Patrick Grey
To celebrate the start of Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month, The Footnote reviewed some classic and recent works spotlighting the history, culture, and work of Latinx people. Diaspora, resistance, and solidarity are some of the major themes in this book list. We hope that our readers can use this list to explore the contributions of Latinx people within and outside of the academy, in the US and beyond.
History & Nonfiction
Black in Latin America by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
This travelogue focuses on the history of African-descended people, their diaspora in Latin America, and their legacies in Brazil, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, and Peru. Gates explores a range of topics including art, music, cuisine, dance, politics, and religion, as well as discussing the histories of enslavement and anti-black racism in the present. Gates narrates each chapter like a tour. This relatively short read provides a great introduction to the history and culture of Afro-Latinos.
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldúa
In this expertly-written work of critical theory, Anzaldúa examines the social, cultural, and linguistic legacies of the communities living in and around the Rio Grande Valley – right on the site of the US-Mexico border. Freely switching between different dialects of English and Spanish in a mix of essays and poetry, the book opens new points of inquiry to better understand the history of borderlands, race in language, and how identity can challenge power. The book implores us to take seriously the history of Chicano people and their struggle, but more importantly, their perseverance.
Cuba: An American History by Ada Ferrer
Ferrer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book explores the history of Cuba through its interactions with the United States. However, this isn’t just a history of US-Cuban relations; rather, Ferrer is more interested in telling the history of Cuba in a way that is less sensationalized than some accounts and pays more attention to the long history of US influence on Cuba, and vice versa. Centering the role of “ordinary people” in the unique history of Cuba, Ferrer’s beautifully written account will shape the thinking of historians of both Latin America and the US as well as the general public.
New Worlds, New Lives: Globalization and People of Japanese Descent in the Americas and from Latin America in Japan edited by Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, Akemi Kikumura-Yano, and James A. Hirabayashi
This edited volume explores the history of the Japanese diaspora in the Americas and provides different perspectives of the Nikkei (people of Japanese descent) community in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Paraguay, Peru, and the United States. The book draws upon different scholarly disciplines to make a comparative analysis of the Japanese immigrant community, their descendants in several countries, and their social, political, and cultural legacies. One of the book’s strengths is its emphatic focus on the futures of Nikkei communities in the Americas.
The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas by Monica Muñoz Martinez
Muñoz Martinez reconstructs a moving account of three distinct lynching cases along the Texas-Mexico border in the early twentieth century. This book explores the long history of anti-Mexican violence in the US and pays close attention to the institutions and the local organizations that were responsible for the murders of innocent Mexicans and Mexican Americans during the period in US history now known as “La Matanza” (1910-20). The book also makes a case for reparations in its accounts of the descendants of survivors.
The Young Lords: A Radical History by Johanna Fernández
In this definitive work on the history of the Young Lords Organization (YLO), Fernández uses oral histories and police surveillance records to reconstruct a fuller story of the organization from its roots as a Chicago street gang to a political organization in East Harlem during the 1960s and 70s. With foundations inspired by the Black Panther Party, the YLO was led by poor and working-class Puerto Ricans who organized free breakfast programs, childcare programs for working mothers, and tested children for lead poisoning. This monograph, written with impressive narration, provides a unique perspective to better understand how radical politics can challenge racist and anti-poverty policies in the US.
Biography
Ainda estou aqui (I’m Still Here) by Marcelo Rubens Paiva
Paiva’s memoir, which was recently adapted into the Academy-award winning film of the same name, recounts the story of his and his family’s life in Brazil during the military dictatorship (1964-1985). Although it is an autobiographical work, the book highlights the story of the disappearance of the author’s father, Rubens Paiva, and the story of his mother, Eunice Paiva, who rebuilt her family’s life after the government seized and murdered her husband all the while becoming a civil rights attorney advocating for the rights of Brazil’s indigenous people.
La distancia entre nosotros (The Distance Between Us) by Reyna Grande
This memoir captures the childhood and adolescence in the author’s small town in Mexico after the departure of her father, and, later, her mother to “El otro lado” (the other side of the border). In her at times lyric prose, Grande takes us inside the intimate moments of joy, separation, and the navigation of new worlds.
My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor
Set just before she became the first Latinx justice appointed to the US Supreme Court, this memoir recounts the coming of age of Sonia Sotomayor. From her early years growing up with her grandmother in the housing projects in the Bronx to her appointment as a federal judge in New York in 1992, Sotomayor fleshes out her trailblazing story and writes about topics like disability, affirmative action, and the role of Spanish in her life.
Fiction & Poetry
Dom Casmurro by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
Set in Rio de Janeiro during the second reign of the Empire of Brazil, this novel follows Bento Santiago, the protagonist and the unreliable narrator of the story, recounting the events that occurred in his youth in retrospect. Machado de Assis, arguably the greatest Brazilian novelist, often interrupts and manipulates time in the narrative to push the readers to develop different interpretations of the conclusion of the book.
Katatay/Temblar (Tremble) by José María Areguedas
Written by a pioneer of modern Quechua poetry and one of the foremost literary figures in Peruvian history, this collection of Areguedas’ poems is representative of his vision for equity between the cosmopolitan and the rural Andean as well as his call for international solidarity against oppression and poverty. Katatay/Temblar is written in Quechua and Spanish, and it is publicly available through the Peruvian Casa de la Literatura.
The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat
Set along the border of the Dominican Republic and Haiti during Rafael Trujillo’s dictatorship, this novel narrates the story of a young Haitian worker, Amabelle, caught right in the middle of the Parsley Massacre of 1937. Danticat uses sharp and precise language to emphasize the importance of remembering to begin healing sores from the past.
The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival by Alicia Partnoy
In this novel, Partnoy, one of the 30,000 people who were disappeared during the Argentine military junta (1974-83), offers readers glimpses into the horrors of what she heard, experienced, and, at times, saw through the blindfold covering her eyes. The author fictionalizes the identities of some of her prisoners and writes about the struggle to hold on to dignity and humanity amid the injustices committed by the dictatorship in “the Little School,” a clandestine detention center, with poetic prose.
Patrick Grey is a second-year PhD student in the Department of History at Georgetown University. His research centers on the histories of the African diaspora in the Americas, particularly those of fugitivity, marronage, and resistance to enslavement in the Atlantic world. He is Co Editor-in-Chief of The Footnote.
The Footnote 