Featured Ebooks
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Happy Hispanic Heritage Month! We've included biographies of remarkable figures in art, archeology, activism, sports, and music. Take a moment to explore and be inspired.
Contemporary Poetry Books
Journey to Xibalba
When Don Patterson's twenty-seven-year-old daughter turned to him for advice about her professional future, Patterson in turn reflected on his almost thirty-year experience working on major archaeological sites in Mexico and Central America. His autobiographical account examines his professional journey, the people and institutions that made it possible, and the decisions, both good and bad, that he made along the way. Patterson draws from ancient Mayan mythology, weaving the tale of Hunahpu and Xbalanque, the Hero Twins, and their voyage to Xibabla, the underworld, into his own story to provide an analogy of the journey through life and the daily challenges and pitfalls one must overcome. Each of the book's eight chapters is named after the houses of testing in Xibalba and reflects the people, environments, financing, and politics of the different archaeological projects Patterson worked on throughout his career. The resulting story is part Indiana Jones and part analysis of the problems facing modern Mesoamerica between globalization and national patrimony.
María Izquierdo and Frida Kahlo
María Izquierdo (1902-1955) and Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) were the first Mexican women artists to achieve international recognition. During the height of the Mexican muralist movement, they established successful careers as easel painters and created work that has become an integral part of Mexican modernism. Both were regularly included in major exhibitions of Mexican art, and they were invariably the only women chosen for the most important professional activities and honors. In a study that prioritizes critical analysis over biographical interpretation, Nancy Deffebach places Kahlo's and Izquierdo's oeuvres in their cultural context, examining how the artists participated in the national and artistic discourses of postrevolutionary Mexico. Through iconographic analysis of paintings and themes within each artist's oeuvre, Deffebach discusses how the artists engaged intellectually with the issues and ideas of their era, especially Mexican national identity and the role of women in society. In a time when Mexican artistic and national discourses associated the nation with masculinity, Izquierdo and Kahlo created images of women that deconstructed gender roles, critiqued the status quo, and presented more empowering alternatives for women. Deffebach demonstrates that, paradoxically, Kahlo and Izquierdo became the most successful Mexican women artists of the modernist period while most directly challenging the prevailing ideas about gender and what constitutes important art.
Diego Rivera: a Biography
Diego Rivera: A Biography presents a concise but substantial biography of the famous and controversial Mexican artist.The book examines Rivera's childhood and artistic formation (1886-1906), his European period (1907-1921), and his murals of the 1920s. The book explores his work in the United States (1930-1933) and follows his career from his subsequent return to Mexico through his death in 1957. It explores his turbulent marriage to renowned painter Frida Kahlo and controversial works, such as Rivera's 1933 mural for the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan. With primary source accounts, this book highlights the highs and lows of Rivera as he creates his impactful works within the art world.
Pablo Picasso
This book explores the interaction between collectors, dealers, and exhibitions during Pablo Picasso's career. The term collector/dealer must often be used in combination since the distinction between both is often unclear; Heinz Berggruen, for instance, identified himself primarily as a collector, although he also sold a few Picassos through his Paris gallery. On the whole, however, dealers bought more often than collectors; and bought works by artists they were already involved with. While some dealers were professional gallery owners, most were mainly collectors who sporadically sold items from their collections. The book is organized chronologically and discusses the interaction between Picasso collectors, dealers, and exhibitions as they take place. Once collectors acquired an artwork, their willingness to lend them to exhibitions or their necessity to submit them to auction had a direct impact on Picasso's prominence in the art world.
Francisco Goya
Francisco Goya (1746-1828) was recognized from a very early age as the leading artist in Spain, rising to become the official portraitist of the Spanish Court. He was famed for the quality and speed at which he executed his drawings, and his etchings are of extraordinary delicacy. His use of chiaroscuro in his dark, intense paintings influenced many artists, including Manet. This monograph presents the essential works of this pioneering artist, today considered the father of modern art.
Dali
Painter, designer, creator of bizarre objects, author, and filmmaker, Dalí became the most famous of the Surrealists. Buñuel, Lorca, Picasso, and Breton all had a great influence on his career. Dalí's film, An Andalusian Dog, produced with Buñuel, marked his official entry into the tightly-knit group of Parisian Surrealists, where he met Gala, the woman who became his lifelong companion and his source of inspiration. But his relationship soon deteriorated until his final rift with André Breton in 1939. Nevertheless, Dalí's art remained surrealist in its philosophy and expression and a prime example of his freshness, humor, and exploration of the subconscious mind. Throughout his life, Dalí was a genius at self-promotion, creating and maintaining his reputation as a mythical figure.
Leonora Carrington
The English-born artist and writer Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) has received critical acclaim and achieved stellar status in Mexico, where she lived and worked for most of her life, having fled Europe via Spain in tormenting circumstances. Leonora Carrington: Living Legacies brings together a collection of chapters that constitute a range of artistic, scholarly, and creative responses to the realm of Carrington, emphasizing how her work becomes a medium, a milieu, and a provocation for new thinking, being, and imagining in the world. The diversity of contributions from scholars, early career researchers, and artists include unpublished papers, interviews, creative provocations, and writing from practice-led interventions. Collectively they explore questions and enable new ways of thinking with Carrington's legacy. Wishing to expand on recent important scholarly publications by established Carrington researchers which have brought historical and international significance to the artist's legacy, this volume offers new perspectives on the artist's relevance in feminist thinking and artistic methodologies. Conscious of Carrington's reluctance to engage in critical analysis of her artwork we have approached this scholarly task through a lens of give and return that the artist herself musingly articulates in her 1965 mock manifesto Jezzamathatics: "I was decubing the root of a Hyperbollick Symposium ? when the latent metamorphosis blurted the great unexpected shriek into something between a squeak and a smile. IT GAVE, so to speak, in order to return." (Aberth, 2010:149). In adopting her playful conjecture, this publication seeks to bring Carrington and her work to further prominence.
Celia Sánchez Manduley
Celia Sanchez Manduley (1920-1980) is famous for her role in the Cuban revolution. Clad in her military fatigues, this "first female guerrilla of the Sierra Maestra" is seen in many photographs alongside Fidel Castro. Sanchez joined the movement in her early thirties, initially as an arms runner and later as a combatant. She was one of Castro's closest confidants, perhaps lover, and went on to serve as a high-ranking government official and international ambassador. Since her death, Sanchez has been revered as a national icon, cultivated and guarded by the Cuban government. With almost unprecedented access to Sanchez's papers, including a personal diary, and firsthand interviews with family members, Tiffany A. Sippial presents the first critical study of a notoriously private and self-abnegating woman who yet exists as an enduring symbol of revolutionary ideals. Sippial reveals the scope and depth of Sanchez's power and influence within the Cuban revolution, as well as her struggles with violence, her political development, and the sacrifices required by her status as a leader and "New Woman." Using the tools of feminist biography, cultural history, and the politics of memory, Sippial reveals how Sanchez strategically crafted her legacy within a history still dominated by bearded men in fatigues.
Violeta Parra
The first book in English to consider the full extent of the accomplishments and influence of the Chilean cultural icon, Violeta Parra. Violeta Parra was an extraordinary figure. She is best known for her contribution to the Latin American New Song movement and for her visual art, which was exhibited in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs of the Louvre gallery in 1964. Parra spent her early career singing Mexican songs in bars and researching traditional Chilean culture. All the different phases of Parra's life and work are discussed in this book, with analyses of her music, paintings, sculptures, embroideries (arpilleras), and poetry. Her exhibition in the Louvre gallery and the music venue that she set up before she died, La Carpa de la Reina, are also covered. Among the individual essays collected here are seminal works by Patricio Manns and Leonidas Morales, which have been translated into English for the first time. These works introduce the historical and biographical context for Parra's work. Other essays feature the latest research and findings by Catherine Boyle, Ericka Verba, Paula Miranda, Serda Yalkin, Romina A. Green, and Lorna Dillon.
Dolores Huerta Stands Strong
Selected as a Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Book of the Year for 2018 (Category: Twelve-Fourteen) "A biography for the times ... An excellent read for anyone hoping to believe one person can make a difference." --Kirkus (starred review) "This well-told, age-appropriate account of a vital and essential activist deserves a place in all middle grade collections." --School Library Journal (starred review) Today, we know Dolores Huerta as the co-founder, with Cesar Chavez, of the National Farmworkers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers of America. We know her as a tireless advocate for the rights of various populations. And we know her as the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2012. Before all that, though, Huerta was a child in the farming community of Stockton, California, and then a teenager whose teachers underestimated her because she was Chicana. When she became a teacher herself, she witnessed her students coming to school shoeless and hungry. Many took days off from school to work in the farm fields to help feed their families. What could she do to help them? A young mother at the time, Huerta quit her teaching job to organize their parents. That began her journey to educate a nation about who produces our food and the conditions under which they work. Dolores Huerta Stands Strong follows Huerta's life from the mining communities of the Southwest where her father toiled, to the vineyards and fields of California, and across the country to the present day. As she worked for fair treatment for others, Dolores earned the nation's highest honors. More importantly, she found her voice.
Roberto Clemente
Roberto Clemente is touted as perhaps the best baseball player ever and the first Hispanic player to be voted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Selena Perez
In her short 23 years, singer Selena Perez made a huge impact on both the music world and the Hispanic community by bringing together and celebrating her Mexican heritage and American upbringing.