National Hispanic Heritage Month
Other Books & Authors:
Bilingual children's book publishers
More Hispanic / Latino literature sources
Herencia: The Anthology of Hispanic Literature of the United States
by
Nicolas Kanellos—"Ten years in the making, this anthology is an
unprecedented collection of writing in North America from the age of the Spanish
explorers in the 16th century to the present. Kanellos is most famous for
founding Arte Publico Press, the oldest Hispanic publishing house in the United
States..." Library Journal
http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=7-0195138244-0
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195138244/absolutsearch05/002-6229485-6334441
"Kathleen Alcalá is a Chicana writer whose trilogy on
nineteenth century Mexico was published by Chronicle Books... 'I began writing
as a way to explain the world to myself. So much family history did not match
the 'official' history of the Southwest, that I had to become an explorer, an
adventurer, an ethnographer, a scholar and a writer in order to discover who we
were and who we are today. I believe that writing, in and of itself, is a
political act, and that the artistic cannot be separated from the political.'
"'Writing makes the invisible, visible; the silent, audible; the absent,
present.'"
http://www.kathleenalcala.com/
"Liz Balmaseda is an author and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist at The Miami Herald. "In 1993... Balmaseda won the Pulitzer for Commentary for columns that washed the splintered rafts and desperate dreams of Cuban and Haitian immigrants onto the news pages and into the hearts and minds of readers..." Florida International University Magazine. http://news.fiu.edu/fiumag/spring_99/melanie.html
Waking up in America: how one doctor brings hope to those who need it most / Pedro Jose Greer Jr. with Liz Balmaseda. "Dr. Pedro Jose Greer, the son of Cuban immigrants and the founder of Miami's Camillus Health Concern, has traveled from the trash-littered, drug-infested streets of one of America's toughest neighborhoods to the offices of corporate and political power brokers. Throughout his odyssey he has become known for his tireless efforts to bring health care to society's "untouchables" -- homeless drug addicts, hookers, alcoholics, runaways, or people who have simply lost their way. Many of them are in need of medical care, but all of them are in need of compassion, and "Dr. Joe" dispenses both for free." publisher' description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/simon033/99030152.html
"Ana Castillo, poet/novelist/artist/xicanista Ana Castillo lives in her hometown of Chicago with her son. Her latest work is a collection of poetry, I Ask the Impossible. Her latest novel published in the fall of 1999, is Peel My Love Like an Onion. She has also written a children's book My Daughter, My Son, The Eagle, The Dove...She has also written several essays and columns for newspapers and magazines across the country on various topics such as the murder of Tejano singer, Selena; gender roles in the Farmworkers movement (Los Angeles Times, 4/20/97); being a mother (Salon, 4/12/99); and Feministas turning 50 (Oxygen.com). She has been profiled and interviewed on National Public Radio and the History Channel. In addition, she has also been featured along with Sandra Cisneros and Denise Chavez in Vanity Fair (9/94) and Hispanic (3/95)."http://anacastillo.com/ac/indexIE.html
"Linda Chavez has proven she is not afraid to challenge the system. Her work focuses on politics and the role of Hispanics from a conservative point of view. The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, The New Republic and Reader's Digest have published Chavez's work, and she wrote a weekly column for USA Today. Her book, Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation (Basic Books, 1991), explores Hispanic achievements and progress and deals with such issues as immigration, affirmative action, bilingual education and voting rights. http://www.creators.com/opinion_Shell.cfm?pg=biography.html&columnsname=lch
Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation by Linda Chavez C-SPAN BOOKNOTES, March 22, 1992. http://www.booknotes.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1092
Esmeralda Santiago is the eldest of eleven children. She spent her childhood in Puerto Rico, moving back and forth between a tiny village and Santurce, a suburb of San Juan. With her mother and siblings she moved to New York in 1961, at the age of thirteen. She attended junior high school in Brooklyn, and Performing Arts High School in Manhattan. After the extraordinary years described in her two memoirs, When I Was Puerto Rican and Almost a Woman, she graduated from Harvard University and received a master's degree from Sarah Lawrence College. Santiago is also the author of América's Dream and is coeditor, with Joie Davidow, of Las Christmas: Favorite Latino Authors Share Their Holiday Memories. Santiago lives in Westchester County, New York, with her husband and two children. http://www.randomhouse.com/vintage/read/puerto/santiago.html
The New Face of Baseball : The One-Hundred-Year Rise and Triumph of Latinos in America's Favorite Sport
by Tim Wendel
Wendel traces the lives and roles of Latinos in baseball from the days when only light-skinned men were allowed to participate in Major League competition, to the linguistic barriers Latinos were confronted with when playing on teams with "English-only" dugout rules.
"Rosario Ferré is Puerto Rico's leading woman of letters. A professor at the University of Puerto Rico and contributing editor for the San Juan Star, she has written poetry, criticism and biography, in addition to the fiction for which she is best known... 'Her fiction ... depicts in poignant detail the struggles of individual women resisting the flattening of their multidimensionality and agency by the confining conventions of love, romance, domesticity, and male-identified femininity,' writes Professor Cordelia Chávez Candelaria...Ferré's new novel, The House on the Lagoon (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $23), is her fourth book published in English. The other three are the novellas Sweet Diamond Dust and The Battle of Virgins, and a collection of short stories, The Youngest Doll." http://www.chron.com/content/interactive/special/books/ferre.html
"Cynthia Leal Massey is the award-winning author of Fire Lilies, a saga of the Mexican Revolution, winner of the 2002 Independent E-Book Award for Best Romance and a finalist for the 2002 EPIC Award for Best Historical Novel, and The Caballeros of Ruby, Texas..." http://www.cynthialealmassey.com/
Sergio Troncoso "In high school, I wrote for the school newspaper, and senior year I became the editor-in-chief...Pearl Crouch, my journalism advisor, a tough woman who reminded me of my abuelita, was the first person who opened my eyes to the world outside El Paso. When I had never even been to the fancy neighborhoods in El Paso, she took me to writing competitions in San Francisco and New York City. The summer after my junior year I won a scholarship to the Blairstown Summer School for Journalism, in New Jersey. I was terrified because that was the first time I lived away from home, but I survived and made new friends all across the country." http://www.sergiotroncoso.com/
Sergio Troncoso's first book, The Last Tortilla and Other Stories, won the Premio Aztlán and the Southwest Book Award. His second book, The Nature of Truth, was published in 2003. Click the titles for reviews. The novel is a philosophical thriller set at Yale about the difference between being righteous and being evil in the quest for the truth. Read The Nature of Truth: The First Three Chapters.
Why Should Latinos Write Their Own Stories? http://sergiotroncoso.com/essays/latinos/index.htm
"Carmen Lomas Garza was born in Kingsville, Texas, in 1948. At the age of thirteen she made a commitment to pursue a career in art and taught herself elements of drawing. Her narrative works of art depict childhood memories of family and friends in a wide range of activities from making tamales to dancing in a patio to Tejano music. Ms Garza's paintings, prints, paper and metal cutouts, and installations also depict the flora and fauna of Mexico and the American Southwest with its history of human interactions... In 1990 Children's Book Press of San Francisco published a bilingual book, Family Pictures/Cuadros de Familía, of Ms Garza's paintings and short stories. Over 260,000 copies have sold in hard cover and paperback. A second children's book, In My Family/En mi familia, was published in 1996 and a third book, Magic Windows/Ventanas Magicas accompanied by a workbook, Making Magic Windows: Creating Papel Picado/Cut-Paper Art with Carmen Lomas Garza debuted in 1999."http://www.carmenlomasgarza.com/biography.html
http://www.carmenlomasgarza.com/publications.html
Pat Mora --"Award-winning author of poetry, nonfiction, and children's books, Pat Mora promotes connecting communities through literature and literacy...The Washington Post described her acclaimed memoir House of Houses as “a textual feast . . . a regenerative act . . . and an eloquent bearer of the old truth that it is through the senses that we apprehend love.” Her poems were described by The New York Times as “proudly bilingual.” The illustrated volume, Aunt Carmen’s Book of Practical Saints, is her fifth poetry collection. She has also published over twenty books for young readers and is active in having April 30th celebrated as Día de los niños / Día de los libros, a celebration of children, books, languages and cultures."
http://www.patmora.com/index.html
"Pipina Salas Porras [was] the daughter of parents who fled Mexico during the Revolution. She was raised in El Paso, Texas. One of 15 Hispanic women to graduate from the University of Texas at El Paso in 1946, she [had] been a life-long educator and activist. As a teacher, she was a pioneer in developing dual language programs in El Paso. Pipina [was] a Trustee of the Freedom Forum Foundation in Arlington, Virginia-the largest foundation in the U.S. dedicated to media and first amendment issues.
Old friends Pipina Salas-Porras and José Cisneros team up to bring to life a nursery rhyme they both learned when they were very small. This dual language version of El Ratoncito Pequeño / The Little Mouse will help preschoolers find out for certain why a little mouse should never fall for a hungry cat's tricks. It will also give beginning readers a delightful introduction to the rhythms of language in both Spanish and English.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=38QOLK22VR&isbn=0938317563&itm=1
Gary Soto –"...In 1999 he received the Literature Award from the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, the Author-Illustrator Civil Rights Award from the National Education Association, and the PEN Center West Book Award for Petty Crimes. He serves as Young People's Ambassador for the California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA) and the United Farm Workers of America (UFW). He lives in Berkeley, CA." http://www.garysoto.com/index.html
He writes:
• Chapter Novels, ages 7 to 11
• Short Story Collections, ages 10 to 14
"Rafael Campo is the author of several books of poetry, including The Healing Art: A Doctor's Black Bag of Poetry (W.W. Norton & Co., 2003); Diva (1999), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; What the Body Told (1996)...[and] The Poetry of Healing (W. W. Norton, 1996), his collection of prose..." http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?45442B7C000C070D0F
The Healing Art: A Doctor's Black Bag of Poetry—" Campo knows his poetry-he's won a Pushcart Prize, a National Poetry Series award, and two Lambda Literary Awards and was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award-and as a physician associated with Harvard Medical School he also knows his medicine. Here he discusses the connection between poetry and healing, which he invokes every time he recites poetry to patients while doing rounds." Library Journal Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?endeca=1&ean=9780393057270
Guillen, Nicolas (1902-1987) "...Guillen began writing about the social problems aced by blacks in the 1920, his first poems appeared in Camaguey Grafico in 1922. This was followed by his first collection of poems, Cerebro y Corazon (Brain and Heart). In 1926, he became a regular contributor to the Sunday literary supplement of Havana’s Diario de la Marina and in 1929 published El Camino en Harlem, an article that condemned Cuba’s racial structures. During the same year Guillen interviewed Langston Hughes in Havana, he deeply admired Hughes and they became lifelong friends..."
Bilingual children's book publishers
http://benito.arte.uh.edu/Arte_Publico_Press/about_app/aboutapp_app.htm
http://www.cincopuntos.com/index.ssd
More Hispanic / Latino literature sources
Latino Culture: Links to resources about Latino/Hispanic writers throughout the Americas.
http://www.lasculturas.com/lib/libAuthors.php
Bilingual Review/Press has been publishing the works of Hispanic writers since 1974. We have more than 100 titles in our backlist and publish eight to ten titles a year. Most of our books are by or about U.S. Hispanics and most are written in English, though we do feature bilingual and Spanish-only titles as well. http://www.asu.edu/brp/brp.html
Welcome to Café Latino!
Feel free to browse the shelves of the Café. This site is a brief compilation, yet thorough, of the Hispanic and Latino World. Please return frequently to this site because it will be frequently updated according to your suggestions. http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/8429/index.html
Latin American Literary Review Press was established in 1980 with the principal objective to familiarize readers outside the field with Latin American literature. LALRP's emphasis has been on publishing translations of creative writing (Discovery series) and literary criticism (Exploration series). These were soon followed by bilingual Spanish/English editions of poetry. Publication of books of Spanish music began later, and young adult titles were first offered in 1989. http://www.lalrp.org/a_author_index.html
RAYO will publish books that embody the diversity within the Latino community, in both English and Spanish-language editions, connecting culture with thought, and invigorating tradition with spirit. http://www.harpercollins.com/hc/aboutus/imprints/rayo.asp