Hispanic Heritage Month

A former L.A. gang member describes his experiences in that world, recounting the sense of security and power found in a gang and the grim reality of violence and poverty. By age twelve, the author was a veteran of East L.A. gang warfare. Lured by a seemingly invincible gang culture, he witnessed countless shootings, beatings, and arrests, then watched with increasing fear as drugs, murder, suicide, and senseless acts of street crime claimed friends and family members. Before long he saw a way out of the barrio through education and the power of words, and successfully broke free from years of violence and desperation.

Big Familia follows Juan Gutiérrez, a self-employed single father, as he navigates a tumultuous year of inescapable change. When his incarcerated father dies and his daughter reveals she's pregnant, Juan is forced to examine the emotional bonds that both hold and hinder him, to reassess his ideas of commitment, of friendship, of love.

Tony faces the daunting prospect of growing up amidst constant religious and cultural uncertainty. His mother is a devoted Catholic, but her influence is challenged by Ultima--a woman with magical healing powers. As Tony follows his own path toward adulthood, he relies on Ultima's wisdom. With her guidance, he is able to forge his unique identity.

Poems celebrating Hispanic culture are the focus of this collection. Liberal sprinkling of Spanish words and phrases with some poems translated from one language to another make this an ideal anthology for both the English class and the bilingual ESL classroom. Topics for poems extend from hot dogs to learning English to the revolution in Nicaragua. What all of the selections have in common is the adolescent experience at the core of the poem.

Sixteen-year-old Danny searches for his identity amidst the confusion of being half-Mexican and half-white while spending a summer with his cousin and new friends on the baseball fields and back alleys of San Diego County, California.

Sierra Santiago planned to have an easy summer of making art and hanging out with her friends. But then a corpse crashes the first party of the season. Her stroke-ridden grandfather starts apologizing over and over. And when the murals in her neighborhood begin to weep real tears...Well, something more sinister than the usual Brooklyn ruckus is going on. WHERE THE POWERS CONVERGE AND BECOME ONE. With the help of a mysterious fellow artist named Robbie, Sierra discovers shadowshaping, a thrilling magic that infuses ancestral spirits into paintings, music, and stories. But someone is killing the shadowshapers one by one -- and the killer believes Sierra is hiding their greatest secrete. Now she must unravel her family's past, take down the killer in the present, and save the future of shadowshaping for herself and generations to come.

Marisel Vera emerges as a major voice of contemporary fiction with a heart- wrenching novel set in Puerto Rico on the eve of the Spanish-American War. It is 1898, and groups of starving Puerto Ricans, los hambrientos, roam the parched countryside and dusty towns begging for food. Under the yoke of Spanish oppression, the Caribbean island is forced to prepare to wage war with the United States. Up in the mountainous coffee region of Utuado, Vicente Vega and Valentina Sanchez labor to keep their small farm from the creditors. When the Spanish-American War and the great San Ciriaco Hurricane of 1899 bring devastating upheaval, the young couple is lured, along with thousands of other puertorriquenos, to the sugar plantations of Hawaii-another US territory-where they are confronted by the hollowness of America's promises of prosperity.