Hispanic Heritage Month begins next month, from September 15th to October 15th. The theme for 2024 is Pioneers of Change: Shaping the Future Together. Books are always a good way to dive into culture. They create windows for us to peer through and give us new experiences to make part of our normal lives. With that in mind, here are some recommendations to check out during Hispanic Heritage Month with characters trying to forge their own futures.
Hispanic Heritage Month: Juliet Takes a Breath
Published in 2016, Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera tells the story of Juliet Milagros, a first-year college student from the Bronx. Juliet’s main excitement is spending the summer interning with her favorite feminist author, Harlow Brisbane, in Portland, Oregon. Running underneath Juliet’s excitement though is coming out as a lesbian to her traditional Puerto Rican family. The novel is a fantastic coming-of-age story as Juliet learns to come to terms with herself and how to define her place in the world.
Hispanic Heritage Month: Dreaming In Cuban
The debut novel of Cristina Garcia, Dreaming in Cuban, was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction when it was released in 1992. Following three generations of women in the del Pino family, the novel explores questions of family, exile, and spirituality. With incredible prose, Dreaming in Cuban aches with the connections felt through their loss as every generation tries to claim to its past, present, and future. Whether it’s capitalism, socialism, or Santeria, each woman in the family clings to their path, hoping it will open a way forward. A true must-read if there ever was one.
Hispanic Heritage Month: The Devil’s Highway
Rounding out our suggestion is Luis Alberto Urrea’s 2004 non-fiction work The Devil’s Highway. Urrea tells the story of a group of migrants crossing the border from Mexico in the Arizona desert. The men are abandoned by their guides, left to fend for themselves in the sweltering heat as they try to make their way through the desert. Although immigration is a reliable controversy in election years, rarely does the news treat the people making the crossing as anything other than a policy to assign blame to. With its insistence on humanizing the men making the crossing, Urrea brings a grounded, human element to a topic plagued by mass-market sensationalism.
Conclusion
This is by no means a comprehensive list. Living in a range from the American Southwest, the Caribbean, and Central and Southern America, trying to pin down a definitive Hispanic experience is a fool’s errand. Still, some fool’s errands are worth more than others. If there’s anything to learn, there are countless ways to move forward. For Hispanic Heritage Month, it is only appropriate that there be so many opportunities and cultures to learn from. It can feel overwhelming instead of enriching. Like you’re suffering from an abundance of beginnings. But if you were looking for a good place to start, it’s hard to go wrong with any of these.
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