My Favorite Books by Latino Writers
Discover a curated list of must-read books by Latino writers. Explore powerful stories, diverse voices, and cultural richness in these favorite literary works.
Book
Down These Mean Streets
by Piri Thomas
A modern classic of manhood, marginalization, survival, and transcendence—and a lyrical memoir of coming of age on the streets of Spanish Harlem. "A report from the guts and heart of a submerged population group ... It claims our attention and emotional response." —The New York Times Book Review Thirty years ago Piri Thomas made literary history with this lacerating memoir. Here was the testament of a born outsider: a Puerto Rican in English-speaking America; a dark-skinned morenito in a family that refused to acknowledge its African blood. Here was an unsparing document of Thomas's plunge into the deadly consolations of drugs, street fighting, and armed robbery—a descent that ended when the twenty-two-year-old Piri was sent to prison for shooting a cop. As he recounts the journey that took him from adolescence in El Barrio to a lock-up in Sing Sing to the freedom that comes of self-acceptance, faith, and inner confidence, Piri Thomas gives us a book that is as exultant as it is harrowing and whose every page bears the irrepressible rhythm of its author's voice.
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Book
Macho!
by Victor Villaseñor
From Victor Villase-or, author of the critically acclaimed bestsellerRain of Gold, comes the stunning story of a young man's coming of age—a novel that captures the cadences and color, passion and pride of the Mexican-American experience. Roberto Garcia was only seventeen. But he already had big dreams of freedom, respect, money, familia. With ambition to burn and a passion to prove his manhood, Roberto took the dangerous journey north, crossing the Mexican border to pick fruit in the golden fields of California. There, a good man could make more money in a week than in a whole year in the mountains of Michoacan. Nothing could have prepared Roberto for the jammed boxcars and bolted trucks carrying migrants through burning deserts to fields of dreams. But he was determined to become a norte-o, coming home with a family to save and a score to settle, no longer a boy, but a man. At once raw and powerful, poetic and heartbreaking,Macho!brings to life the brutality of migrant labor, Cesar Chavez's efforts to unionize the workers, and a vivid portrayal of the immigrant experience as seen through the eyes of a young man who saw it all.
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Book
Caramba!
by Nina Marie Martinez
Welcome to Lava Landing, population 27,454, a town just this side of Mexico, where Miss Magma reigns and rockabilly and mariachi music are king. Enter our protagonists, Natalie and Consuelo, self-described "like-minded individuals." They spend their days at The Big Cheese Plant and their nights at The Big Five-Four, the hottest spot in town. But they have long-term projects, foremost among them to cure Consuelo of her unreasonable fear of public transportation and long car rides so they can finally take Natalie's 1963 Cadillac convertible on the road trip it deserves . . .
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Hunger of Memory
by Richard Rodriguez
Hunger of Memory is the story of Mexican-American Richard Rodriguez, who begins his schooling in Sacramento, California, knowing just 50 words of English, and concludes his university studies in the stately quiet of the reading room of the British Museum. Here is the poignant journey of a “minority student” who pays the cost of his social assimilation and academic success with a painful alienation — from his past, his parents, his culture — and so describes the high price of “making it” in middle-class America. Provocative in its positions on affirmative action and bilingual education, Hunger of Memory is a powerful political statement, a profound study of the importance of language ... and the moving, intimate portrait of a boy struggling to become a man.
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Always Running
by Luis J. Rodriguez
In the tradition of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Manchild in the Promised Land--an explosive memoir of hopelessness and resurrection that vividly portrays the brutality of barrio gang life. A timely exploration into the roots of Latino rage.
Book
Bless Me, Ultima
by Rudolfo Anaya
This coming-of-age classic and the bestselling Chicano novel of all time follows a young boy as he questions his faith and beliefs -- now one of PBS's "100 Great American Reads." 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. The winner of the 2015 National Humanities Medal, Rudolfo Anaya is acclaimed as the father of Chicano literature in English and for his rich and compassionate writing about the Mexican-American experience.
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