Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month by spending time with the personal stories of these Hispanic American authors. From recollections of a trek to Mount Everest to stories taking place in our own nearby communities, these books traverse time and place and remind us of the power of listening to each other's lived experiences.
My Broken Language: A Memoir by Quiara Alegría Hudes
The Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright and co-writer of In the Heights tells her lyrical story of coming of age against the backdrop of an ailing Philadelphia barrio, with her sprawling Puerto Rican family as a collective muse.
A House of My Own: Stories from My Life by Sandra Cisneros
From Chicago to Mexico, the places Sandra Cisneros has lived have provided inspiration for her now-classic works of fiction and poetry. But a house of her own, a place where she could truly take root, has eluded her. In this jigsaw autobiography, made up of essays and images spanning three decades—and including never-before-published work—Cisneros has come home at last.
Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood by Danny Trejo
For the first time, the full, fascinating, and inspirational true story of Danny Trejo’s journey from crime, prison, addiction, and loss to unexpected fame as Hollywood’s favorite bad guy with a heart of gold.
In the Shadow of the Mountain: A Memoir of Courage by Silvia Vasquez-Lavado
Endless ice. Thin air. The threat of dropping into nothingness thousands of feet below. This is the climb Silvia Vasquez-Lavado braves in her page-turning, pulse-raising memoir chronicling her journey to Mount Everest.
The Man Who Could Move Clouds: A Memoir by Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Interweaving family stories more enchanting than those in any novel, resurrected Colombian history, and her own deeply personal reckonings with the bounds of reality, Rojas Contreras writes her way through the incomprehensible and into her inheritance. The result is a luminous testament to the power of storytelling as a healing art and an invitation to embrace the extraordinary.
Crying in the Bathroom: A Memoir by Erika L. Sánchez
Growing up as the daughter of Mexican immigrants in Chicago in the nineties, Erika Sánchez was a self-described pariah, misfit, and disappointment—a foul-mouthed, melancholic rabble-rouser who painted her nails black but also loved comedy, often laughing so hard with her friends that she had to leave her school classroom. Twenty-five years later, she’s now an award-winning novelist, poet, and essayist, but she’s still got an irrepressible laugh, an acerbic wit, and singular powers of perception about the world around her.
The Boy Who Reached for the Stars: A Memoir by Elio Morillo
Elio Morillo's life is abruptly spun out of orbit when economic collapse forces his family to flee Ecuador for the United States. His itinerant childhood sets into motion a migration whose momentum will ultimately carry Elio to the farthest expanse of human endeavor: space.
The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood by Richard Blanco
A poignant, hilarious, and inspiring memoir from the first Latino and openly gay inaugural poet, which explores his coming-of-age as the child of Cuban immigrants and his attempts to understand his place in America while grappling with his burgeoning artistic and sexual identities.
All summaries provided by the publisher.