Hispanic Heritage Month celebrates the rich history and culture of Hispanic Americans, Americans whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America. The month starts on September 15 to commemorate the anniversary of the independence day for Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.
Check out these books from the library to learn more about the history of Hispanic Americans and their influence on shaping the United States.
In Inventing Latinos‚ Laura Gómez‚ a leading expert on race‚ law‚ and society‚ illuminates the fascinating race-making‚ unmaking‚ and re-making of Latino identity that has spanned centuries‚ leaving a permanent imprint on how race operates in the United States today.
Our America maps the influence of America's Hispanic past, from the explorers and conquistadors who helped colonize Puerto Rico and Florida, to the missionaries and ranchers who settled in California and the 20th-century resurgence in major cities like Chicago and Miami.
An African American and Latinx History of the United States
In precise detail, Ortiz traces this untold history from the Jim Crow-esque racial segregation of the Southwest, the rise and violent fall of a powerful tradition of Mexican labor organizing in the twentieth century, to May 1, 2006, International Workers’ Day, when migrant laborers—Chicana/os, Afro-Cubanos, and immigrants from nearly every continent on earth—united in resistance on the first Day Without Immigrants.
Rather than chronology, geography, or political successions, Eduardo Galeano has organized the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation. Thus he is concerned with gold and silver, cacao and cotton, rubber and coffee, fruit, hides and wool, petroleum, iron, nickel, manganese, copper, aluminum ore, nitrates, and tin. These are the veins which he traces through the body of the entire continent, up to the Rio Grande and throughout the Caribbean, and all the way to their open ends where they empty into the coffers of wealth in the United States and Europe.
Within this momentous collection, poets representing every Latin American country grapple with identity, place, and belonging, resisting easy definitions to render a nuanced and complex portrait of language in rebellion.
Manifest Destinies tells the story of the original Mexican Americans - the people living in northern Mexico in 1846 during the onset of the Mexican American War. The war abruptly came to an end two years later, and 115,000 Mexicans became American citizens overnight. Yet their status as full-fledged Americans was tenuous at best.
No Mexicans, Women, or Dogs Allowed
Historian Cynthia E. Orozco presents a comprehensive study of the League of United Latin-American Citizens, with an in-depth analysis of its origins.
The Hispanic past of the United States predates the arrival of the Pilgrims by a century, and has been every bit as important in shaping the nation as it exists today. El Norte chronicles the sweeping and dramatic history of Hispanic North America from the arrival of the Spanish in the early 16th century to the present--from Ponce de Leon's initial landing in Florida in 1513 to Spanish control of the vast Louisiana territory in 1762 to the Mexican-American War in 1846 and up to the more recent tragedy of post-hurricane Puerto Rico and the ongoing border acrimony with Mexico.
Emerging from the ruins of Aztec civilization and from centuries of Spanish contact with indigenous people, Mexican culture followed the Spanish colonial frontier northward and put its distinctive mark on what became the southwestern United States.
Revolutionary Women of Texas and Mexico
The anthology embraces an expansive definition of the word revolutionary by looking at female role models from decades ago and subversives who continue to stand up for their visions and ideals. At the heart of the portraits are the women of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920)-women like the soldaderas who shadowed the Mexican armies, tasked with caring for and treating the wounded troops.
