Commemorating National Hispanic Heritage Month 2023: A Choice Round-Up

In honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month, we gathered Choice resources from the past year that highlight Latin American history, literature, and movements. These selections include book reviews, podcast interviews, and more.

Posted on October 10, 2023 in Blog

In honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month, we assembled Choice resources from the past year that foreground Latin American historical figures, movements and events. We hope these resources will aid in learning more about the history and heritage of Latin American countries this month and throughout the year.

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Featured Reviews

Featured Reviews consider how a title exposes racist systems and inequities or proposes means of dismantling them. These important works from valuable perspectives are of use to undergraduates, faculty, and anyone interested in learning more about racism and racial inequalities. These two titles investigate the history of Texas’s statehood and intersectional feminist movements.

Slaveholder Republic: Gerald Horne Unravels the Dark Roots of Texas’s Statehood

Prominent historian Gerald Horne (Univ. of Houston), whom Cornel West has referred to as “one of the great historians of our time,” was a notable influence on the New York Times’s popular “1619 Project.” Following its publication, politically motivated backlash against “The 1619 Project” spawned a handful of conservative counter-projects. The Trump-endorsed “1776 project,” for example, sanitized U.S. history, expunging references to the brutality of enslavement of Africans or the genocide of Indigenous peoples. In 2021, the Republican governor of Texas cultivated the “1836 project” with similar aims to counter so-called woke histories with revisions that hide the violence of white supremacy and U.S. capitalism. Horne’s latest offering, The Counter-Revolution of 1836, aims to correct the falsifications rooted in common misunderstandings of that state’s birth. Read the full review.

Power in Numbers: Liza Taylor Explores the Potential of Intersectional Feminist Movements

Libraries that boast copies of such books as bell hooks’s Ain’t I a Woman (1981), Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble (1990), and Sara Ahmed’s Living a Feminist Life (2017) should most certainly add Liza Taylor’s new book to their collections. Taylor (California State Polytechnic Univ., Pomona) is a feminist political theorist who offers sophisticated arguments about philosophical principles and feminist practices together with an accessible discussion of core texts from women of color. She writes for multidisciplinary feminist readers already familiar with classics such as position papers from the Combahee River Collective and essays by Audre Lorde but does so with sufficient attention to explaining these and other arguments from the rich field of feminist theorizing. Students just becoming aware of this area of study will get a vibrant introduction, and more knowledgeable readers will find this an innovative and helpful approach. Read the full review.

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Review of the Week

Each week Choice highlights a review that addresses a topical issue, event, or holiday—or simply, a review we believe deserves more attention. These picks spotlight the lives of immigrant sons in Los Angeles, an intersectional approach to environmental policy, a comprehensive history of Chilean literature, and more.

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Bibliographic Essay

Every issue of Choice features a bibliographic essay, also available online for free on the LibGuides platform. These comprehensive guides written by a qualified expert in the field cover the essential titles on a given topic. This essay looks at labor and migration in the Mexican American community.

Tracing the History of Chicana/o Labor and Migration (November 2022)

This bibliographical essay employs Gilbert G. Gonzalez’s research to “contextualize major historical interpretations of the experiences and the patterns of labor and migration among the Mexican American community living in the United States, often referred to as Chicana/o” and “will analyze the specialization of Chicana/o labor and migration historiography by focusing on its major interpretations and areas of focus within the field.” Read the essay.

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Outstanding Academic Titles

Outstanding Academic Titles is Choice’s premier editorial franchise of the best titles of the year. Published each December, the list is separated into unique categories and previewed for collection development purposes or personal reading pleasure. These selections pertain to Latin America, exploring medicinal practices, the rise of evangelicalism in North and South America, and more.

Outstanding Academic Titles 2022: Latin America

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TIE Podcast

TIE Editor-in-Chief Alexia Hudson-Ward interviews thought leaders from across academia and the professional community to explore a range of topics to address DEIA through a pedagogical, scholarly, curatorial, and workplace/professional lens. The TIE Podcast is part of the Toward Inclusive Excellence content vertical, which also includes weekly blog posts and periodic webinars. This episode features Dr. Danielle Terrazas Williams.

Dr. Danielle Terrazas Williams on the Legacy of Free Women of African Descent in Colonial Mexico

Danielle Terrazas Williams, associate professor of history at the University of Leeds and author of The Capital of Free Women: Race, Legitimacy, and Liberty in Colonial Mexico, reviews her exploration of a variety of archives to piece together the stories of free women of African descent in Colonial Mexico and Spanish America. As Danielle explains, she hopes the title will highlight the long legacy of Black people living in Mexico and disrupt the narrative of Mexicans being primarily of Spanish and Indigenous descent. She discusses the barriers faced when engaging in this course correction, and praises the work of librarians and archivists, particularly those in Mexico who face budgetary and staff challenges. In addition, Danielle outlines how these women employed their own ideals of marriage, denomination, and economic independence to redefine “legitimacy” in Mexican society. Listen to the episode.

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Enjoy this post? Check out our Choice round-ups for Black History Month, Women’s History Month, and Pride Month.

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