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.)
Poetry
The Light of Desire | La Luz del Deseo by Marjorie Agosín
Translated from the Spanish by Lori Marie Carlson
Swan Isle Press | 2009
This long poem is “both a secular and sacred meditation on love and its meanings in the land of Israel.”
Lord Is This A Psalm? by Jack Agüeros
Hanging Loose Press | 2002
According to Martín Espada, “Agüeros is the wiseguy in the choir who leaves the congregation muffling snorts of hilarity, or slack-jawed with the shock of recognition.”
Center for Literary Publishing | 2023
Set in northern New Mexico, Susto “surveys many settings: the body, the soul, the terrain the soul encounters upon leaving the body.”
Now in Color by Jacqueline Balderrama
Perugia Press | September 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.”
Everything I Kept | Todo Lo Que Guardé by Ruth Behar
Translated from the Spanish by Ruth Behar
Swan Isle Press | 2018
This collection is Behar’s “poetic voyage into her own vulnerability and the sacrifices of her exiled ancestors as she tries to understand love, loss, regret, and the things we keep and carry with us.”
Red Hen Press | 2023
Cárdenas’s poems “transgress illusory borders between lands, languages, humans and the rest of the natural world, waking and dreaming, and the living and the dead as they unearth traces of experience that shape and haunt us.”
Maps You Can’t Make by Mariella Saavedra Carquin
June Road Press | 2023
Carquin “confronts hard truths in this powerful debut collection, pushing through layered complexities of immigration, race, and identity to find a way forward.”
Migrations and Other Exiles by Letisia Cruz
Lost Horse Press | 2023
Winner of the Idaho Prize for Poetry, Migrations and Other Exiles “questions the contradictory nature of human love.”
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.”
Even Shorn by Isabel Duarte-Gray
Sarabande Books | 2021
Duarte-Gray’s debut poetry collection “mines local orature, family history, and folklore for the music of Western Kentucky, creating the sparse line breaks and the harsh syntax of the present.”
Meet Me at the Lighthouse by Dana Gioia
Graywolf Press | 2023
In this poetry collection, Gioia “invites us back to old Los Angeles, where the shabby nightclub of the title beckons us into its noirish immortality.”
Songs for the Spirit / Conciones para el Espíritu by Robert L. Giron
Gival Press | 2023
According to George Klawitter, Giron’s translation of the psalms “is both refreshing to the soul and beautifully crafted.”
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.”
Architects of the Imaginary / Los arquitectos del imaginario by Marta López-Luaces
Translated from 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.”
The Heart Is an Undertaker Bee by Brice Maiurro
Middle Creek Publishing | 2023
According to Ken Arkind, “Maiurro’s new collection is a testament to a life spent listening, sitting with the disaster while trying to make sense of it, it is a still pond reflecting back a forest fire.”
Hustle by David Tomas Martinez
Sarabande Books | 2014
Martinez’s poetry collection “moves from gang activity through his discovery of pornography to a failed suicide attempt on a crooked path toward self-understanding.”
Future Botanic by Christina Olivares
Get Fresh Books Publishing | 2023
Olivares’s poems are “lyrical meditations- in some cases, spells- that embody, vivify and reckon with the geography of the Americas and the centuries-long postcolonial condition.”
El Rey of Gold Teeth by Reyes Ramirez
Hub City Press | 2023
In this poetry collection, Ramirez “explores living in America as a first-generation American of Salvadoran and Mexican descent, living among conflicting histories.”
Get Fresh Books Publishing | 2023
This debut poetry collection “flies across oceans and recycles itself through tradition, blood, nature, and time—always manifesting itself in new creationism.”
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez by Iliana Rocha
Tupelo Press | February 1, 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.”
Third Winter in Our Second Country by Andres Rojas
Trio House Press | 2021
In these poems, Rojas “captures the essence of the experience of settling into a new land, in all its strangeness and sometimes, ridiculousness.”
Interior Landscape by Mirta Rosenberg
Translation from the Spanish by Yaki Setton and Sergio Waisman
Ugly Duckling Presse | 2023
In this poetry collection, Rosenberg “explores questions of life and death, of changes experienced in one’s body through time and the resulting changes in perspective.”
The Disordered Alphabet by Cintia Santana
Four Way Books | 2023
Santana’s “poetic encyclopedia chronicles life’s ubiquitous elegies alongside the world’s innumerable wonders.”
Lima::Limón by Natalie Scenters-Zapico
Copper Canyon Press | 2019
Lima::Limón “traces machismo, womanhood, and culture across borders, raising questions to the gods while finding answers within the flesh.”
Study of the Raft by Leonora Simonovis
Center for Literary Publishing | 2023
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, especially among womxn.”
Today in the Taxi by Sean Singer
Tupelo Press | 2022
According to Laurie Sheck, “Sean Singer’s radiant and challenging body of work involves, much like Whitman’s, nothing less than the ongoing interrogation of what a poem is.”
Translated from the Spanish by Alexis Almeida, Daniel Beauregard, Daniel Borzutzky, Whitney DeVos, Jèssica Pujol Duran, Patrick Greaney, and Robin Myers
Ugly Duckling Presse | 2023
This poetry collection “immerses readers in the State-sponsored terror during this period and the effects it would continue to have on Chile.”
Sweet Beast by Gabriella R. Tallmadge
Trio House Press | 2021
This poetry collection “reflects a marriage wounded by the aftermath of a soldier’s return from war, relating trauma in the only way it can be told: raw and with no embellishment.”
Unaccompanied by Javier Zamora
Copper Canyon Press | 2017
Zamora’s debut “speaks with heart-wrenching intimacy and first-hand experience to the hot-button political issues of immigration and border crossings.”
Fiction
Coffee, Shopping, Murder, Love by Carlos Allende
Red Hen Press | 2022
Allende’s novel is “a campy dark comedy for the angry and the disenchanted.”
The Legend of Dave Bradley by S. Atzeni
Read Furiously | 2022
This book follows “an eclectic blend of experiences from the New Jersey Shop ‘NBag, a supermarket at the Jersey Shore.”
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.”
Translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman
Graywolf Press | 2023
The characters in Herrera’s new story collection “inhabit imagined futures that reveal the strangeness and instability of the present.”
Fiebre Tropical by Julián Delgado Lopera
Feminist Press | 2020
According to Lit Hub, this multilingual novel is a “story about coming of age as a queer adolescent, an immigrant, a daughter, a bilingual kid, a complex human being.”
The Consequences by Manuel Muñoz
Graywolf Press | 2022
The stories in Muñoz’s new collection “are mostly set in the 1980s in the small towns that surround Fresno.”
Urban Folk Tales by Y. Rodriguez
Read Furiously | 2023
Urban Folk Tales is a story collection “based upon the true life experiences of the people who live in the working poor and working class neighborhoods of New York City.”
Cross-Genre, Hybrid & Drama
A and B and Also Nothing by Chris Campanioni
Unbound Edition Press | 2021
In this cross-genre work, Campanioni “reads and recasts his own life through the works of Henry James and Gertrude Stein.”
![banana [ ] / we pilot the blood by Paul Hlava Ceballos and Quenton Baker featuring a brown textured cover with the title and author’s names surrounding the edges vertically and horizontally.](https://www.clmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/banana-we-pilot-the-blood-300x300.png)
banana [ ] / we pilot the blood by Paul Hlava Ceballos and Quenton Baker
The 3rd Thing | 2021
This book includes a “critical /creative commentary on empire and the poetics of reckoning by Christina Sharpe in dialogue with the poems and artist Torkwase Dyson’s ‘hypershapes.’”
53rd State Press | 2020
This monologue, which weaves together the voice of the narrator and that of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, is “at once a coming-of-age story, a horror story, and a highly theatrical experiment in radical empathy.”
Portrait of a Deputy Public Defender (or, how I became a punk rock lawyer) by Juanita E. Mantz
Bamboo Dart Press | August 10, 2021
This multi-genre chapbook of memoir pieces, social justice essays, and poetry “describes the author’s love of punk rock and her quest to challenge the system of mass incarceration as a deputy public defender.”
Frayed Edge Press | 2022
This cross-genre collection of short stories, microfiction, and drama “explores themes of physical and emotional violence, human relationships, and the weight of politics, history, and culture on individuality and identity.”
The Javier Plays by Carlos Murillo
53rd State Press | 2016
This collection’s essays and plays—including Diagram of a Paper Airplane and Your Name Will Follow You Home—are, according to Todd London, “like America itself—its violence, its identity crises, its homegrown art, its shape in the eye of the immigrant.”
Nonfiction
WTAW Press | 2023
In these essays, Acevedo “portrays a young memoirist’s experience of a life that is broken, beautiful, and confusing all at once.”
The Hurricane Book: A Lyric History by Claudia Acevedo-Quiñones
Rose Metal Press | 2023
In this debut memoir, 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.”
Black Dove: Mamá, Mi’jo, and Me by Ana Castillo
Feminist Press | 2016
This memoir “looks at what it means to be a single, brown, feminist parent in a world of mass incarceration, racial profiling, and police brutality” and “narrates some of America’s most heated political debates and urgent social injustices through the oft-neglected lens of motherhood and family.”
My Mother’s Funeral by Adriana Páramo
CavanKerry Press | 2013
This memoir “circles around the death of the author’s mother, but what also emerges is a landscape of personal loss and pain, of innocence, humor, violence and beauty.”
Literary Magazines
“The Languages of Belonging: A Conversation Between Ruth Behar and Marjorie Agosín”
Paper Brigade | 2023
In this conversation, Behar and Agosín “discuss how they found their unique lyrical voices by bridging borders and cultures.”
Atlas: Skin/Bone/Blood: Body Maps in Brown And Black
Apogee Journal | 2022
According to editor heidi andrea restrepo rhodes, this folio addresses “themes at the intersections of latinidad and disability, to put forth a poetics of black and brown racial and disability justice.”
“Nola Face” by Brooke Champagne
Tahoma Literary Review | 2022
This essay begins, “It was unfortunate: the bitch had an ugly face. Aquiline nose, weird on a dog, and muddy eyes that couldn’t pick a color.”
“Encounters with Spirit: An Interview with Sandra Cisneros”
Orion | 2022
In this conversation, Sandra Cisneros and Manuel Muñoz “discuss their mutual love of poetry, literature, Mexico, and the magic of divine providence.”
“Self-portrait as St. Joseph” by Monica Colón
West Trestle Review | 2022
This poem begins, “I don’t care much about / being remembered. If it happens, it’ll happen // by accident, a right-place-right-time sort of thing.”
“in the dream things are as they should be” by Steven Espada Dawson
Southeast Review | 2022
This poem begins, “it’s so cold everyone’s bundled / like bank robbers ski masks / and balaclavas one man misread / the email as baklava…”
Lines & Breaks | 2022
This poem begins, “Mother, mi mamá / Her warmth, her hugs / We still crave her touch…”
“The Language of Bodies” by Andra Emilia Fenton
Terrain.org | 2023
This essay begins, “We went to see her the day she arrived. Her skin was no longer brown but red, scraped, peeling in places, dotted with small blisters that had popped under the desert sun.”
“My Father, Wandering” by Christopher Gonzales
The Hopkins Review | 2023
This essay begins, “A large painting used to hang in the living room of my childhood home. The artwork is no longer there, having been carried away to a closet during one of my mother’s more sweeping renovations when my father was still alive and residing in the nursing home.”
“Bridge of Cards” by Suzanne Fernandez Gray
Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices | 2017
This essay begins, “After a late-night supper and Spanish chatter garnished with English, the women of my family would retire to the bedroom where my grandmother would be transformed from an old woman with wobbly arms into a seer who could shine light on the present and tell you about your future using the Baraja Española, the Spanish cards.”
“Safeway Roses” by Patrick Holian
Southeast Review | 2023
This poem begins, “during the fourth and penultimate world war, a soldier— / a warrior, really, in the purest and truest sense—rose / to power.”
Zyzzyva | 2021
Featuring fiction and essays by Wendy C. Ortiz, Andres Reconco, and Francisco González; poetry by David Hernandez; and the street photography of Henry Lara.
“To the Smoker on 72nd Street” by Jasmine Ledesma
Off Assignment | 2020
This letter begins, “I met you in the heat of the afternoon. The clouds were drowning in a blue-glass sky, and New York stretched on all around.”
SWWIM | 2023
This poem begins, “above us there are no helicopters / not like when the wind / smelled like california soot…”
The Mystery Woman in Room Three by Aya de León
Orion | 2021
This serialized novel begins, “It’s a flood day in Proctor, Florida, a small city near Miami. The bus makes its way slowly through streets filled with ocean water. Even though Proctor is a few towns inland in Miami-Dade County, our science teacher explained that we hit the disaster jackpot.”
“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.”
“Birthplace” by Alejandra Medina
Lines & Breaks | 2022
This poem begins, “I was born here, long before the conquistadores ever / set foot through these parts. I am older than the palm trees…”
Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices | 2009
This essay begins, “The culture of exile is the culture of loss. Such an equivalence is made abundantly clear to the young exile who, looking back to his origins, sees only the raw edges of a violent tear.”
“This Is How Tortillas Are Made” by Sara Munjack
SWWIM | 2023
This poem begins, “a hunk of driftwood / washed up on dogbeach / in the shape of the palisades…”
“Filthy, Polluted” by Raul Palma
SmokeLong Quarterly | 2017
This story begins, “At daybreak, when your mother brings you a café con leche, then asks if you have a moment, slide a chair over and say, ‘For you. Always.’”
ANMLY #26
According to editor Erica Mena, this folio 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.”
Another Chicago Magazine | 2020
The poem “america, sweetheart” begins, “in dc, the heart of you, at yet another museum, one of my favorite pastimes…”
“The 17th Day” by Christina Rivera
Terrain.org | 2022
This essay begins, “Stars blink back at me through the top of my bedroom window, but I feel dawn coming. I pat my night table just as my phone’s alarm vibrates.”
“I Come to you on This Ghost Strewn Paper” by Amanda Rosas
West Trestle Review | 2023
This prose poem begins, “Tonight after the girls were in bed and I finally got into the shower, I pulled a tick out of the dimpled skin on my hip.”
“Pulpo” by Leigh Camacho Rourks
SmokeLong Quarterly | 2017
This story begins, “Her papa’s hands tremble as he opens the olives—something she can do but asks for help with anyway.”
“Same ol’ Song and Dance” by Randy William Santiago
Five South | 2021
This story begins, “The sun rose slower every morning leaving the city beneath her darker longer. She watched night rise from its sleep as the darkness faded and the streetlamps lost their glow.”
“A Jewish Literary Map of Latin America” by Ilan Stavans
Paper Brigade | 2019
The essay accompanying this map begins, “As a young man, I thought of Latin America as a place left unfinished at the moment of creation. To me this was a handicap: time was slow; space always gave the feeling of being elastic; and things worked in peculiar, idiosyncratic ways.”
“The Six Times of Alan” by Alejandro Varela
The Hopkins Review | 2023
This story begins, “All the other children were white. I considered leaving, using the tantrum-proof promise of ice cream as an exit strategy. Instead, I held my breath for 10 seconds, exhaled with intention—just as Alan always tells me to—and allowed Jules to wander off and play.”
