Fifteen-year-old Michelle Pena, born into a powerful Mexican American gang family, tries to reconcile her gangster legacy with the girl she has become–a nationally ranked runner and academic superstar.
Mexican Americans
A Picture Book of Cesar Chavez
Cesar Chavez dedicated his life to helping American farmworkers. This champion of social justice organized farmworkers into unions and argued for better pay and fwir working conditions.
Lights On The River
Teresa, the young daughter of Mexican American migrant workers, has a hard life but keeps memories of her grandmother and Mexico alive in her heart.
The Rainbow Tulip
A Mexican-American first-grader experiences the difficulties and pleasures of being different when she wears a tulip costume with all the colors of the rainbow for the school May Day parade.
500 Anos del Pueblo Chicano/500 Years of Chicano History: In Pictures
This bilingual pictorial history depicts the Mexican American/Chicano people from their origins 500 years ago with Columbus’ “discovery” and the invasions of the New World, to their struggles for social justice today. Over 800 photographs with brief explanatory texts tell the story of how Mexicans came to what is now the U.S. well before the Pilgrims and after the U.S. war of 1846-48, were made strangers in their own land. Elizabeth Martinez, author of books and articles on social movements, presents a vivid record of the life, culture, and collective struggles by farmworkers, miners, students, factory workers, women’s organizations, noted leaders, immigrants, and artists across the country. The faces of weathered workers, militant youth and beautiful children alternate with victims of lynchings and bloody repression to create a work of both pain and celebration. This updated edition should be of special interest, given today’s emphasis on multiculturalism, to teachers and students as well as the general public. The publisher, the SouthWest Organizing Project, is a community-based organization nationally known for its work on racial, social, and economic justice issues. Order from Southwest Community Resources, 211 10th St., SW, Albuquerque, NM 87102, 505-247-8832.
Big Enough/Bastante Grande
When a treasured pinata is threatened, little Lupita discovers that she is big enough to help her mother.
Addicted To Her
Monique is as beautiful and unobtainable as an Aztec goddess. Or is she? In this novel set in California’s San Joaquin Valley, a Mexican American teenager must choose between what he desperately wants and what he knows is best.
Cesar Chavez
Who was César Chávez? Here, an essay and photographs restore this man to his place in American history.The real César Chávez got lost in the hoopla. Many think he was a Mexican boxer. Young people think he’s that guy on the stamp or that statue in the park. No wonder it’s difficult, especially for our young people, to understand his human complexities and the struggles to which he gave his life.Esteemed Latin American scholar and writer Ilan Stavans, supported by more than forty photographs from archival collections at the Cesar E. Chavez Foundation, restores this man’s humanity so that readers can understand his struggles as a labor organizer and civil rights activist for farm workers. The book discusses his growing up and his family; his comadre Dolores Huerta, who stood with him from the beginning; his relationship with Dr. King and other activists in the broader struggles for civil rights for all people of color; and his insistence on being an activist for the rights of farm workers when so much media attention was given to the civil rights activists in the cities.Ilan Stavans is a nationally respected Jewish Latino writer and scholar. His story “Morirse está en hebreo” was made into the award-winning movie My Mexican Shivah, produced by John Sayles. His books include An Organizer’s Tale (Penguin Classics, 2008), Dictionary Days (Graywolf Press), The Disappearance (TriQuarterly), and Resurrecting Hebrew (Random House). Stavans has received numerous awards, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Jewish Book Award, the Latino Book Award, and Chile’s Presidential Medal. He is a professor in Latin American culture at Amherst College.
Rules of Attraction
Living on the University of Colorado-Boulder campus with his older brother Alex, a college student and ex-gang member, high school senior Carlos is not ready to give up his wild ways until he meets a shy classmate named Kiara and becomes unwillingly involved in a drug ring.
Yo, Naomi Leon
Naomi Soledad Leon Outlaw has had a lot to contend with in her young life, her name for a start. Then, there are her clothes (sewn in polyester by Gram), her difficulty speaking up, and her status at school as “nobody special.” But according to Gram, most problems can be overcome with positive thinking. And with Gram and her little brother, Owen, life at Avocado Acres Trailer Rancho in California is happy and peaceful…until their mother reappears after seven years, stirring up all sorts of questions and challenging Naomi to discover who she really is.
Spanish title: Yo, Naomi Leon
Naomi Soledad Leon Outlaw ha tenido que enfrentarse a mucho en su corta vida, empezando por su nombre. Tambien esta el problema de su ropa (hechas por su abuela en tela de poliester), su timidez y la fama que tiene en la escuela de no ser nadie especial. Pero segun su abuela, la mayoria de los problemas se solucionan con mentalidad positiva. Y su vida, junto a su abuela y su pequeno hermano, Owen, en el parque de casas moviles Avocado Acres, es tranquila y feliz… hasta que su mama aparece luego de siete anos, creando confusion y retando a Naomi a que averigue quien es.