La Raza Heritage Month: The Books

I included the original publication dates for each book read, because without planning a lot of it ended up being from the '90s.

I guess I started to notice when an essay on gendered work referenced the artwork of Carmen Lomas Garza. I recognized her style from remember Tamalada. 

While it would have made sense if I had seen it in a Spanish class, I think I saw it in a cooking article.

It is a painting of a large extended family all working together to make tamales. It made a big impression on me. I know someone whose extended Italian family makes multiple batches of ravioli and freezes them once a year. I have participated in a mass egg roll making session with a Laotian family. Maybe every culture has that one work party food?

As it is, looking through the books I see there was also a mass empanada making session, though that happened at her aunt and uncle's house. Maybe it depends on how many foods your family likes that are labor-intensive.

There was no intention to focus on this time period, and yet it made sense that it happened. This was a time when multicultural studies were growing and getting more attention, but I did not know how new it was. 

Earlier when I read about Cesar Chavez, I had not realized he died in 1993. He seemed much more in the past. The big thing I heard about -- the grape boycott -- was from before I was born, but he was still active and union rights were still important well into my lifetime.

On a completely unrelated note, I recently watched an episode of Qunicy M.E. where a doctor allows babies with Down Syndrome to die. This particular child had digestive issues, where surgery would have been necessary for feeding to even be possible, but the surgery wasn't done and IV feeding wasn't done and the child died.

That episode was from 1982.

I don't remember living in a world where that was possible. I went to school with people who had siblings with Down Syndrome who were totally part of the family, my sisters helped with a Special Olympics event, we saw other families on television, I saw "Welcome to Holland" in Dear Abby so many times...

It is the first time that I have wondered if maybe there should have been more people with Down Syndrome around. Did some maybe die or were they locked away? Because that's one way the doctor who allowed the death justified it; if they don't die, they just grow into terrible burdens we lock away!

The episode is seriously disturbing. It also has some outdated language that can make you cringe, but that is almost minor because there is a dead child.

Television is not perfect, but it can help us look back.

Certainly it is a reminder of privilege that just because you have not had a problem cannot take for granted that no one else has. 

Perhaps more importantly, changes don't inevitably happen. It takes people marching, organizing, writing letters, sharing their stories, and a multitude of other activities, repeated, often under great frustration.

Don't take them for granted.

Back to the reading list, I really liked Martin Espada and will definitely read more by him. 

It made me happy to find the rest of Lomas Garza's work.

Otherwise, the most recommended are probably De Colores and Fifth Sun. 

The other non-fiction books were a bit too pedantic, though they made valid points about groups with goals in common sometimes fighting against each other and needing to grow beyond that.

Picture Books:

Broken Butterfly Wings by Raquel M. Ortiz, illustrated by Carrie Salazar, 2021
Family Pictures/Cuadros De Familia by Carmen Lomas Garza, 1990
In My Family/En Mi Familia by Carmen Lomas Garza, 1996 

Poetry:

Cool Salsa: Bilingual Poems on Growing Up Hispanic in the United States, edited by Lori M. Carlson, 1994
Zapata's Disciple by Martin Espada, 1998
Floaters by Martin Espada, 2021

Prose/Non-fiction

De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century by Elizabeth Martinez, 1998
Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs by Camilla Townsend, 2019
The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture by Neil Foley, 1997
Border Matters: Remapping American Cultural Studies by José David Saldivar, 1997