Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Bless Me, Ultima

by Rudolfo Anaya

When a curandera comes to stay with a young boy, he tests the bonds that tie him to his culture and finds himself in the secrets of the past.

"Poetry with a distinct flavor: a skillfully mixed appetizer." --Kirkus Reviews (starred) Here are the sights, sounds, and smells of Latino culture in America in thirty-six vibrant, moving, angry, beautiful and varied voices, including Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Ana Castillo, Sandra Cisneros, Luis J. Rodríguez, Gary Soto, and Martín Espada. Presented in both English and Spanish, each poem helps us to discover the... (more)

The House on Mango Street

by Sandra Cisneros

Told in a series of vignettes stunning for their eloquence, The House on Mango Street is Sandra Cisneros's greatly admired novel of a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Acclaimed by critics, beloved by children, their parents and grandparents, taught everywhere from inner-city grade schools to universities across the country, and translated all over the world, it has entered the canon of... (more)

Hungry Woman in Paris

by Josefina Lo?pez

A journalist and activist, Canela believes passion is essential to life; but lately passion seems to be in short supply. It has disappeared from her relationship with her fiancé, who is more interested in controlling her than encouraging her. It's absent from her work, where censorship and politics keep important stories from being published. And while her family is full of outspoken individuals, the only one... (more)

George Washington Gomez: A Mexicotexan Novel

George Washington Gomez: A Mexicotexan Novel

by Americo Paredes

This first novel written in the 1930s by the dean of Mexican-American folklore charts the coming of age of a young Mexican American on the Texas-Mexico border against the background of guerrilla warfare, banditry, land grabs, abuses by the Texas Rangers and the overpowering pressures to disappear into the American melting pot.

Desert Blood: The Juarez Murders

by Alicia Gaspar de Alba

Desert Blood: The Juárez Murders Alicia Gaspar de Alba, March 31, 2005, ISBN 1-55885-446-0, Clothbound, $23.95 An incisive mystery that delves into the violent deaths of young women plaguing the US / Mexico border It’s the summer of 1998 and for five years over a hundred mangled and desecrated bodies have been found dumped on the Chihuahua desert outside of Juárez, México, just across the river from El... (more)

The Rain God: A Desert Tale

by Arturo Islas

Already a Southwestern classic as beautiful, subtle and profound as the desert itself Arturo Islas's The Rain God is a breathtaking masterwork of contemporary literature. Set in a fictional small town on the Texas-Mexico border, it tells the funny, sad and quietly outrageous saga of the children and grandchildren of Mama Chona the indomitable matriarch of the Angel clan who fled the bullets and blood of the 1911... (more)

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Tags: chicano literature