Latino Heritage Month: Non-Fiction

Esmeralda Santiago was one of eleven children who grew up in a tin-can of a house in Puerto Rico, surrounded by quarreling parents and poverty. While living in Brooklyn with her grandmother, Santiago's ambition and hard work resulted in a Harvard education, and a successful career as a writer and film producer.

In this engaging memoir, explore one woman’s life and learn how she overcame barriers of poverty, race, and illness to achieve great success.

Oscar Hijuelos' autobiography is poignant and humorous as he retraces his life growing up in Manhattan's Morningside Heights in the 1950s to Cuban immigrant parents, and eventual development into a writer whose novel The mambo kings play songs of love became a best seller. His most recent novel is Twain & Stanley enter paradise.

 

While covering the 1986 Philippine Revolution, Puerto Rican journalist Luisita Lopez Torregrosa falls in love with another writer, Elizabeth. The love affair is overwhelming and changes Torregrosa's life forever.

World War II opened up jobs for women and minorities, and for Mexican American women the opportunities caused a type of revolution in their personal lives, shaking up traditional customs and ideas about women going out into the world unprotected.

One of modern Cuba's major writers, Arenas holds back little in this candid autobiography. Originally a young guerrilla fighter with Castro, he then spent 20 years in prison under the regime he had supported. Finally making his way to the United States, he fought a more desperate battle with AIDS.

This new edition features original photographs, a new translation and a preface from Aleida Guevara, Che's daughter. These are the adventures of the young man, twenty-four-year-old Ernesto Guevara, in 1951 taking a break from medical school at the University of Buenos Aires. We see the growth of a carefree fellow who witnesses poverty and deprivation which will change the future of his life. He travels with his buddy, Alberto Granado, on their Norton motorbike, La Ponderosa II.  What begins as a roadtrip adventure story, proceeds to be the awakening of a future world revolutionary, impatient with social and political injustices.

The memory of  a discussion with his father prompts Richard Rodriguez's collection of thought-provoking essays about Mexico and the United States with their intertwined and conflicted histories.

What price for assimilation and a university education?  In this candid autobiography, Richard Rodriguez recounts his childhood, knowing hardly any Englsh, and eventually earning a Ph.D, and becoming a Fullbright scholar at the Warburg Institute in London.  However, along the way he lost connections to his past, his family and his culture. 

Four Mexican American boys, some of whom are in the U.S. illegally, compete in the Mate Center competition to develop robots. Is there any chance these disadvantaged guys have a chance to win anything?  What will happen to some of them if they do win and get a lot of notoriety?  With nothing to lose and something to gain, the young men give it their all.

"Latino baseball flourished in Southern California from the early 1900s to the 1970s. It was a popular sport, but it was also something more. Latino baseball leagues helped create a cohesive and vibrant Latino community and they were a source of community pride. The games became a place for meetings across the region and were integral to discussion and eventually political organization within the communities."  Photographs and narrative provide a vivid history. See the Latino Baseball History Project for more information.

 

"Latino baseball flourished in Southern California from the early 1900s to the 1970s. It was a popular sport, but it was also something more. Latino baseball leagues helped create a cohesive and vibrant Latino community and they were a source of community pride. The games became a place for meetings across the region and were integral to discussion and eventually political organization within the communities."  This book chronicles the lives of players who worked and lived in the central part of California.

Cuban-American Fernando Bujones was a richly talented ballet start with the American Ballet Theatre.  He was the youngest principal dancer in the company and the first American dancer to win a gold medal at the Varna International Ballet Competition.

Luis J. Rodriguez, Poet Laureate of Los Angeles 2014 - 2016,  bravely, boldly recounts his life as a young Chicano gang member in East Los Angeles, with all of the violence, sadness and hopelessness that were part of that life.  He found a way out, through education and has made it his mission to help others.

Poet, political thinker, journalist, revolutionary, José Marti is one of the great heroes of Latin America. He is beloved and hailed by Castro, and those who oppose him, the exiled Cuban community. Alfred Lopez workd for many years on this new biography, gaining access to original Cuban and U.S. sources.

Jenni Rivera was strong, determined, talented and very smart. This is her autobiography told her way, as she did everything else, including damaging choices in men.  She toughed it out to succeed in the male-dominated world of banda and norteño music to become an international sensation.

 

Finely detailed Mexican papercutting can be traced back to the pre-Columbian period. The paper is traditionally used for window coverings, hangings and in other decorative ways, and this book provides clear instructions.

Daniel D. Arreola has one of the largest collections of Mexican border town photo postcards, covering the early 1900s through the 1950s.  In the early part of the twentieth century the post cards were used to promote the quiet border towns as tourist destinations. The images are illuminating cultural pieces.

This lavishly illustrated biography of Diego Rivera is an excellent overview of the artist's productive, turbulent life as an artist and political activist.

Great suffering and achievement were equal parts of Frida Kahlo's life. This biography is a concise and interesting introduction to her life and art.

Ballet in Cuba is world-renowned because of prima ballerina assoluta Alicia Alonso, who is the focus of this book.

Jaime Escalante was an inspirational math teacher who proved to students and others that inner-ctiy students were capable of great achievements, including passing AP calculus exams. The movie Stand and deliver is based on his life. 

 

The Nobel Peace Prize 1992 "in recognition of her work for social justice and ethno-cultural reconciliation based on respect for the rights of indigenous peoples"

Richard Blanco was the fifth poet selected to read an original poem for a United States Presidential Inauguration. As an openly gay man and Cuban immigrant this was a very special event, which he recounts with humor, insight and reverence. 

Isabel Quintero's graphic novel biography of Graciela Iturbide will appeal to all ages. Quintero interviewed the 76-year-old photographer whose pioneering work in photographing indigenous cultures is as remarkable as her own life. Other books by Iturbide can be found here.

Because of its vividly colored soil, Cuba is known as the violet isle. Photographers Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb capture the gritty street life and wild and domestic animals. Pico Iyer's essay is poetic and informative.

During the late 1960s there were two main conflicts for the United States: the battle for civil rights and the Vietnam War. This new book gives voice to the Chicano experience in the war and as POWs. 

This expansive and well-researched book may be the most complete biography of Cesar Chavez, labor leader and founder of the United Farm Workers.

Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado has traveled the world documenting the best and worst of what humanity has done to itself and to the environment. The winner of many awards, he is UNICEF’s Goodwill Ambassador. In this semi-autobiography Salgado discusses his most important photographic assignments. His other books can be found here.

Judith Baca, American Chicana artist and activist, created the world’s longest mural, the Great Wall of Los Angeles, inspired by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Jose Clemente Orozco.

The name of our city, Los Angeles, is a shortened version of El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles. This books explores other place-names with roots in Spanish.

Tenochtitlan was the capital of the Aztec empire, built on an island, it was one of the largest cities in the world. In 1521, Hernando Cortes declared to the Spanish King, Charles V, that he had destroyed the city. Art historian Barbara Mundy’s research proves that was not the case, and highlights other aspects of this extraordinary city.

Hollywood’s dream factories, the motion picture industry, created images of passionate men who challenged the all-American images of the blonde, blue-eyed male actors.

Peruvian poet, journalist and revolutionary politician, Magda Portal was the only female founder of the non-Communist, leftist organization American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (ARPA).

In her autobiography, Isabel Toledo, Cuban-American fashion designer, writes about her passion for design and fashion. In 2009, First Lady Michelle Obama wore Toldedo's lemon-green dress and coat ensemble for the inauguration of President Obama.

 

Cuban-American playwright Eduardo Machado's memoir of his Cuban roots is centered around food, family and places, and is interspersed with recipes, and black and white family photographs. 

LAPL has a collection of his plays.

Luis J. Rodriguez, former Poet Laureate of Los Angeles, explores current issues of race, freedom of speech, identity, and the layers of culture that unite more than divide us.

Danny Trejo is well known as an actor, who portrays the most villainous of characters. His face reflects a life of hard living: convict, drug addict, guidance counselor, actor, restaurateur and writer. He reveals it all in his autobiography.

While researching the restaurant that her grandmother Doña Natalia opened, Natalia Molina discovered even more about the eatery, her grandmother, and the community that worked and ate there. The real-life experiences reflect a complex history of Los Angeles with more twists and turns than a suspense novel.

In the theater world, when you say, Chita, it can only refer to Chita Rivera, a dancing, singing, acting legend who starred in the original versions of classic Broadway musicals. In her own words and style, she recounts her own sensational story.