If you’re a book lover, you’re going to love our Latinas & Libros Book Club, where we read stories from Latina authors in community, and see ourselves reflected in the pages of our selected books.
After a successful book club launch cultivating a community of 1,500 book lovers and reading 12 incredible new releases throughout the year, 2023 marks a fabulous second year where we are diving into incredible stories.
In partnership with Fabian Flores Publishing and its founder and our host Norma Fabian Newton, we have been able to dive into new titles from our community, and gather our Amigahood for some heart-to-heart charlas with the authors themselves. We designed this as a safe space for book lovers to reflect juntas as they open their books and their hearts.
Check out the titles we intentionally chose for 2023! If you want to join the live book discussion, be sure to join the Amigahood and join the Latinas & Libros Book Club. There you can connect with other mujeres in alignment with self-exploration, unwavering community, and purpose.
JANUARY
The Pain We Carry: Healing from Complex PTSD for People of Color
Genre: Self-help
As people of color, the intense feelings of anger that derive from experiencing repeated trauma must be addressed in order for us to feel safe again in our own bodies. In this groundbreaking work written by psychotherapist Natalie Y. Gutiérrez, LMFT, The Pain We Carry illuminates the phenomena of complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) as it is uniquely experienced by people of color, and provides a much-needed path to health and wholeness. Together, we’ll discover powerful tools for healing and ways to build self-compassion and resilience, reclaim our wellness, and reconnect with our ancestral wisdom.
FEBRUARY
Brown Enough: True Stories About Love, Violence, the Student Loan Crisis, Race, Familia, and Making It in America
Genre: Memoir
Holding the weight of being a Latino man, Christopher Rivas wonders where he falls on the color line, widened through his experience as an ethnically ambiguous actor of color in Hollywood and the many dangers and pitfalls that come from owning one’s Brownness. Told through the lens of his personal stories and in a unique and literal voice, Christopher examines the deep history of his Dominican and Colombian heritage that begs the question of what it means to be Brown in 21st century America.
MARCH
¡Ándale, Prieta!: A Memoir
Genre: Memoir
This is a beautiful open coming-of-age memoir by Mexican-American writer, Yasmín Ramírez, that doubles as a love letter to the tough grandmother who raised her. Yasmín does not fit in, she is not “güerita” like her sister, nor does she have a conventional family, and her plans never go as expected. Can you relate, amiga? Her skin is darker and shows her Mexican heritage, so her grandmother calls her prieta. While it can be an insult, when it comes from her Ita’s mouth, prieta means love; a love that helps Yasmín accept herself and her history. ¡Ándale, Prieta! shows the bond between a grandmother and granddaughter, and explores the grief of losing it.
APRIL
The Making of Yolanda Bruja
By: Lorraine Avila
Genre: Young Adult
The Making of Yolanda La Bruja is the book this country that struggles with the plague of gun violence has so desperately needed. Just as Yolanda Alvarez is starting to feel at home Julia De Burgos High, her school in the Bronx, a white boy, the son of a politician, appears and his vibes are off. When Yolanda’s initiation into her bruja family begins, she receives a series of troubling visions of the violence this boy threatens. How can Yolanda protect her community, in a world that doesn’t listen? Only with the wisdom and love of her family, friends, and community – and the Brujas Diosas, her ancestors and guides.
MAY
My What If Year: A Memoir
Genre: Memoir
Amiga, what if you spent the next year of your life leading with curiosity and wonder? That’s what Alisha Fernandez Miranda did when, on the cusp of turning forty; she temporarily paused her stressful career as the CEO of a high-powered consulting firm and left her London home to spend one year exploring the dream jobs of her youth, seeking answers to the question, “what If?” My What If Year proves that it’s never too late to say yes to second chances and explore the roads untraveled throughout your life.
JUNE
Get Rooted: Reclaim Your Soul, Serenity, and Sisterhood Through the Healing Medicine of the Grandmothers
By: Robyn Moreno
Genre: Memoir
Anyone scrolling through Robyn Moreno’s social media who sees her on the set of The Today Show; shaking hands with Barack Obama at the White House; speaking on stage at SXSW; and cozying up to celebs like J.Lo and Rihanna would have thought she was living the life. But the truth behind her well-curated snaps was that Robyn was burnt out AF. Get Rooted is both a memoir and manual detailing her journey of quitting her manic #mommyboss existence to save her soul, sanity, and family. Read about how she set out on a 260-day spiritual journey based in Aztec and Mayan traditions to study the medicine of her Mexican grandmothers, and get inspired to write your own story of reclamation.
JULY
El Viento Conoce Mi Nombre / The Wind Knows My Name
By: Isabel Allende
Genre: Fiction
El Viento Conoce Mi Nombre / The Wind Knows My Name, by Isabel Allende, is a powerful and moving novel weaving together past and present, tracing the ripple effects of war and immigration on one child in Europe in 1938 and another in the United States in 2019. Samuel Adler is five years old when his father disappears during Kristallnacht—the night his family loses everything. As her child’s safety becomes ever harder to guarantee, Samuel’s mother secures a spot for him on a Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England. Eight decades later, Anita Díaz and her mother board another train, fleeing looming danger in El Salvador and seeking refuge in the United States. But their arrival coincides with the new family separation policy, and seven-year-old Anita finds herself alone at a camp in Nogales. Intertwining past and present, El Viento Conoce Mi Nombre / The Wind Knows My Name tells the tale of these two unforgettable characters, both in search of family and home.
AUGUST
Plantains and Our Becoming
Genre: Poetry
Poet and musician Melania Luisa Marte opens Plantains and Our Becoming by pointing out that Afro-Latina is not a word recognized by the dictionary. But the dictionary is far from a record of the truth. What does it mean, then, to tend to your own words and your own record—to build upon the legacies of your ancestors? In this imaginative, blistering poetry collection, Marte looks at the identities and histories of the Dominican Republic and Haiti to celebrate and center the Black diasporic experience. Through the exploration of themes like self-love, nationalism, displacement, generational trauma, and ancestral knowledge, this collection uproots stereotypes while creating a new joyous vision for Black identity and personhood.
SEPTEMBER
Family Lore: A Novel
Genre: Fiction
From the bestselling National Book Award–winning author Elizabeth Acevedo comes her first novel for adults, the story of one Dominican-American family told through the voices of its women as they await a gathering that will forever change their lives. Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides she wants a living wake—a party to bring her family and community together to celebrate the long life she’s led—her sisters are surprised. Has Flor foreseen her own death, or someone else’s? Spanning the three days prior to the wake, Family Lore traces the lives of each of the Marte women, weaving together past and present, Santo Domingo and New York City. Family Lore is an indelible portrait of sisters and cousins, aunts and nieces—one family’s journey through their history, helping them better navigate all that is to come.
OCTOBER
Where There Was Fire
Genre: Historical Fiction
When a lethal fire erupts at the American Fruit Company’s most lucrative banana plantation, burning all evidence of a massive cover-up, the future of Teresa Cepeda Valverde’s family is changed forever. Twenty-seven years later, Teresa and her daughter Lyra are still picking up the pieces. What unfolds is a story of a mother and daughter trying to forgive what they do not yet understand, and the mystery at the heart of one family’s rupture. Brimming with ancestral spirits, omens, and the anthropomorphic forces of nature, John Manuel Arias weaves a brilliant tapestry of love, loss, secrets, and redemption in Where There was Fire.
NOVEMBER
First Gen: A Memoir
Genre: Memoir
This is an unflinching memoir about navigating social mobility as a first-gen Latina—offering both a riveting personal story and an examination of the unacknowledged emotional tolls of being a trailblazer (like yourself, amiga!) With candor and heart, Alejandra retraces her trajectory as a Mexican-American woman raised by an immigrant single mother in Los Angeles and shares a powerful testimony that shatters the one-dimensional glossy narrative we are often sold of what it takes to achieve the American Dream. Amiga, can you relate? Part memoir, part manifesto, First Gen is a story of generational inheritance, aspiration, and the true meaning of belonging—a gripping journey to reclaim the parts of ourselves we sacrificed in order to survive.
DECEMBER
Creep: Accusations and Confessions
By: Myriam Gurba
Genre: Memoir
This is a ruthless and razor-sharp essay collection that tackles the pervasive, creeping oppression and toxicity that has wormed its way into society—in our books, schools, and homes, as well as the systems that perpetuate them—from the acclaimed author of Mean, and one of our fiercest, foremost explorers of intersectional Latinx identity, Myriam Gurba. With her wry humor, she braids her history and identity throughout, passionately arguing for a new way of conceptualizing oppression and offering tools to help liberate us all.
