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I like this book a lot because it talks about the Mexican heritage of a family living in Chicago, and the importance of traditions and culture such as wearing a rebozo. Their journey to Mexico City from Chicago is hilarious, including the use of the term "Mericans." — Ivette 

It deals with Esperanza Cordero, a young Latina girl, and her life growing up in Chicago among Chicanos and Puerto Ricans, describing her life as a writer and what motivates her. I love it. — Ivette 
 
The House on Mango Street is a Mexican American classic that shares the coming-of-age story of Esperanza, a young Latina in Chicago. Through a series of lyrical vignettes, we meet her family, friends, and neighbors, and discover a longing for a better life. The story resonates with my own personal experience as a Chicano growing up in the inner city. — Michael 
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I love this book because it shows the amazing culinary culture we have in Mexico, mixed with a little bit of history and a lot of drama associated with a matriarchal hierarchy and the magic of those invisible ingredients (love, fear, hate, and sadness) and how they affect those who eat them. — Rosana 

[This] is a moving novel about a Mexican woman named Tita who longs for her lover; however, her mother will not allow her to be with him due to family tradition. Instead, Tita must take care of her mother until her death. She finds herself best able to express herself through her cooking. The story is beautiful and infuses magical realism throughout the novel; the use of recipes speaks to her passion and the importance of food in Mexican culture. — Michael 
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We love this collection of short stories because they are incomparably intense and impactful. Upon reading just a few pages, one immediately dives into a unique world that portrays rural life in post-revolutionary Mexico. Each story has its own spirit that transcends time and captivates us because it is easy to identify with the fight for one's life that the stories convey. — Norberto 
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Pacheco is one of contemporary Mexico's great writers, and he possesses the rare ability to be able to express powerful and profound images through simple, everyday language. This is one of our favorite novels because despite being relatively short in length, we can spend hours discussing just a few pages, which contain fascinating stories and revelatory realities. One could say that in this story, Mexico City almost becomes alive — it is born, grows, and dies. — Norberto 
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This coming-of-age memoir is the book we all need right now. It is funny, lyrical, and fierce. The text grapples with trauma, violence, and assault, and it is wildly funny. She explores identity, toxic masculinity, eating disorders, friendship, and pop culture with ease. If you appreciate unapologetic, straightforward writing from a fearless writer, you will enjoy this book. — Cynthia

This book won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature but will be enjoyed by everyone in the family. Set in a Latinx Chicago neighborhood with the perfect amount of Spanish prose sprinkled throughout, our protagonist teaches us about the stigmas of mental illness, the impacts of extreme poverty, and the unique pressures felt by immigrant children. — Cynthia

This short little book is a masterpiece. Poetic, visceral, and told in true magical realism prose, this is a classic tale of border crossing with a female protagonist. The translation is good but, if you can, read it in Spanish to enjoy one of Mexico’s greatest “new literature” authors. — Cynthia

Editor's note: Although quite different in plot and execution, Signs is a great book to read if you loved Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West and are looking for a similarly gripping, slightly surreal novel about physical and psychological border crossings. 
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Loose Woman is a beautiful, reflective, passionate, and often sexy book of poetry. The text is empowering and offers commentary on the Latina experience, wading the intersections of cultural expectations and the modern American experience. It's exciting and powerful! — Michael

Borderlands is a very special read about identity that beautifully exposes the Mexican American experience of living in a borderland, where you search for a balance between Mexican and American, religious and academic, English and Spanish, men and women, and gay and straight. It also blends semi-autobiographical essays with poetry and prose with great ease and engaging text. Highly recommended! — Michael

This beautiful coming-of-age story, set in New Mexico, marries the folkways of Mexican culture and brings them to the US. Originally published in 1972, it was one of the first critically acclaimed Chicano novels. I fall in love with it every time I reread it. — Michael
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Carmen Boullosa is an award-winning Mexican poet, novelist, and playwright (and a favorite of the late Chilean novelist, Roberto Bolaño). Her novel Texas: The Great Theft focuses on the Mexico-Texas borderland in the mid-19th century. Boullosa manages a massive, diverse cast on both sides of the border, all with a wide-ranging sympathy and special attention to women’s roles and voices. You would think that the weight of so many characters, and the fraught historical context of US imperialism and border violence, would drag down the narrative, but in Boullosa’s hands such enormity simply adds nuance and power to an incredible Western epic. If you like historical fiction, check this one out.
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If you’re feeling up to the challenge, try Álvaro Enrigue. Electric Literature calls the recent Sudden Death “an exercise in uncertainty,” and indeed this novel about a fictional tennis match between Caravaggio and Quevedo (yes, that Caravaggio and Quevedo), but also about Anne Boleyn, Pius IV, and the author himself, among many other historical figures and events, is kind of a brain teaser of a book. It’s also totally engrossing and a great introduction to the experimentalism at the heart of the Mexican literary avant garde.

Of the many things that recommend Laia Jufresa’s Umami, the atmospheric and domestic setting — a courtyard at the center of Mexico City, in 12-year-old Ana’s vegetable garden — is the most alluring. Powell's bookseller Lucinda writes, "Over the course of a rainy summer, the reader is swept into the melancholic memories of Ana and her neighbors, whose stories of loss are woven together in intriguing, unpredictable ways. Funny, sad, and tender, Umami offers a riveting glimpse of life in a contemporary Mexican urban community."

Valeria Luiselli is the wife of Álvaro Enrigue, and a stunning writer. The Story of My Teeth really is a story about teeth — Marilyn Monroe’s, to be exact — but it’s also a playful experiment in form and authorship, with several aspects of the story and structure developing out of collaborations between Luiselli and her translator, Christina McSweeney, and Luiselli and a group of Jumex factory workers. The New York Times called The Story “Walter Benjamin without the tears,” in reference to its fluency in modern philosophy and structural preoccupation with time and space. It sounds difficult, but it’s much more fun, wacky, and interactive than challenging.

Daniel Saldaña París’s debut, Among Strange Victims, is a funny, strange novel about Rodrigo, a 20-something slacker in Mexico City, who finds himself accidentally married to a coworker and moving back to his provincial hometown, where he hangs out with other slackers and… not much happens. Among Strange Victims is a picaresque, with all of the lolling pleasure and absurdity of the genre. Jeremy notes, “An imperfect outing, Among Strange Victims is nevertheless a fun, playful, weird, ambitious, imaginative, and impressive work. Saldaña París writes with a gifted and confident prose that is as much the star of this singular novel as its unforgettable characters and delightful plot.”

Herralde Prize-winning writer Juan Villoro’s new middle reader, The Wild Book, is so charming and gorgeous that adults will revel in it as well. (Of course, it’s about the magic of books, so we were predisposed to love it.) Young Juan is sent to live with his eccentric uncle Tito, who asks him for his help in hunting The Wild Book, a book with the tendency to run away. In a library filled with sentient, trouble-making books, Juan, Tito, and Juan’s friend Catalina embark on a satisfying adventure.