Friday Five: contemporary Hispanic authors you should read

You can be forgiven for not knowing we are in the midst of National Hispanic Heritage Month. Even I, a pocho but still proud of my Hispanic heritage (or Latino/a/x, if you prefer), often find myself taken by surprise when this annual event shows up on the calendar — probably because it’s a “month” that really isn’t. It starts in the middle of September and ends in the middle of October, an oddity that probably contributes to its lack of visibility.

Hispanic authors, too, often lack visibility in the mainstream of literature. Now that we’re almost a week into National Hispanic Heritage Month, I want to devote this Friday Five to Hispanic writers. Although many exceptional U.S. writers have Hispanic roots, they’re often overshadowed in the literary world.

Depending on how you define “Hispanic” or “Latino/a/x,” you could argue that the roots of the modern novel grew from a Hispanic author. The Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes, whose Don Quixote was published in the early 1600s. Don Quixote has influenced many writers from a diverse array of backgrounds.

But for today’s post, I’m more interested in highlighting contemporary Hispanic voices in literature, and offer these five modern Hispanic authors and their most important works for consideration to be added to your to-be-read pile.

1 – Kirstin Valdez Quade, whose debut novel, The Five Wounds, has garnered several awards, including the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize in 2021. The Five Wounds is the story of a dysfunctional family, the main players being teenage mother-to-be Angel Padilla; her parents, the struggling, unemployed alcoholic Amadeo and his estranged wife Marissa; and Angel’s grandmother, Yolanda, who holds secrets she refused to divulge to her family.

The novel begins with Angel arriving at the house where her father and grandmother live as Amadeo, in hopes of atonement, prepares to play the role of Jesus in his town’s annual reenactment of the Passion of the Christ during Holy Week. He takes the role very seriously — and quite literally — to signal his commitment. With tremendous detail, dialogue and scene-setting, Quale weaves together a narrative of each individual struggling to overcome their dysfunction, addiction, abuse, and generational trauma. The novel also portrays the struggles of an impoverished family, the unstable social fabric in place to support them, and the role Catholicism plays in their lives.

Check out a selection of her other writings, including essays and short stories.

Read: “An Interview with Kirstin Valdez Quade, 2021 First Novel Prize Finalist for The Five Wounds.”

2 – Sigrid Nunez may not fit the traditional idea of a Latina, but her multicultural roots span Central Europe, East Asia, and Central America. Born to a German mother and a Chinese-Panamanian mother, she is the author of nine novels, most notably The Friend, which won the National Book Award in 2018. The Friend is the story of a woman who, after the unexpected death of a longtime friend and mentor, is saddled with his unwanted dog. Described as “both a meditation on loss and a celebration of human-canine devotion,” the novel is a poignant read.

3 – Junot Diaz‘s breakthrough novel — The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao — is a great comic novel that infuses magical realism into the immigration experience of Dominicans (people born in the Dominican Republic, or DR). The book, published in 2014, follows Oscar, who is described on Diaz’s website as a “sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who — from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister — dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love.” The DR-born Diaz does a great job of weaving folklore and history into the novel and, despite its heavy footnotes (a la David Foster Wallace), those additions make the book even more enjoyable. Diaz publishes frequently about writing on his StoryWorlds Substack. It’s worth reading.

4- Cristina Henriquez has just come out with a terrific historical novel, The Great Divide, which tells the story of the construction of the Panama Canal, along with the stories of the unsung heroes who built it. I have not yet read this one, but am looking forward to it. If it’s anything like her 2014 novel The Book of Unknown Americans, it will be an absorbing read. The Book of Unknown Americans is a riveting tale of a Mexican family — and others from south of the U.S. border — and their struggles migrating to the United States.

5 – Erika L. Sánchez is a Mexican-American writer whose young adult novel, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, was an unusual but worthwhile read for me. (I usually don’t read YA offerings.) The novel chronicles Julia, the daughter of Mexican immigrants living in Chicago whose older sister Olga — the “perfect” daughter — dies in a freak accident. Her parents expect her to fill Olga’s shoes, complete with an overdue quinceañera, but Julia rebels as she struggles to determine her own identity, and in the process uncovers a dark secret about her dead sister. Sánchez also has a new memoir out (which I have not read) titled Crying in the Bathroom. You can find some of Sánchez’s other writings and a link to her podcast on her website.

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Each of these writers offers a fresh view on contemporary life from their distinctive perspectives. I hope you’ll consider exploring their wonderful works.

Later this National Hispanic Heritage Month, I will share my five picks for great “classic” (read: better known) novels by Hispanic writers.

Image via The COM (College of Maryland) Library on Flickr.