Latin American Fiction

In his short life, the Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution, leading movements in North America, South America, the African continent, and the Caribbean. In each locale, Rodney found himself a lightning rod for working class Black Power. His deportation catalyzed 20th century Jamaica's most significant rebellion, the 1968 Rodney riots, and his scholarship trained a generation how to think politics at an international scale.

At thirteen years old, Valeria "Magic" Salomón is already the best soccer player her town has ever seen. She has talent in spades and an abuelo whose tough-love coaching and lessons about “strength and honor” have made her the star of the Overlords, the top boys’ team in the state. But everything changes at the State Cup semi-final when Valeria gets her first period while Wearing. White. Shorts. After her team is unexpectedly eliminated, she goes from their secret weapon to their scapegoat.

Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s magnetic story collection breathes life into her Indigenous Latina characters and the land they inhabit. Against the remarkable backdrop of Denver, Colorado - a place that is as fierce as it is exquisite - these women navigate the land the way they navigate their lives: with caution, grace, and quiet force. In “Sugar Babies,” ancestry and heritage are hidden inside the Earth but tend to rise during land disputes.

Yuri Herrera does not simply write about the border between Mexico and the United States and those who cross it. He explores the crossings and translations people make in their minds and language as they move from one country to another, especially when there's no going back. Traversing this lonely territory is Makina, a young woman who knows only too well how to survive in a violent, macho world. Leaving behind her life in Mexico to search for her brother, she is smuggled into the USA carrying a pair of secret messages - one from her mother and one from the Mexican underworld.

A stunning debut novel about a young undocumented Peruvian woman fighting to keep her family afloat in New York City. Ana Falcón, along with her husband, Lucho, and their two young children, has fled the economic and political strife of Peru for a chance at a new life in New York City in the 1990s. Being undocumented, however, has significantly curtailed the family’s opportunities: Ana is indebted to a loan shark who calls herself Mama and is stretched thin by unceasing shifts at her factory job.

A Vegas cocktail waitress. An Indian herbalist. A British chemistry professor. An Italian-American widow. Four unique women with one thing in common: Each is haunted by a tragedy from her past. Cynthia, Rohini, Jane, and Angela meet on a food blogging site and bond over recipes. On impulse, they decide to open The Secret Spice, an elegant cafe on the magnificent ocean liner, the RMS Queen Mary, currently a floating hotel in Long Beach, California. Rich in history and tales of supernatural occurrences, the ship hides her own dark secrets.

Growing up Mexican-American in Fresno, California in the 1950’s and 60’s might not have been easy, but it was certainly never boring for young Gary Soto, his brother Rick and sister Debra. As this compilation of 21 short stories and articles illustrates, there is no limit to the amount of fun a child can have, or how much he can terrorize siblings and neighbors if his imagination is active.

Le capitaine Marlow raconte sa remontée d'un grand fleuve africain sur un vapeur jusqu'au "cœur des ténèbres", à la recherche d'un certain Kurtz.

Uprooted from her comfortable life in Bogotá, Colombia, into an ant-infested Miami townhouse, 15-year-old Francisca is miserable and friendless in her strange new city. Her alienation grows when her mother is swept up into an evangelical church, replete with Christian salsa, abstinent young dancers, and baptisms for the dead. But there, Francisca also meets the magnetic Carmen: opinionated and charismatic, head of the youth group, and the pastor’s daughter. As her mother’s mental health deteriorates and her grandmother descends into alcoholism, Francisca falls in love with Carmen.

Luz “Little Light” Lopez, a tea leaf reader and laundress, is left to fend for herself after her older brother, Diego, a snake charmer and factory worker, is run out of town by a violent white mob. As Luz navigates 1930s Denver, she begins to have visions that transport her to her Indigenous homeland in the nearby Lost Territory. Luz recollects her ancestors’ origins, how her family flourished, and how they were threatened. She bears witness to the sinister forces that have devastated her people and their homelands for generations.

Une invitation de Damian Baxter ? Voilà qui est inattendu ! Cela fait près de quarante qu'ils sont fâchés ! Inséparables durant leurs études à Cambridge, leur indéfectible amitié s'est muée en une haine féroce, suite à de mystérieux événements survenus lors de vacances au Portugal en 1970. Après de déconcertantes retrouvailles, la révélation tombe : riche, à l'article de la mort, Damian charge le narrateur, sur la foi d'une lettre anonyme, de retrouver parmi ses ex-conquêtes - six jeunes filles huppées qu'ils fréquentaient alors - la mère de son enfant.

On the weekend of her wedding, Clare Hobbes meets an elderly woman named Edith Herron. During the course of a single conversation, Edith gives Clare the courage to do what she should have done months earlier: break off her engagement to her charming - yet overly possessive - fiancé. Three weeks later Clare learns that Edith has died - and has given her another gift. Nestled in crepe myrtle and hydrangea and perched at the marshy edge of a bay in a small seaside town in Delaware, Blue Sky House now belongs to Clare.

On her 12th birthday, Sierva Maria - the only child of a decaying noble family in an 18th-century South American seaport - is bitten by a rabid dog. Believed to be possessed, she is brought to a convent for observation. And into her cell stumbles Father Cayetano Delaura, who has already dreamed about a girl with hair trailing after her like a bridal train. As he tends to her with holy water and sacramental oils, Delaura feels something shocking begin to occur.

On the eve of his 90th birthday, a bachelor decides to give himself a wild night of love with a virgin. As is his habit - he has purchased hundreds of women - he asks a madam for her assistance. The 14-year-old girl who is procured for him is enchanting, but exhausted as she is from caring for siblings and her job sewing buttons, she can do little but sleep. Yet with this sleeping beauty at his side, it is he who awakens to a romance he has never known. Tender, knowing, and slyly comic, Memories of My Melancholy Whores is an exquisite addition to a master's work.

An early desktop computer becomes the third partner in a doomed relationship; an older brother figure whose father lives in exile imparts hilarious life lessons to his young protégé. A man attempts to quit smoking despite the fact that he’s very good at it; another masquerades as the family man he'll never be. Throughout, Pinochet’s dictatorship casts a long shadow, and men in relationships exhibit their profound capacity for both love and harm.

Professional ballerina Ailsa MacIntyre is at the peak of her career when her world is shattered by a shocking diagnosis. Life-saving surgery leaves her with a fractured memory, little recollection of her husband, Evan, and none of her career as a principal dancer. While recuperating at home, Ailsa hears beautiful music coming from the apartment upstairs, and the sound of the grand piano at the hands of a talented new neighbor sparks her muscle memory. As her recovery progresses, the broken pieces of her past gradually re-emerge, a picture not quite what Evan would have her remember.

To the outside observer, Vivian is a success story—a dedicated lawyer who advocates for mentally ill patients at a New York City psychiatric hospital. Privately, Vivian contends with the memories and aftereffects of her bad childhood—compounded by the everyday stresses of being a Black Latinx woman in America. She lives in a constant state of hypervigilant awareness that makes even a simple subway ride into a heart-pounding drama.

Euridice is bright and ambitious. But this is Brazil in the 1940s, and society expects her to be a loving wife and mother. While Antenor is busy congratulating himself on his excellent catch, Euridice spends her spends her humdrum days ironing his shirts and removing the lumps of onion from his food, dreaming of the success she could have made of herself - as a writer, dressmaker or culinary whiz - in another life.

Having grown up in the nurturing household of Casa Capuleta, Mariana will do anything for familia. To solve her adoptive parents’ financial problems amid their rapidly changing San Antonio comunidad, Mariana and her younger sisters are determined to win the Battle of the Mariachi Bands. That means competing against Hugo Montero, their father’s archnemesis, and his band and escalating a decades-old feud. It also raises the stakes of Mariana’s forbidden attraction for a certain dark-eyed mariachi who sets her heart racing.

September 11, 1973: Eleven-year-old Alejandro Penda watches from his apartment window as Santiago, Chile falls to a military coup, destroying his family and his childhood. Arriving alone in America, he’s taken in by the Larks: a prominent family in the town of Guelisten. Though burdened by unresolved grief for his disappeared parents, he becomes fiercely loyal to the Larks, eventually marrying one of their daughters, Valerie.