National Hispanic Heritage Month 2019: The books

I didn't have any children's books this time, but I did read several comics. One of them, Nightlights, could be appropriate for children.

Ricanstruction: Reminiscing and Rebuilding Puerto Rico by Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez and many others (a collection of stories by different others, themed on Puerto Rico, and especially but not only recovering from Hurricane Maria.)

Submerged by Vita Ayala

Livewire by Vita Ayala

Nightlights by Lorena Alvarez

X-Men: A Skinning of Souls by Fabian Nicieza and others

Wonder Woman by George Pérez and others

Most of the comics were chosen via a combination of what our library system had and this article:

https://www.comicsbeat.com/an-important-year-ahead-for-latinxs-in-comics/ 

Having often been disappointed with runs on certain characters, I had been trying to switch more to searching on creators, and maybe publishers. That kind of did not work well, because I was irritated by a few of these comics. However, it also makes sense, because X-men wasn't just Nicieza, it was also Lobdell, which I did not see until I got it. 

I did not like Livewire, but I really liked Submerged, so I think my problem with Livewire is not Vita Ayala but Valiant Comics; that also makes a lot of sense.

I saw recommendations for Nightlights and Submerged in other places, so I probably would have read them anyway. The biggest gain from the article, then, was that I read Ricanstruction. Like any anthology, it has stronger and weaker parts, but I overall enjoyed it. Still, recommendations from people who know comics are generally the best source for good comic suggestions.

I had mentioned wanted to read more Sandra Cisneros, and thinking about reading them in both English and Spanish. This time around I read The House on Mango Street, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, and A House of My Own from Cisneros.

I only read them in English; that plan was overly ambitious for where my live is right now. I am not ruling it out in the future. There was a segment from The House on Mango Street that I read in school many years ago, in Spanish, and I think it felt different emotionally then. However, that could also be because it was read alone without the context of the rest of the book, or because it was read by a younger, less world-weary person over two decades ago. The experiment could still be valid, bandwidth allowing.

I know I will read more Cisneros, because she resonates with me, especially when she is writing about writing. I know I will write more about her this year, because there is more that I need to say about A House of My Own and about Submerged that will go together.

Also, there was a segment in "A House of My Own" (the essay that book is named after) where she writes about discovering other Chicana writers, and there is a lot I could potentially read from there. I made a list!

That leaves seven books, most of which were more academic, and needed to come through Inter-Library Loan. (Without that, I might have been able to finish in 2019.)

My Life as a Community Activist, Labor Organizer, and Progressive Politician in New York City by Gilberto Gerena Valentin

The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 by Alfred W. Crosby

Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys by Victor M. Rios

El Libertador: Writings of Simon Bolivar by Simon Bolivar

Mambisas: Rebel Women in Nineteenth Century Cuba by Teresa Prados-Torreira

Women Who Live Evil Lives: Gender, Religion, and the Politics of Power in Colonial Guatemala by Martha Few

Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion by James Maffie

I'm going to be honest: they were largely boring. Gerena's and Rios's books were the most interesting and accessible, I think. Honestly, a lot of people should read Punished.

However, the way Few and Prados-Torreira use original sources to suss out more about the lives and roles of women is important and impressive.

The Bolivar and Maffie books may be the most important of all. There is such a bias toward "Western civilization" in understanding basic topics like government and philosophy, but that isn't all that there is, nor is it all that matters.

It may be especially important to watch how other democracies have developed when our own seems to be failing.