US Latino / Latina Bibliography

By Elizabeth Huergo, Ph.D.


This bibliography is selective not exhaustive. It is meant to serve as the foundation for the development of an undergraduate literature course, one that would satisfy General Education requirements and offer students a well-considered multicultural educational experience. Resting not far behind this statement of purpose is the humanistic (and humane) hope that this bibliography  will help instructors within and outside the academic disciplines of English or Comparative Literatures to reflect consciously on the notable contributions of Latino/a writers to the intellectual life of the US and to our shared histories.


Bibliographies and Online Sources

There are a number of helpful bibliographies available on Latino/a literatures, cultures,
and histories: U.S. Latino Literature: An Essay and Annotated Bibliography by Marc Zimmerman (1990); Latinos in English, edited by Harold Augenbraum (1992);The Handbook of Hispanic Cultures in the United States: Literature and Art, a collection of essays edited by Nicolás Kanellos, Francisco  A. Lomelí, and Claudio Esteva Fabregat (1993);

Scholarship Relevant to Institutions of Higher Education

This selection of scholarly essays and books is meant to address a need within institutions of higher education to serve a population that is too often invisible, despite the prevalence of quantifying demographics. The works selected address the way in which institutional cultures affect the experience of Latino/a students in the classroom.

Literary Scholarship

This selection of scholarly essays and books is meant to address the theoretical interests and concerns of instructors who teach or are preparing to teach Latino/a literatures at the undergraduate level. The selection is representative of the often award-winning scholarship being done in the field of Latino Studies from 1990 to the present. Another source of special interest is the journal published by Palgrave-MacMillan, Latino Studies, beginning with its first issue in 2003.

Latino/a Literary Anthologies

Literary anthologies serve a practical purpose, whether in an introductory course, or as a helpful tool for instructors and general audiences interested in familiarizing themselves with the formal and historical range of Latino/a writings. The anthologies listed here represent  the formal range of literary texts (from performance art to prose fiction), as well as the historical range (from pre-Columbian to the present).

U.S. Latino/a Writers

There are hundreds of well-known Latino/a poets, novelists, and playwrights contributing to the aesthetic and intellectual culture of the United States today. Their names are grouped here by genre and then listed alphabetically. In poetry, they range from the canonical (William Carlos Williams) to the well-recognized (Sandra Cisneros, Richard Blanco, Martín Espada) to the newly emerging (Eduardo C. Corral, who became in 2011 the first Latino to win Yale Younger Poets prize).

Poetry

Agüeros, Jack. Sonnets from the Puerto Rican. New York: Hanging Loose Press, 1996.

Alarcón, Francisco X. From the Other Side of Night/Del otro lado de la noche: New and Selected
Poems.
Tucson, AZ: Univ. of Arizona Press, 2002.

Alcalá, Rosa. The Lust of Unsentimental Waters. Bristol, England: Shearsman Books, 2012.

Drama

Alvarez, Lynne. Collected Plays, Vol. 1. Hanover, NH: Smith and Kraus, 1998.

Cruz, Nilo. Anna in the Tropics. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2003.

——-. Two Sisters and a Piano and Other Plays. New York: Theatre Communications Group,
2005.

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