A STUNNING TREASURY OF LATINX-AUTHORED BOOKS ON THIS INSTAGRAM

By Editor April 15, 2017 07:56

Growing up in a Jewish neighborhood in Queens, New York, Sabrina Rodriguez often felt disconnected from her Latindidad. Hoping to get in tune with her roots, the Puerto Rican-Cuban-Italian turned to stories written by, for and about Latinxs.

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“Reading nurtures the soul, heals (sometimes breaks!) our hearts and opens our minds. Being able to experience different lives and different adventures through literature is so powerful, and no history textbook or salsa lesson can do that,” Rodriguez, a 19-year-old student at Baruch College, told us.

The avid reader soon began logging the books she read on LatinxReads, an Instagram account featuring photos of classics like Julia Alvarez‘s “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” and Sandra Cisneros‘ “The House on Mango Street” as well as more recent releases like Erika L. Sanchez‘s “I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter” and Diane Guerrero‘s “In the Country I Love” – all adorned with colorful Frida Kahlo-inspired floral crowns.

Some texts are about protagonists who are longing, and having difficulty, to fit into U.S. culture, while others take a look at the struggle foreigners have to hold on to the language and people they left back home. Some leads are U.S.-born and others are immigrants. Some are first-generation with parents who have been deported and others have long histories in this country. They’re from Mexico, Central America, South America and the Caribbean. They’re queer, straight, Black and light skinned.

“There is no such thing as a ‘stereotypical Latinx.’ If we don’t raise our voices to express that to people – even our own people – we will continue to find ourselves stuck in this never-ending cycle of soul/identity-searching that so many of us experience,” Rodriguez said.

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Peruse through LatinxReads for some lit inspo that’ll feed your soul.

Source: Latina.com