There's a Book for That: Hispanic & Latine Heritage Month
Welcome Hispanic & Latine Heritage Month which runs from September 15th through October 15th, during which time we honor the contributions of Latine and Hispanic Americans to the United States and celebrate their heritage and culture. Enjoy the following array of new and acclaimed nonfiction – biography, memoir, cooking, travel, history, and poetry – to mark the occasion.
Searching, propulsive, and deeply spiritual, Accordion Eulogies is an odyssey to repair a severed family lineage, told through the surprising history of a musical instrument. Growing up in Yakima, Washington, Noé Álvarez never knew his grandfather. Stories swirled around this mythologized, larger-than-life figure: That he had abandoned his family, and had possibly done something awful that put a curse on his descendants. About his grandfather, young Noé was sure of only one thing: That he had played the accordion. Now an adult, reckoning with the legacy of silence surrounding his family’s migration from Mexico, Álvarez resolves both to take up the instrument and to journey into Mexico to discover the grandfather he never knew.
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian, the first comprehensive history of the Western Hemisphere, a sweeping five-century narrative of North and South America that redefines our understanding of both
MEXICO CITY: THE EXTRAORDINARY GUIDE: AN INSIDER TOUR OF ART, FOOD, AND CULTURE by Thibault Mommalier, Franck Juery
Go beyond the ordinary with this highly visual travelogue, guidebook, and coffee table keepsake showcasing the incredible experiences waiting to be had in Mexico City. Explore the authentic side of Mexico City, with a richly photographed, intoxicating mix of history and the cosmopolitan present day. Perfect for an adventurous traveler—where The Rough Guide crowd meets the Wallpaper audience—this book is for anyone yearning to be inspired and excited by travel, and to find the less obvious.
Hope is the first autobiography in history ever to be published by a Pope. Written over six years, this complete autobiography starts in the early years of the twentieth century, with Pope Francis’s Italian roots and his ancestors’ courageous migration to Latin America, continuing through his childhood, the enthusiasms and preoccupations of his youth, his vocation, adult life, and the whole of his papacy up to the present day.
At once intimate and wide-ranging, and as enthralling, surprising, and vivid as the place itself, this is a uniquely eye-opening tour of one of the great metropolises of the world, and its largest Spanish-speaking city.
With an introduction by The Motorcycle Diaries filmmaker Walter Salles, and featuring 24 pages of photos taken by Che.
The Motorcycle Diaries is Che Guevara’s diary of his journey to discover the continent of Latin America while still a medical student, setting out in 1952 on a vintage Norton motorcycle together with his friend Alberto Granado, a biochemist. It captures, arguably as much as any book ever written, the exuberance and joy of one person’s youthful belief in the possibilities of humankind tending towards justice, peace and happiness.
Frida Kahlo’s legacy continues to grow in the public imagination in the nearly fifty years since her “discovery” in the 1970s. This collection of conversations over the course of her brief career allows a peek at the woman behind the hype. And allows us to see the image of herself she carefully crafted for the public.
An extraordinary account, in the tradition of The House on Mango Street, of a Colombian woman’s harrowing childhood defined by uprootedness and migration. Comprised of letters written over the course of thirty years, this astonishing memoir describes in painterly detail the remarkable courage and limitless imagination of a young girl growing up with nothing. Discovered only after Reyes’s death, it reveals a gifted writer whose talent remained hidden for far too long.
THE DAY OF THE DEAD: A CELEBRATION OF DEATH AND LIFE by Déborah Holtz, Juan Carlos Mena
A tribute to Mexico’s most important holiday, this extraordinary and definitive volume documents the immense creativity displayed by this popular annual celebration.
This landmark Latinx poetry collection offers “a wondrous journey through the passions, the ideas, and the diversity of a people redefining what it means to be American” (Héctor Tobar, Pulitzer Prize winner). Now, in an unprecedented anthology edited by the poet and critic Rigoberto González, Library of America brings together more than 180 poets whose poems bear witness to the beauty and power of this vital and expanding tradition: its profound engagement with pasts both mythical and historical, its reckoning with the complexities of language, land, and identity, and its vision of a nation enriched by the stories of immigrants, exiles, refugees, and their descendants. Latino Poetry spans the 17th century to today, and presents those poems written in Spanish in the original and in English translation.
In this monumental work, culinary expert Sandra A. Gutierrez shares more than three hundred everyday dishes—plus countless variations—that home cooks everywhere will want to replicate. Divided by ingredient—Beans, Corn, Yuca, Quinoa, and almost two dozen more—and featuring an extensive pantry section that establishes the fundamentals of Latin American cooking, Latinísimo brings together real recipes from home cooks in Argentina, Brazil, Belize, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
From the kitchen of a world-renowned chef comes this treasury of authentic Mexican recipes inspired by the painter Frida Kahlo and filled with mouthwatering photography. In engaging texts, Castellano explores Kahlo’s relationship to food, as well as the historic importance of Mexican culinary arts in Kahlo’s work. Fans of Kahlo’s art will gain a deeper understanding of her use of color and her connection to Mexican tradition. Anyone interested in authentic Mexican cooking will be drawn to the flavors and textures of Castellanos’ gorgeously illustrated recipes.
For more on these, and related, titles visit Hispanic & Latine Heritage Month, 2025
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