National Hispanic Heritage Month: Library Resources

An African American and Latinx history of the United States

Spanning more than two hundred years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history, arguing that the "Global South" was crucial to the development of America as we know it. Scholar and activist Paul Ortiz challenges the notion of westward progress as exalted by widely taught formulations like "manifest destiny" and "Jacksonian democracy," and shows how placing African American, Latinx, and Indigenous voices unapologetically front and center transforms US history into one of the working class organizing against imperialism.

The Poet X

Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking.

But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers--especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about.

With Mami's determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. So when she is invited to join her school's slam poetry club, she doesn't know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out. But she still can't stop thinking about performing her poems.

Because in the face of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent.

Our America : a Hispanic history of the United States

The United States is still typically conceived of as an offshoot of England, with our history unfolding east to west beginning with the first English settlers in Jamestown. This view overlooks the significance of America's Hispanic past. With the profile of the United States increasingly Hispanic, the importance of recovering the Hispanic dimension to our national story has never been greater. This absorbing narrative begins with the explorers and conquistadores who planted Spain's first colonies in Puerto Rico, Florida, and the Southwest. Missionaries and rancheros carry Spain's expansive impulse into the late eighteenth century, settling California, mapping the American interior to the Rockies, and charting the Pacific coast. During the nineteenth century Anglo-America expands west under the banner of "Manifest Destiny" and consolidates control through war with Mexico. In the Hispanic resurgence that follows, it is the peoples of Latin America who overspread the continent, from the Hispanic heartland in the West to major cities such as Chicago, Miami, New York, and Boston. The United States clearly has a Hispanic present and future.

Quinceañera Style

Quinceañera celebrations, which recognize a girl's transition to young womanhood at age fifteen, are practiced in Latinx communities throughout the Americas. But in the consumer-driven United States, the ritual has evolved from a largely religious ceremony to an elaborate party where social status takes center stage. Examining the many facets of this contemporary debut experience, Quinceañera Style reports on ethnographic fieldwork in California, Texas, the Midwest, and Mexico City to reveal a complex, compelling story. Along the way, we meet a self-identified transwoman who uses the quinceañera as an intellectual space in her activist performance art. We explore the economic empowerment of women who own barrio boutiques specializing in the quinceañera's many accessories and made-in-China gowns. And, of course, we meet teens themselves, including a vlogger whose quince-planning tips have made her an online sensation.

The House on Mango Street

Told in a series of vignettes--sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes joyous--Cisneros's masterpiece is a classic story of childhood and self-discovery and one of the greatest neighborhood novels of all time. Like Sinclair Lewis's Main Street or Toni Morrison's Sula, it makes a world through people and their voices, and it does so in language that is poetic and direct. This gorgeous coming-of-age novel is a celebration of the power of telling one's story and of being proud of where you're from.

Baseball As Mediated Latinidad

In her incisive study Baseball as Mediated Latinidad: Race, Masculinity, Nationalism, and Performances of Identity, Jennifer Domino Rudolph analyzes major league baseball's Latin/o American players--who now make up more than twenty-five percent of MLB--as sites of undesirable surveillance due to the historical, political, and sociological weight placed on them via stereotypes around immigration, crime, masculinity, aggression, and violence. Rudolph examines the perception by media and fans of Latino baseball players and the consumption of these athletes as both social and political stand-ins for an entire culture, showing how these participants in the nationalist game of baseball exemplify tensions over race, nation, and language for some while simultaneously revealing baseball as a practice of latinidad, or pan-Latina/o/x identity, for others.

Hispanic American Periodicals Index

Hispanic American Periodicals Index (HAPI) contains bibliographic citations to articles, book reviews, and original literary works pertaining to Central and South America, Mexico, the Caribbean basin, the United States-Mexico border and Hispanics in the United States. Approximately 400 journals from throughout the world are reviewed regularly to compile the database.

Arte Publico Hispanic Historical Collections

Arte Publico Hispanic Historical Collections Series 1 presents a digital collection of historical content pertaining to U.S. Hispanic history, literature and culture. This collection accurately conveys the creative life of U.S. Hispanics and sheds new light on the intellectual vigor and traditional values that have characterized Hispanics from the earliest moments of American history through 1960. Arte Publico Hispanic Historical Collection draws its content from Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project, including the complete texts of over 1,100 books, 60,000 articles, newspapers, reviews, religious and political pamphlets, poems, and short stories. About 80% of the content is in Spanish.

Ethnic Diversity Source

Ethnic Diversity Source is a full-text database covering the culture, traditions, social treatment and lived experiences of different ethnic groups in America including Latinx Americans, Multiracial Americans and more. It provides full text from a growing list of sources including peer-reviewed journals, magazines, e-books, biographies and primary source documents.

Hispanic American Historical Review

Hispanic American Historical Review pioneered the study of Latin American history and culture in the United States and remains the most widely respected journal in the field. HAHR's comprehensive book review section provides commentary, ranging from brief notices to review essays, on every facet of scholarship on Latin American history and culture.

Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences

The Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences publishes empirical articles, multiple case study reports, critical reviews of literature, conceptual articles, reports of new instruments, and scholarly notes of theoretical or methodological interest to Hispanic populations. The multidisciplinary focus of HJBS encompasses the fields of anthropology, economics, education, linguistics, political science, psychology, psychiatry, public health, and sociology.

Hispanic Review

A quarterly journal devoted to research in Latin American, Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian literatures and cultures, Hispanic Review has been edited since 1933 by the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Pennsylvania. The journal features essays and book reviews on the diverse cultural manifestations of Iberia and Latin America, from the medieval period to the present.

Hispanic Health Care International

Hispanic Health Care International is at the forefront of addressing health-related issues affecting Hispanic and Latino/a populations. This peer-reviewed journal serves as an interdisciplinary forum for discussing current and cutting-edge topics in clinical practice, education, global health, research, policy, and technology affecting Hispanic and Latino/a populations in the United States and around the world.

The Journal of Hispanic Higher Education

The Journal of Hispanic Higher Education (JHHE) is a quarterly international journal devoted to the advancement of knowledge and understanding of issues at Hispanic-serving institutions. JHHE maintains a broad focus and accepts the highest quality scholarly, creative and practical articles that combine research with application, fostering the integration of theory and practice. As such, JHHE publishes both quantitative and qualitative articles that specifically relate to issues of interest at Hispanic-serving institutions of higher learning worldwide. JHHE is particularly interested in research that crosses both cultural and disciplinary boundaries.

Latinos in Georgia: Politics and Public Policy Archive

In October 2019, the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies and the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials (GALEO) and GALEO Latino Community Development Fund (LCDF) announced a statewide initiative to document the contributions the Latino and Hispanic communities have made to the landscape of modern Georgia politics. To ensure the most comprehensive documentation and accessibility of the political history of all of Georgia’s citizens, the Russell Library and GALEO are working together to identify and document people and organizations representing the interests of the Latino and Hispanic communities. This effort preserves traditional records and papers and captures oral histories with elected officials, activists, and business leaders.

Latinx Georgia Oral History

The Latinx Georgia Oral History Project is part of a partnership with the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies and the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials (GALEO) to collect and preserve the modern history of Georgia Latinx communities through oral history interviews, organizational records and other collections. Oral histories will be a bilingual collection of first-person, Latinx personal narratives and experiences about life in Georgia.