Anaya
Antonio Marez is six years old when Ultima comes to stay with his family in New Mexico. She is a curandera, one who cures with herbs and magic. Under her wise wing, Tony will probe the family ties that bind and rend him, and he will discover himself in the magical secrets of the pagan past--a mythic legacy as palpable as the Catholicism of Latin America. And at each life turn, there is Ultima, who delivered Tony into the world... and will nurture the birth of his soul.
by Ernesto Quinonez
When Julio, a young Puerto Rican-Ecuadorian boy in Spanish Harlem, hears that Taina, a fifteen-year-old girl from his church, is pregnant and that both mother and daughter insist that she is a virgin, he decides to believe them.
Ridiculed for his naiveté, Julio begins to feel like even more of a misfit than he’s always felt. His staunch yet unrequited loyalty to Taina soon unleashes a whirlpool of emotions that bring Julio to question his parents, his religion, and even the basic building blocks of modern science (who’s to say Taina’s baby’s conception wasn’t indeed a mystical, scientific miracle?). He finds himself willing to uproot everything he once believed in, and all for the sake of his fervent devotion to the young Puerto Rican girl.
Yet the lengths Julio goes to defend Taina’s purity will thrust him into the girl’s murky past. In the midst of it all, he meets Taina’s uncle, “El Vejigante,” an ex-con who claims that in order to get closer to the immaculate Taina, Julio must provide financial support to help the future young mother. Dubious but determined, and following the ex-con’s instructions, Julio gets entangled in a web of lies and stealing (dogs, for example, from Upper East Siders who will pay hefty rewards to have them returned). He finally comes face-to-face with Taina, whose mother keeps locked inside their apartment in the projects, but not without bringing his loved ones into his chaotic love affair, and uncovering a family secret that will not leave him unscathed. Taina is a sweeping story that delivers a subtle yet poignant critique of Latino cultural norms and society, disguised within an absorbing, magical narrative.
by Luis Urrea
In this "raucous, moving, and necessary" story by a Pulitzer Prize finalist (San Francisco Chronicle), the De La Cruzes, a family on the Mexican-American border, celebrate two of their most beloved relatives during a joyous and bittersweet weekend.
"All we do, mija, is love. Love is the answer. Nothing stops it. Not borders. Not death."
In his final days, beloved and ailing patriarch Miguel Angel de La Cruz, affectionately called Big Angel, has summoned his entire clan for one last legendary birthday party. But as the party approaches, his mother, nearly one hundred, dies, transforming the weekend into a farewell doubleheader. Among the guests is Big Angel's half brother, known as Little Angel, who must reckon with the truth that although he shares a father with his siblings, he has not, as a half gringo, shared a life.
Across two bittersweet days in their San Diego neighborhood, the revelers mingle among the palm trees and cacti, celebrating the lives of Big Angel and his mother, and recounting the many inspiring tales that have passed into family lore, the acts both ordinary and heroic that brought these citizens to a fraught and sublime country and allowed them to flourish in the land they have come to call home.
Teeming with brilliance and humor, authentic at every turn, The House of Broken Angels is Luis Alberto Urrea at his best and cements his reputation as a storyteller of the first rank.
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
One Hundred Years of Solitude is a classic novel known throughout the world. One of the 20th century’s enduring works of art, it is the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize-winning career.
The story of the village of Macondo, as seen through the lives of the Buendia family, is told with Marquez’s trademark mastery of magical realism. Alternately reverential and comical, One Hundred Years of Solitude weaves the political, personal and spiritual to bring a new consciousness to storytelling. No less than an accounting of the history of the human race, the novel has been translated into dozens of languages, making it a classic of truly global proportions.
by Jaquira Diaz
In this searing memoir, Jaquira Díaz writes fiercely and eloquently of her challenging girlhood and triumphant coming of age.
While growing up in housing projects in Puerto Rico and Miami Beach, Díaz found herself caught between extremes. As her family split apart and her mother battled schizophrenia, she was supported by the love of her friends. As she longed for a family and home, her life was upended by violence. As she celebrated her Puerto Rican culture, she couldn’t find support for her burgeoning sexual identity. From her own struggles with depression and sexual assault to Puerto Rico’s history of colonialism, every page of Ordinary Girls vibrates with music and lyricism. Díaz writes with raw and refreshing honesty, triumphantly mapping a way out of despair toward love and hope to become her version of the girl she always wanted to be.
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