Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month

By Julianne Jones | August 3 2020 | Holidays

Hispanic Heritage Month—also called Latinx Heritage Month to recognize a broader spectrum of identities relating to gender, language, and origin—will be celebrated in the US from September 15th through October 15th.

Started in 1968 by President Lyndon B. Johnson as a week-long commemoration, the event was expanded to a month-long span by President Ronald Reagan in 1988. Its mid-month starting point coincides with the anniversary of independence for several Latin American countries: Costa Rice, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua (all on September 15th); Mexico (on September 16th); and Chile (on September 18th).

The holiday began as a way to center and celebrate the contributions of this community in the United States, but has since broadened into an opportunity to center the experience of today’s Latinx peoples in a variety of conversations and activations. Today, the U.S. Hispanic population totals over 60 million, with significant growth in Southern states and a strong influence on younger consumer buying power in the country.

Celebrate the month by encouraging accounts to stock up on top-selling fiction and nonfiction titles that focus on Latinx stories, including Spanish-language titles. For more information on the holiday, visit https://hispanicheritagemonth.gov/about/.

To see the full list of titles on the Backlist Vault, click here.

To see this collection on Edelweiss, click here.

The House on Mango Street
978-0-679-73477-2
A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A coming-of-age classic about a young girl growing up in Chicago • Acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught in schools and universities alike, and translated around the world—from the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature.“Cisneros draws on her rich [Latino] heritage...and seduces with precise, spare prose, creat[ing] unforgettable characters we want to lift off the page. She is not only a gifted writer, but an absolutely essential one.” —The New York Times Book ReviewThe House on Mango Street is one of the most cherished novels of the last fifty years. Readers from all walks of life have fallen for the voice of Esperanza Cordero, growing up in Chicago and inventing for herself who and what she will become. “In English my name means hope,” she says. “In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting."Told in a series of vignettes—sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes joyous—Cisneros’s masterpiece is a classic story of childhood and self-discovery and one of the greatest neighborhood novels of all time. Like Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street or Toni Morrison’s Sula, it makes a world through people and their voices, and it does so in language that is poetic and direct. This gorgeous coming-of-age novel is a celebration of the power of telling one’s story and of being proud of where you're from. 
$12.95 US
Apr 03, 1991
Paperback
Vintage
US, Canada, Open Mkt

Next Year in Havana
Reese's Book Club (A Novel)
978-0-399-58668-2
A REESE WITHERSPOON BOOK CLUB PICK"A beautiful novel that's full of forbidden passions, family secrets and a lot of courage and sacrifice."--Reese WitherspoonAfter the death of her beloved grandmother, a Cuban-American woman travels to Havana, where she discovers the roots of her identity--and unearths a family secret hidden since the revolution...
$18.00 US
Feb 06, 2018
Paperback
Berkley
World

Chronicle of a Death Foretold
978-1-4000-3471-0
NOBEL PRIZE WINNER • From the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude comes the gripping story of the murder of a young aristocrat that puts an entire society—not just a pair of murderers—on trial. A man returns to the town where a baffling murder took place 27 years earlier, determined to get to the bottom of the story. Just hours after marrying the beautiful Angela Vicario, everyone agrees, Bayardo San Roman returned his bride in disgrace to her parents. Her distraught family forced her to name her first lover; and her twin brothers announced their intention to murder Santiago Nasar for dishonoring their sister. Yet if everyone knew the murder was going to happen, why did no one intervene to stop it? The more that is learned, the less is understood, as the story races to its inexplicable conclusion.
$16.00 US
Oct 07, 2003
Paperback
Vintage
US, Canada, Open Mkt

Nopalito
A Mexican Kitchen [A Cookbook]
978-0-399-57828-1
A collection of 100 recipes for anyone who wants to cook traditional Mexican food in all its surprising freshness and variety, ranging from the simplest dishes to more complex ones, and including both the classic and the lesser-known regional gems of this cuisine.
$30.00 US
Apr 11, 2017
Hardcover
Ten Speed Press
World

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