Echoes of Mexico: New and Classic Works by Authors of Mexican Descent

by Annette Chavez Macias

Four cousins, who were exceptionally close as children, have grown apart and are struggling with their own issues. When tragedy reunites them, will they remember their abuelita's lessons about family and forgiveness—or is a fifteen-year separation too much to overcome?

by Oscar Cásares

Moving to his godmother's volatile Texas border town after his mother's sudden death, a 12-year-old Mexican-American boy discovers a young illegal immigrant taking shelter in his godmother's home before their shared desire for independence puts all of them at risk.

by Ana Castillo

A celebrated poet, novelist, essayist and playwright presents a collection of short stories that explore the secrets that are kept within households and the women they impact including a student who joins Cesar Chavez’s La Causa. 

by V. Castro

Struggling with a darkness that threatens to consume her, Alejandra discovers she, like the women in her family before her, is being haunted by La Llorona, the vengeful and murderous mother of Mexican Legend, and must summon everything she’s inherited from her foremothers to banish this demon forever.

by Mario Alberto Zambrano

Using the a deck of Loteria cards as her muse, 11-year-old Luz Castillo, a ward of the state who has retreated into silence, finds each shuffle sparking a random memory that, pieced together, brings into focus the joy and pain of her life and the events that led to her present situation.

by Rubén Degollado

The tight-knit Izquierdo family is grappling with misfortunes none of them can explain. When eldest son Gonzalo digs up a strange object in the backyard of the family home, the Izquierdos take it as proof that a jealous neighbor has cursed them. As the Izquierdos face a distressing present and an uncertain future, they are sustained by the blood that binds them, a divine presence, and an abiding love for one another.

by Sandra Cisneros

During her family's annual car trip from Chicago to Mexico City, Lala Reyes listens to stories about her family, including her grandmother, the descendant of a renowned dynasty of shawl makers, whose magnificent striped (or caramelo) shawl has come into Lala's possession, in a multi-generational saga of a Mexican-American family.

by Jaime Cortez

Gordo brings readers inside a migrant workers camp near Watsonville, California in the 1970s. At the heart of these interrelated stories is a young, probably gay, boy named Gordo, who must find a way to contend with the notions of manhood imposed on him by his father. As he comes of age, Gordo learns about sex, watches his father’s drunken fights, and discovers even his own documented Mexican-American parents are wary of illegal migrants. We also meet Fat Cookie, high schooler and resident artist who runs away from home one day with her mother’s boyfriend, Manny. And then there are Los Tigres, the twins who show up every season and whose drunken brawl ends with one of them rushed to the emergency room in an upholstered chair tied to the back of a pick-up truck.

by Isabel Cañas

When the US attacks Mexico in 1846, Nena, a healer striving to prove her worth, and Néstor, a member of the auxiliary cavalry of ranchers and vaqueros, find their reunion overshadowed by the appearance of a nightmare made flesh.

by Richard Vasquez

Follows the lives of four generations of a Mexican-American family that migrates to the United States, from patriarch Hector, who flees discrimination and injustice during the Mexican Revolution, to granddaughter Mariana, who incites a clash of cultures when she becomes pregnant with an Anglo student's child.

by Graciela Limón

Ana's idyllic childhood is shattered when her mother dies in childbirth, and Ana must assume the duties of caring for the younger ones of the family. In order to earn enough for his family to survive, Ana's father takes the children and an adopted son to the United States. Here begins Ana's long torturous odyssey towards self-fulfillment. On the way, she must face her father's ever-increasing wrath, her sisters' envy, a treacherous love affair, grueling agricultural work, and society's rigidity as she becomes more independent.

by Reyna Grande

Widowed by the Texas Rangers in the fight over the disputed Rio Grande boundary, a Mexican woman, skilled at healing, joins the Mexican army and falls in love with a Yankee deserter.

by Manuel Munoz

Set in California’s Central Valley in the 1980s, this masterful collection of stories, depicts the Mexican and Mexican American farmworkers who are regularly and ruthlessly rounded up by the migra, as well as the immense challenges faced by their families.

by Rudolfo Anaya

Ultima, a curandera, one who cures with herbs and magic, comes to Antonio Marez's New Mexico family when he is six years old, and she helps him discover himself in the magical secrets of the pagan past.

by Kali Fajardo-Anstine

Luz “Little Light” Lopez, a tea leaf reader and laundress, is left to fend for herself after her older brother, Diego, a snake charmer and factory worker, is run out of town by a violent white mob. As Luz navigates 1930s Denver, she begins to have visions that transport her to her Indigenous homeland in the nearby Lost Territory. Luz recollects her ancestors’ origins, how her family flourished, and how they were threatened. She bears witness to the sinister forces that have devastated her people and their homelands for generations. In the end, it is up to Luz to save her family stories from disappearing into oblivion.

by Luis Alberto Urrea

Across one bittersweet weekend in their San Diego neighborhood, revelers mingle among the palm trees and cacti, celebrating the lives of family patriarch Miguel "Big Angel" De La Cruz and his mother, and recounting the many tales that have passed into family lore.

by Arturo Islas

Set in a fictional small town on the Texas-Mexico border, Rain God tells the funny, sad, and quietly outrageous saga of the children and grandchildren of Mama Chona the indomitable matriarch of the Angel clan who fled the bullets and blood of the 1911 revolution for a gringo land of promise.