"Growing up as the daughter of Mexican immigrants in Chicago in the nineties, Erika Sanchez was a self-described pariah, misfit, and disappointment--a foul-mouthed, melancholic rabble-rouser who painted her nails black but also loved comedy, often laughing so hard with her friends that she had to leave her school classroom. Twenty-five years later, she's now an award-winning novelist, poet, and essayist, but she's still got an irrepressible laugh,...

"As a young girl, Selena Quintanilla sang in a band called Selena y Los Dinos with her brother and sister. The family performed at fairs, weddings, quinceañeras, and on street corners in their native Texas. Selena learned how to sing in Spanish and soon became hugely popular within the Latino community--so much so that she became the best-selling Latin artist of the 1990s. Selena was poised to be a great success, but her life was cut short after...

"From the Chicago neighborhoods where she grew up and set her groundbreaking The House on Mango Street 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...

"Just Like Us" offers a powerful account of four young Mexican women coming of age in Denver--two of whom have legal documentation, two of whom who don't--and the challenges they face as they attempt to pursue the American dream.

Should she leave home, go to college and experience life? Or stay home, get married, and keep working in her sister's struggling garment factory? It may seem an easy decision, but for 18-year-old Ana, every choice she makes this summer will change her life.

"At the age of 8, Reyna Grande made the dangerous and illegal trek across the border from Mexico to the United States, and discovered that the American Dream is much more complicated than it seemed."--Provided by publisher.

A collection of poetry attests to the author's original passion and reveals her talent for employing the precision and musicality of language in verses both comic and sad.

Ten moving and heartbreaking stories of love, lust, and longing among men and women struggling to find their way in the world. Written in Gilb's spare but throbbing language, each of these haunting stories featuring characters of Mexican-American heritage is crafted with a poetic, aching beauty. The men and women in these stories are often at odds with each other. Like woodcuts, the men are unable to see the women in their lives as little more than...

"In 1951, a mysterious old woman confronts Pilar Aguierre in the small boarder town of La Cienega, Texas. The old woman is sure Pilar stole her husband and, in a heated outburst, lays a curse on Pilar and her family. More than forty years later, Lulu Muñoz is dodging chaos at every turn: her troubled father's moods, his rules, her secret life as singer in a punk band, but most of all her upcoming quinceañera. When her beloved grandmother passes...

Three generations of women in a Mexican American family experience sexual awakenings over the course of a summer.