#readlatinx

It's time for the latest edition of #GuideFriday and #ReadPuertoRican. This week I am highlighting memoirs. Some of these I hold close to my heart. QOTD: What memoirs have you really enjoyed recently? Here are some of my favorite quotes from some of today's featured recommendations: 🔖"And years later, this would be exactly how I understood love: thrilling and terrifying, tears and laughter and then tears again. Love, I learned, could destroy you "- Jaquira Diaz,, Ordinary Girls 🔖"The cruelest prison of all is the prison of the mind." - Paris Thomas, Down These Mean Streets 🔖"It seemed too complicated, as if each of us were really two people, one who was loved and the official one who, I assumed, was not."- Esmeralda Santiago, When I Was Puerto Rican 🔖"The aroma of coffee perking in the kitchen, the mesmerizing creaks and groans of the rockers, and the women telling their lives in cuentos are forever woven into the fabric of my imagination, braided like my hair that day I felt my grandmother's hands teaching me about strength, her voice convincing me of the power of storytelling"- Judith Ortiz Cofer, Silent Dancing #GuideFriday #ReadLatinx #ReadPuertoRican #Boricua #LatinxBookstagram #booklist #Fridaypost #BookRecs #PuertoRicanLit #memoirs #ownvoices #Fridaypost #LatinxBooks #BookFeatures #PuertoRicanAuthors #reading #nonfiction #booksbooksbooks #bookish #bookstoread #PuertoRico #bookstagram #bibliophile #nuyoricans #BoricuaStories #bookdragon #weneeddiversebooks #dignidadliteraria #bookworm #diversereader #bookcollector (at Bushwick) https://www.instagram.com/p/CNdatRsLDwr/?igshid=1g5a8dx1whllg

Thank you @alegriamagazine for such a beautiful gift. QOTD: Do you prefer your poetry spoken or written? What I love most about Alegria is that they spotlight Latinx and Black voices. They highlight Latinx stories about different experiences. They foster community and stories of healing. More importantly they provide visibility for up and coming poets and writers. Poetry has really gotten me by this last year and I'm so glad to add these to my collection: 🌺 All She Is 🌼 Groanings From the Desert 🌸 The Black & Latinx Poetry Project Fun Fact: My daughter was featured in The Latinx Poetry Project (not featured here), another Alegria publication. #AlegriaPublishing #Poetrycollection #LatinxBookstagram #ReadLatinx #OwnVoices #IndiePublisher #PoetryBooks #LatinxBooks #Read #BookFeature #BookRecs #Bookish #Bookdragon #bibliophile #Books #BooksandMurals #BookPhotos #Bookworm #PoetryIsLife #Alegria #BooksOutside #BooksBooksBooks #ReadPoetry #Latinxwomeninbooks (at The Shops at Atlas Park) https://www.instagram.com/p/CMiU5PrLzHt/?igshid=o5wxhdq114i5

"and I think about TV and how people fall in love , have families, and spend lives together. Not like it is around here; people love for a little while ...And I wonder what makes love last." Love War Stories by Ivelisse Rodriguez is a short story collection that aimed to dissect the concept of love and show the many layers and aspects of it. I am a fan of short stories and this is one that is now one of my favorites. Every story brings up a new question about love and exposes another complexity. Each story leaves you wanting to search for answers and research further. What I loved the most was that it was written from the Puerto Rican experience. Reading the stories felt personal. It exposed the mixed messaging and the ways that cultural aspects play a part in creating the notions and expectations of love. The prose was beautiful and relatable. The characters introduced were multifaceted and represented the mixture of identities found in Puerto Rican culture. Each story tackled a different conflict that is relatable. This collection pulled at different pieces of my heart. The stories gave me so much to think about: ❤ How do you construct ideas about love when everything around you reflects contradiction? ❤ Why do we make idols of people we love? ❤ Why do women grieving love get stigmatized? ❤ Why is marraige the ideal and pushed by people unhappily married? ❤ How do continue to believe in love when all it does is disappoint? ❤ How do you make sense of all the mixed messaging about love and relationships? ❤ Why is a woman's reputation and identity judged in relation to who she loves? ❤ Is secret or forbidden love less valid than public love? ❤ If love isn't stagnant and constantly changing, how do you sustain or put limits on it? ❤ Why does love change you? ❤ Why does love feel like grief? ❤ Can feminism exist with traditional ideas about love? Bookdragon rating: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 #LoveWarStories #ivelisserodriguez #shortstories #puertoricanliterature #readLatinx #latinxbookstagram #bookreview #bookdragon #books #bookstagram #bookphotos #pinkbooks #bibliophile #ownvoices #bookrecs #feministpress #bipoc #bookworm #bookish #paperback #weneeddiversebooks #bookfeature (at Bushwick) https://www.instagram.com/p/CLkt6t9gn0z/?igshid=h48j1ci1dp6b

My last few reads have been amazing but they have been a bit heavy. I'm excited to start this Fat Chance, Charlie Vega next. YA always gets me out of slumps but more importantly the stories are diverse, full of hope while at the same time adding little doses of real issues. I'm looking forward to this read as it deals with the Latinx experience and fat phobia while living in a white suburb. QOTD: What is a light hearted read you really enjoyed? Thanks to @holidayhousebks @hearourvoicestours for the gifted copy. I'm looking forward to the tour. 🌷🌷SYNOPSIS:🌷🌷 Coming of age as a Fat brown girl in a white Connecticut suburb is hard. Harder when your whole life is on fire, though. Charlie Vega is a lot of things. Smart. Funny. Artistic. Ambitious. Fat. People sometimes have a problem with that last one. Especially her mom. Charlie wants a good relationship with her body, but it's hard, and her mom leaving a billion weight loss shakes on her dresser doesn't help. The world and everyone in it have ideas about what she should look like: thinner, lighter, slimmer-faced, straighter-haired. Be smaller. Be whiter. Be quieter. But there's one person who's always in Charlie's corner: her best friend Amelia. Slim. Popular. Athletic. Totally dope. So when Charlie starts a tentative relationship with cute classmate Brian, the first worthwhile guy to notice her, everything is perfect until she learns one thing--he asked Amelia out first. So is she his second choice or what? Does he even really see her? UGHHH. Everything is now officially a MESS. A sensitive, funny, and painful coming-of-age story with a wry voice and tons of chisme, Fat Chance, Charlie Vega tackles our relationships to our parents, our bodies, our cultures, and ourselves. #FatChanceCharlieVega #latinxYAlit #CrystalMaldonado #readLatinx #ownvoices #fatphobia #bibliophile #bookstagram #comingofage #bookphotography #bookdragon #HearOurVoicesTours #bookworm #BooksofIG #Ilovebooks #Latinx #reading #bookwormactivities #Latinxbookstagram #youngadult #bookfeatures #bookrecomendations #HolidayHouse #comingsoon #ARC (at HomeGoods) https://www.instagram.com/p/CKPnG_PAtM_/?igshid=zp8q3bg0d52y

Day 16 of #DecolonizeDecember photo challenge hosted by Alejandro @decolonizeliterature Today's prompt: A book about BIPOC joy Feature: Merci Suarez Switches Gears Genre: Middle Grade Choosing a book to feature today really made me reflect on the importance of BIPOC stories of joy. Publishing only seems to be interested in promoting trauma stories, immigration stories and racism. They ignore our daily existence and erase our moments of happiness in ordinary life. By relegating our identities to trauma, they never have to acknowledge our humanity. They never have to accept that our lives matter, that we have our own dreams and that we deserve equal opportunities. Promoting our stories is a necessity and tearing down the systems that block us from telling our stories is a priority. SYNOPSIS: Thoughtful, strong-willed sixth-grader Merci Suarez navigates difficult changes with friends, family, and everyone in between in a resonant new novel from Meg Medina. Merci Suarez knew that sixth grade would be different, but she had no idea just how different. For starters, Merci has never been like the other kids at her private school in Florida, because she and her older brother, Roli, are scholarship students. They don’t have a big house or a fancy boat, and they have to do extra community service to make up for their free tuition. So when bossy Edna Santos sets her sights on the new boy who happens to be Merci’s school-assigned Sunshine Buddy, Merci becomes the target of Edna’s jealousy. Things aren't going well at home, either: Merci’s grandfather and most trusted ally, Lolo, has been acting strangely lately — forgetting important things, falling from his bike, and getting angry over nothing. No one in her family will tell Merci what's going on, so she’s left to her own worries, while also feeling all on her own at school. In a coming-of-age tale full of humor and wisdom, award-winning author Meg Medina gets to the heart of the confusion and constant change that defines middle school — and the steadfast connection that defines family. #WeLoveMGLit #LatinxMGbooks #readcarribbean #readLatinx #read #bookstagram #bookdragon #books #snowday #bibliophile #ownvoices (at Bushwick) https://www.instagram.com/p/CI4X6GFAsQj/?igshid=4kgck8euvghg

Day 3 #DecolonizeDecember started by Alejandro of @decolonizeliterature Todays prompt: Underrated BIPOC author QOTD: What BIPOC author doesn't get the credit they deserve? My feature today is Puerto Rico's own Esmeralda Santiago. Not only are her books literary gold chock full of representation, the Puerto Rican migration experience and adolescent coming of age, but she has accomplished so much outside of the literary world. 🇵🇷 She graduated from Harvard University and Sarah Lawrence College after attending NYC's H.S. of Performing Arts. 🇵🇷 She has written for national newspapers and mass market magazines. 🇵🇷 She is active in advocating for public libraries. 🇵🇷 She has designed programs for adolescent services and founded a domestic violence shelter for women and their children. 🇵🇷 He holds 3 honorary doctorates from three colleges. 🇵🇷 She is a poet, editor, actress and novelist as well as documentarian. 🇵🇷 She is a stroke survivor and had to relearn how to read and speak in both English and Spanish. #readcarribbean #readlatinx #boricua #PuertoRicanbookstagrammer #book #ownvoices #dignidadliteraria #libros #bookdragon #bookworm #hotcocoa #bibliophile #esmeraldasantiago #PuertoRicanAuthors #boricuapride #throwbookthursday #backlistrecs #representationmatters #latinxbooks #diversespines #decolonizeyourfeed #weneeddiversebooks #readtolearn #bookishmugs #booksandmugs (at Bushwick) https://www.instagram.com/p/CIXFI0VgtMS/?igshid=1s5d3kpuiwmlx