Greenburgh Public Library Blog

Welcome Home! A Look at New Latinx Literature

My blog posts have focused on immigrants and their stories, and this month I am looking at the accomplishments of Latinx immigrants. There is a young generation of writers of Latinx heritage -- Latinx (not Latino nor Latina) to be inclusive and gender neutral -- is putting forth a strong statement through their work. While the development of the Latinx generation's work likely needed García Márquez, Allende and others to pave the way, these writers may also become household names sooner than we think. In their fifty year projection, the Pew Research Center expects Hispanics will make up 31% of the nation’s immigrant population, as opposed to their current status of about eighteen percent of the US population. While political, economic, and historical factors may change, and thus alter this prediction, what is here to stay are the important literary contributions of established and new Latinx writers. 

Many readers are likely familiar with the work of Isabel Allende, a highly successful immigrant author who is known globally, or Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927-2014), icons of Latino literature whose work is well-established both in the US and abroad. Allow me to introduce some Latinx voices that I hope will become familiar names as you read their work and their life stories:

Meg Medina is of Cuban-American heritage, and author of bestselling Children's and Young Adult novels. She won the 2019 Newbery Medal for Merci Suarez Changes Gears, and has won the Pura Belpré Award (named after Pura Belpré, the first Latina librarian at the New York Public Library). Her work focuses on Latina girls and families who are not defined only by their heritage but still honor it, as in the award-winning Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick your Ass (2013) / Yaqui Delgado Quiere Darte Una Paliza (2016), a realistic story about teen struggles that shows how "biculturalism can foster resilience." In 2014 Medina was recognized as one of the CNN 10 Visionary Women in America. 

Luis Alberto Urrea is the author of The House of Broken Angels (2018), "a novel of an American family, which happens to be from Mexico." Born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and American mother, Urrea is most recognized as a border writer, though he says, “I am more interested in bridges, not borders.” (http://luisurrea.com/about/) He also wrote Into the Beautiful North / Rumbo al hermoso norte (2009) about a young Mexican woman seeking her father who has gone to work in the US. His non-fiction book which also is pertinent to the topic of immigrants and reasons why people seek a different life is By the Lake of Sleeping Children: the secret life of the Mexican border (1996). 

Ingrid Rojas Contreras was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, and currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the author of a novel about Colombia's political upheaval of the 1990s, Fruit of the Drunken Tree / Fruta de la borrachera (2018). The coming-of-age story traces the friendship between two very different young women and betrayal, set against the violent backdrop of a country in crisis. "In lush prose, Rojas Contreras sheds light on the impossible choices women are often forced to make in the face of violence and the unexpected connections that can blossom out of desperation."

Reyna Grande is the author of A Dream Called Home / La búsqueda de un sueño (2018), the sequel to her memoir The Distance Between Us (2012) / La distancia entre nosotros (2013) about her life as a Mexican immigrant coming to the US. After struggles and hard work, and finding people who believe in her, she realizes her own American Dream. Throughout her work, Grande focuses on the US and Mexico dichotomy, and finding in the American Dream and the country that will "be our safe haven, our home." 

I hope you enjoy reading these writers' work, and that you also take time to read about their lives and their search for what home means to them. Welcome home!