These books are part of the very broad genres of non-fiction writing that includes Chicana, Latina and Latinx -identified writers and subjects.
Get Lost in a Good Book
It’s easy to get lost in a good book, especially if you’re reading the year’s best fiction book, a sizzling romance novel, or a really good historical novel…but the best Chicana, Latina and Latinx non-fiction books can similarly grab your attention and draw you into its world. These works take many forms and focus on everything from history to gender, race and politics. They provide an extensive overview of a topic and can even change the way you see the world.
Lives That Resist Telling: Migrant and Refugee Lesbians edited by Eithne Luibheid
Lives That Resist Telling challenges the resounding scholarly silence about the lives of migrant women who identify as lesbian, queer, or nonheteronormative.
Reworking social science methodologies and theories, the essays explore the experiences of migrant Latina lesbians in Los Angeles; Latina lesbians whose transnational lives span the borders between the United States and Mexico; non-heteronormative migrant Muslim women in Norway and Denmark; economically privileged Chinese lesbian or lala women in Australia; and Iranian lesbian asylum-seekers in Turkey.
The authors show how state migration controls and multiple institutions of power try to subjectify and govern migrant lesbians in often contradictory ways, and how migrant lesbians cope, strategize, and respond.
The essays complicate and rework binaries of visibility/invisibility, in/out, victim/agent, home/homeless, and belonging/unbelonging. Tellability emerges as a technology of power and violence, and conversely, as a mode of healing, (re)building a sense of self and connection to others, and creating conditions for livability and queer world-making.
Chicana, Latina and Latinx non-fiction offers innovative historically-based perspectives on identity, geography, language, nationalism, sexuality, and more. They are often explorations of the Chicana experience of life within, between, and sometimes outside of two or more cultures.
Compañeras: Latina Lesbians (An Anthology) edited by Juanita Ramos
Originally published in 1987 and revised in 2004, Companeras is a collection of oral histories, essays, poems, short stories and art work by and about Latina lesbians. In these pieces, some in Spanish, most in English, 47 women born in 10 different countries address issues such as coming out, relationships with families and friends, political organizing and community building.
This groundbreaking collection, originally published in 1987 by the Latina Lesbian History Project, allows women to speak about what it means to be Latina and lesbian in their communities. Throughout, the voices in this book explore the process of self-commitment to a political struggle to end all forms of Oppression.
Chicana, Latina, Latinx, Hispanic non-fiction tells the story of the soul’s roots, its evolution, and its lasting cultural and political influence. These works appeal to both lay and academic audiences.
Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora by Lawrence M. La Fountain-Stokes
Exploring cultural expressions of Puerto Rican queer migration from the Caribbean to New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes analyzes how artists have portrayed their lives and the discrimination they have faced in both Puerto Rico and the United States.
Highlighting cultural and political resistance within Puerto Rico’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender subcultures, La Fountain-Stokes pays close attention to differences of gender, historical moment, and generation, arguing that Puerto Rican queer identity changes over time and is experienced in very different ways.
He traces an arc from 1960s Puerto Rico and the writings of Luis Rafael Sánchez to New York City in the 1970s and 1980s (Manuel Ramos Otero), Philadelphia and New Jersey in the 1980s and 1990s (Luz María Umpierre and Frances Negrón-Muntaner), and Chicago (Rose Troche) and San Francisco (Erika López) in the 1990s.
Proposing a radical new conceptualization of Puerto Rican migration, this work reveals how sexuality has shaped and defined the Puerto Rican experience in the United States.
Chicana, Latina, Latinx, Hispanic
The term Hispanic was first used by the United States federal government in the 1980 Census. The emergence of the term has resulted from decades of debate, protest, and lobbying. Hispanics refer to people from Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries, excluding Brazilians.
The term Hispanic has been criticized for highlighting Spain, which colonized much of Latin America. Some offer “Latino” as an alternative, which refers to people from Latin America, including Brazil, not Spain. Latino Americano, later shortened to Latino, first appeared around 1808. Latina is the feminine form of Latino.
Some Mexicans avoided the Latino and Hispanic terms and turned to the word Chicano. There are several theories as to the origin of the word Chicano. One is that it was originally a slur and was reclaimed by Mexican-American activists in the 1960s. Chicana is the feminine form of Chicano.
These gendered words don’t sit well with some people. The term Latinx was coined by the LGBTQ+ Latinx community to denote being gender neutral. It was created by Latinx in the English-speaking United States for use in spoken English. There was as much criticism and support for Latinx as for Latinas, Hispanics, and Chicanas.
