Rooted in Gloria Anzaldúa's experience as a Chicana, a lesbian, an activist, and a writer, the groundbreaking essays and poems in this volume profoundly challenged how we think about identity. Borderlands/La Frontera remapped our understanding of what a "border" is, seeing it not as a simple divide between here and there, us and them, but as a psychic, social, and cultural terrain that we inhabit, and that inhabits all of us.

The author discusses her childhood as the daughter of a Peruvian father and American mother, and recalls the challenges she faced trying to reconcile her two cultures after moving to the United States.

In this collection of essays, Ana Castillo examines what it means to be a single, brown, feminist parent in a world of mass incarceration, racial profiling, and police brutality. Castillo writes about intergenerational stories from Mexico City to Chicago, and she narrates some of America's social injustices through the lens of motherhood.

From her often tragic early years in the Southwest to her meteoric rise in Republican circles, Chavez's path put her at the center of some of the most important conflicts of our time. The daughter of a hard-luck, Mexican-American house painter and a blue-eyed, blond restaurant worker, Chavez survived the loss of four siblings and a chaotic childhood to become an influential public policy advocate and one of the most prominent female conservatives in the country.

From the Chicago neighborhoods where she grew up to her abode in Mexico, in a region where "my ancestors lived for centuries," the places Sandra Cisneros has lived have provided inspiration for her now-classic works of fiction and poetry. But a house of her own, where she could truly take root, has eluded her. With this collection--spanning nearly three decades, and including never-before-published work--Cisneros has come home at last.

A collection of writings by the poet, novelist, and essayist recalling her childhood spent shuttling between the land of her birth, Puerto Rico, and the family home in New Jersey.

A collection of personal essays addressing the varied landscape of the Latina experience in higher education.

This book is an oral history of four generations of Hispanic women in New Mexico. Twenty-one Hispanas recall life experiences spanning a period from the time when New Mexico was a Spanish-speaking territory until today. Themes include the shift from a rural to an urban environment; the struggle to preserve culture and traditions; efforts to cope with discrimination; changes in family relations; the striving for education, job, and careers; service to family and community; and dedication to social change.

When Reyna Grande's father leaves his wife and three children behind in a village in Mexico to make the dangerous trek across the border to the United States, he promises he will soon return with enough money to build them a dream house where they can all live together. When he summons his wife to join him, Reyna and her siblings are deposited in the already overburdened household of their stern, unsmiling grandmother. When their mother at last returns, the reunion sets the stage for a dramatic new chapter in Reyna's young life: her own journey to live with the man who has haunted her imagination for years, her long-absent father.

Diane Guerrero, the television actress from the megahit Orange is the New Black and Jane the Virgin, was just fourteen years old on the day her parents and brother were arrested and deported to Colombia while she was at school. Born in the U.S., Guerrero was able to remain in the country and continue her education, depending on the kindness of family friends who took her in and helped her build a life and a successful acting career for herself, without the support system of her family.

This is the memoir of one Colombian-Cuban daughter's rebellions and negotiations with the women who raised her and the world that wanted to fit her into a cubbyhole. From language acquisition to coming out as bisexual to arriving as a reporting intern at the New York Times as the paper is rocked by its biggest plagiarism scandal, Daisy Hernández chronicles what the women in her community taught her about race, sex, money, and love.

Sonia is a child living amidst the squalor of a boisterous home that is filled with noisy relatives and nosy neighbors. Each day she is glued to the TV screen that blots out the painful realities of her existence and also illuminates the possibilities that lie ahead. But when the TV goes off, Sonia is taken back to real life--the cramped, colorful world of her neighborhood and an alcoholic father. It is Sonia's dream of becoming an actress that keeps her afloat among the turbulence of her life and times.

When Rosario was fourteen years old she moved from Mexico to California with no grasp of the English language and few resources. She has since become a trailblazer in every sense: from becoming the first in her family to graduate from college to having her signature appear on the U.S. dollar bill as the treasurer of the United States, and being the first Latina in California to run for the U.S. Senate.

An uplifting collection of autobiographical stories from eight Latinas who share their life lessons to inspire others to rediscover their personal power.

Rosario Morales and Aurora Levins Morales are mother and daughter--feminists and radicals, Puerto Rican and American and Jewish--patterning their voices into a call and response across generations, geography, politics, and cultures.

In this luminous memoir, Rita Moreno shares her remarkable journey from impoverished Puerto Rican girl to Hollywood legend--and one of the few performers, and the only Hispanic, to win an Oscar, Grammy, Tony and two Emmys.

The Oscar-nominated actress shares the previously untold story about her disadvantaged childhood and her successes in and out of the Hollywood limelight, tracing her relationship with the schizophrenic mother who relinquished her to a Catholic orphanage, the abuse she suffered in a series of homes, and the fierce sense of independence that inspired her career.

This book describes the life of a queer, Cuban high school student in Florida in the 1990s, discovering punk rock, her sexuality, and her identity and fighting against sexual assault in her community.

With this autobiography, Mona Ruiz and co-author Geoff Boucher spin a tale of one woman's private war to escape the tentacles of the street gangs that have carved her barrio into turfs where one misstep leads to violence.

Growing up in Puerto Rico, Esmeralda learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of the tree frogs in the mango groves at night, the taste of the delectable sausage called morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby's soul to heaven. But just when Esmeralda seemed to have learned everything, she was taken to New York City, where the rules - and the language - were bewilderingly different.

Moving beyond the poignant childhood story she told in When I Was Puerto Rican, Esmeralda Santiago--one of the country's leading Latina voices--recalls her extraordinary journey into womanhood.

An instant American icon--the first Hispanic on the U.S. Supreme Court--tells the story of her life before becoming a judge in an inspiring, surprisingly personal memoir. With startling candor and intimacy, Sonia Sotomayor recounts her life from a Bronx housing project to the federal bench, a progress that is testament to her extraordinary determination and the power of believing in oneself.