Literature and Poetry for Latin America Programs

Allende, Isabel. The House of the Spirits. New York: Bantam, 1986. (Chile)

Alvarez, Julia. Yo! New York: Plume, 1997. (Dominican Republic)

Bell, Madison Smartt. All Souls' Rising. New York: Vintage Books, 2004.

The 1791 revolt against the French in Haiti through the eyes of the parties in the conflict: mulattos, blacks, and whites. The protagonists include its leader, the aristocratic Toussaint L'Ouverture who refused to declare independence from France. (Haiti)

Bontemps, Arna. Popo and Fifina: Children of Haiti. New York: Oxford University  Press, 1993.
Gr. 4-7.  Popo and Fifina move from the country to a village in Haiti where Papa Jean plans to earn a living as a fisherman. (Haiti)

Colchie, Thomas, ed. A Hammock Beneath the Mangoes: Stories from Latin America. New York: Plume, 1992.

Danticat, Edwidge. The Dew Breaker. New York: Knopf, 2004.

Focuses on the lives affected by a "dew breaker," or torturer of Haitian dissidents under Duvalier's regime. Each chapter reveals details of the man from another viewpoint, including that of his grown daughter, who, on a trip she takes with him to Florida, learns the secret of his violent past and those of the Haitian boarders renting basement rooms in his Brooklyn home. (Haiti)

Danticat, Edwidge. Behind the Mountains. New York: Orchard Books, 2002. Gr. 5-9

Part of the First Person Fiction series, this book, told through journal entries, chronicles the story of a young girl’s departure from her homeland of Haiti to join her father, who had immigrated to NY five years earlier. (Haiti)

Danticat, Edwidge. Breath, Eyes, Memory. New York: Vintage Books, 1998.

Sophie Caco, a child who was born of rape, leaves Haiti at the age of twelve to join her mother in New York City, where they both battle with the results of sexual abuse. (Haiti)

Danticat, Edwidge. Krik? Krak! New York: Vintage Books, 1996.

Nine stories that encompass both the cruelties and the high ideals of Haitian life. (Haiti)

García Márquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude. New York: Harper & Row, 1970.

The rise and fall, birth, and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendia family.

Growing Up Latino: Memoirs and Stories. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993.

Written in English, all 26 essays and stories in this anthology of contemporary Hispanic American writing focus on coming of age within two conflicting cultures. (Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Colombia)

Holtwijk, Ineke. Asphalt Angels. Asheville, NC: Front Street Books, 1999.

This novel is based on the life of a real child living on the streets of Rio de Janeiro. (Brazil)

In the Trail of the Wind: Americ an Indian Poems and Ritual Orations. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988.

A collection of native American poetry, translated from over 40 languages representing cultures from North and South America. It brings into focus the similarities between peoples as widely separated as the Sioux and the Aztec, the Cherokee and the ancient Maya. Included are omens, battle songs, orations, love lyrics, prayers, dreams, and incantations.

Mariana Becomes a Butterfly: an Agricultural Engineering Story. Boston, MA: Museum of Science, 2005. Gr. 4-6

With help of her Tia, who is an agricultural engineer, Mariana, who lives in the Dominican Republic, discovers how to pollinate a plant so that it thrives in her garden. (Dominican Republic)

Paz, Octavio. A Tree Within. New York: New Directions Pub. Corp., 1988.

Paz, Octavio. The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz, 1957-1987. New York: New Directions, 1987.

A compilation of bilingual poetry published by the author from 1957 to 1987. (Mexico)

Stavans, Ilan, ed. Wachale: Poetry and Prose about Growing Up Latino in America. Chicago: Cricket Books, 2001.

A bilingual collection of poems, stories, and other writings that celebrates diversity among Latinos.

Temple, Frances. Taste of Salt: a Story of Modern Haiti. New York: Orchard Books, 1992.

In the hospital after being beaten, seventeen-year-old Djo tells the story of his impoverished life to a young woman who, like him, has been working with the social reformer Father Aristide to fight the repression in Haiti. (Haiti)

Trevino, Elizabeth Borton de. El Guero: a True Adventure Story. Boston: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1989.

His father's loyalty to the Mexican president deposed by Porfirio Diaz in 1876 forces a boy known as El Güero and his family into exile to the dangerous Baja California territory.

Urrea, Luis Alberto. The Hummingbird's Daughter: a Novel. New York: Little, Brown, and Co., 2005. (Mexico)