Celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month with these powerful, unforgettable stories, from moving fiction from Latine authors to award-winning history books that contextualize the Hispanic experience across North America.

 

Innovative Fiction from Latine Authors:

Gordo by Jaime Cortez

Finalist for the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction

An exuberant debut short story collection set in a migrant workers’ camp in California in the 1970’s that follows the daily lives of remarkable characters—including the titular Gordo, a young, likely queer boy who picks neighborhood fights donned in a wrestling mask.

“This hilarious short story collection gives incisive glimpses of blue-collar Mexican American life.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

 

Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo, translated from Spanish by Douglas J. Weatherford

An enchanting novel following a man’s quest to find his estranged father in a haunted town in Mexico that is populated entirely by restless, wandering ghosts. Featuring a foreword by Gabriel García Márquez, this new translation cements this novel’s place as one of the seminal literary texts of the twentieth century.

“I didn’t sleep until I’d read it twice; not since I had read Kafka’s Metamorphosis in a dingy boarding house in Bogotá, almost ten years earlier, had I been so overcome.”—Gabriel García Márquez

 

The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gómez by John Rechy

Told over the course of a single, transformative Saturday in Los Angeles, this vividly rendered novel follows the indelible Amalia Gómez, a twice-divorced, working-class Chicana mother who believes she has seen a miracle in the form of a large silver cross that appears in the sky.

“A triumph, a sad, beautiful, and loving book . . . Amalia comes to stunning and breathtaking life.”—Newsday

 

 

The Antiquarian by Gustavo Faverón-Patriau

A spellbinding debut novel that’s part murder mystery, part exploration of the antiquarian book world. When renowned psycholinguist Gustavo reunites with his closest friend, who has been convicted for his fiancée’s murder, he is drawn into the center of a quixotic investigation through an underground network of antiquarian dealers.

“A dark, cruel and thrilling gem of a novel . . . a startling read from the first sentence to the last.”—Daniel Alarcón, author of Lost City Radio and At Night We Walk in Circles

 

Woodcuts of Women by Dagoberto Gilb

From one of the most influential voices in Mexican American fiction in the twenty-first century comes a collection of ten gritty and heartbreaking stories of lust, love, and longing among men and women struggling to find their way in the American Southwest.

“Hard-hitting and heart-filling . . . A mix of Raymond Carver and Anton Chekhov.”—Julia Alvarez

 

 

Monkey Boy by Francisco Goldman

Finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

A tender and irresistibly funny auto-fictional novel about a middle-aged writer grappling with the challenges of family life, love, and growing up Guatemalan and Jewish in America.

“Enrapturing . . . a Proustian trip through one man’s life and memory, as well as the violent history of colonization that binds the Americas.”—Viet Thanh Nguyen, American Book Award Citation

 

A Glass of Water by Jimmy Santiago Baca

From an award-winning poet and Chicano activist, a gripping novel about family and the ever-elusive American dream that charts the course of two brothers’ diverging lives. Lorenzo devotes his life to working in the fields, while Vito explores a career as a boxer, their paths reconverging as they must confront their family’s painful past.

“[A] blistering novel . . . The sheer passion that drives Baca’s [work] is undeniable.”—Publishers Weekly

 

 

In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd by Ana Menéndez

A hypnotic and darkly comic collection of linked short stories about Cuban American immigrants forming new lives in Miami as they continue to reckon with their lingering pasts.

“Powerful . . . stories that not only convey the bittersweet mood of exile but also give us a wonderful gallery of idiosyncratic characters.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

 

 

The Veins of the Ocean by Patricia Engel

A New York Times Editor’s Choice

Set in the vibrant coastal and Caribbean communities of Miami, the Florida Keys, Havana, Cuba, and Cartagena, Colombia, this heartrending novel follows a woman’s journey of solace and redemption in the wake of her beloved brother’s death row conviction.

“Lush and entrancing, steeped in love and sorrow, faith and myth.”—Roxane Gay, Book of the Month

 

Essential Latin American History Books:

Mexico by Paul Gillingham

A Washington Post Best Nonfiction Book of 2025

A vibrant and award-winning narrative that traces the history of Mexico from the 16th century to the present, in a richly detailed account of its ground-breaking political innovations, rich cultural history, and current role as a vital shaper of world affairs.

“Engrossing . . . Gillingham tells the story of a nation that has thrived because of its diversity, not in spite of it.”—The New York Times

 

El Norte by Carrie Gibson

A sweeping saga of the Spanish history and influence in North America over five centuries, from the arrival of the Spanish in the early 16th century to the ongoing border acrimony with Mexico in the present. Interwoven into this stirring narrative of events, Gibson unpacks the lasting cultural impacts of issues of language, belonging, community, race, and nationality.

“The book that Americans, Anglo and Hispanic, should read . . . an engaging project of reading the future in the past.”—Julio Ortega, The New York Times Book Review