To celebrate Hispanic and Latinx Heritage Month this year, we are thrilled to feature our recent award-winning books in Latinx and Chicanx studies, plus some highlights from these incredible authors! Dig into the books below that have garnered awards from the International Latino Book Awards, the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education, the Texas Institute of Letters, the American Political Science Association, and more. These books represent best-in-the-field research in border studies, cultural studies, gender and sexuality, history, literature, politics, and education.
Browse more award-winning books, and all our books on Latinx and Chicanx studies by discipline.
Chican@ Artivistas: Music, Community, and Transborder Tactics in East Los Angeles
By Martha Gonzalez
2021 Best First Book – Nonfiction, International Latino Book Awards
“Part academic treatise…and part testimonio, [Chican@ Artivistas] seamlessly weaves together Chicana feminist theory, ethnomusicology and Gonzalez’s intimate experiences. In the process, it offers a glimpse into the vibrant art scene of 1990s East L.A. and the development of a Chicana artivist.”
Los Angeles Times
Agent of Change: Adela Sloss-Vento, Mexican American Civil Rights Activist and Texas Feminist
By Cynthia E. Orozco
Liz Carpenter Award for Research in the History of Women, Texas State Historical Association
“This biography is a corrective and offers an example of how one might recover the lost intellectual histories of marginalized women of color in the twentieth century who sought to have their voices heard…Orozco’s book helps us get a better understanding of the not fully excavated intellectual history of Mexican Americans in the United States and is a welcome addition to Chicanx history.”
American Historical Review
Undocumented Motherhood: Conversations on Love, Trauma, and Border Crossing
By Elizabeth Farfán-Santos
2023 Honorable Mention, Outstanding Book Award NACCS Tejas Foco Award for Non-Fiction, National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies
“A compassionate study . . . Farfán-Santos movingly describes how the Latinx community comes together to help their own and makes a powerful case that the traumas of migration manifest themselves in the bodies of immigrants. This is a stirring portrait of pain and perseverance.”
Publishers Weekly
Apostles of Change: Latino Radical Politics, Church Occupations, and the Fight to Save the Barrio
By Felipe Hinojosa
2021 Finalist Raul Yzaguirre Best Political/Current Affairs Book, International Latino Book Awards
Winner of the Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education Inaugural Book Award
“Hinojosa takes seriously both the religiosity of seemingly secular activists and the politics of organized religion; at the nexus, he charts a new Latina/o religious history that took its cues directly from the streets…Hinojosa’s occupiers offered radical visions for their community’s liberation, breathed new life into their barrios, and remade their spiritual universes in both theological and practical terms. They were true apostles of change. Hinojosa’s account of their exploits is a must-read for historians of social movements, religion, and working-class studies alike.”
Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas
Conjured Bodies: Queer Racialization in Contemporary Latinidad
By Laura Grappo
2023 Honorable Mention, Outstanding Book, Latinx Studies Section (LASA)
2022 Honorable Mention, John Leo & Dana Heller Award for Best Single Work, Anthology, Multi-Authored, or Edited Book in LGBTQ Studies, Popular Culture Association (PCA)
“[Conjured Bodies] provides an accessible and significant exploration of the construct of race in the U.S. Grappo’s book provides an insightful and engaging discussion of the importance of understanding both the value and danger of malleability…Grappo’s book provides thought provoking and gripping arguments about the possible consequences, harms, and issues of conjured identities, images, and bodies that is well positioned in current explorations of intersectionality…a necessary read for any serious student and scholar of Latinidad.”
Ethnic and Racial Studies
Crossing Waters: Undocumented Migration in Hispanophone Caribbean and Latinx Literature & Art
By Marisel C. Moreno
2023 Honorable Mention, Isis Duarte Book Prize, Haiti/ Dominican Republic section (LASA)
“A momentous contribution that expands the field of Latinx Studies into Caribbean water and land. It opens many crucial and fruitful avenues of consideration for the overlooked study of the travails of Caribbean undocumented migration.”
A Contracorriente
Reading, Writing, and Revolution
Escuelitas and the Emergence of a Mexican American Identity in Texas
By Philis Barragán Goetz
Tejas Foco Non-fiction Book Award, National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies
2021 Tejano Book Prize, Tejano Genealogy Society of Austin
2021 Jim Parish Award for Documentation and Publication of Local and Regional History, Webb County Heritage Foundation
2022 National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Book Award
2021 Runner-up, Ramirez Family Award for Most Significant Scholarly Book
“A fascinating history…Barragán Goetz does an excellent job of documenting the existence of escuelitas in the context of public school development, Mexican nation-building pressures, and Mexican-origin community developments…this book is a major contribution to the historiography of Mexican American education in the United States and lays the groundwork for additional work on the origins and development of community-based schooling in Chicanx history.”
Southwestern Historical Quarterly
Fatherhood in the Borderlands: A Daughter’s Slow Approach
By Domino Renee Perez
2023 Finalist Best Academic Themed Book, College Level – English, International Latino Book Awards
“Fatherhood in the Borderlands is a true joy to read—a page turner! The autoethnographic, epistemic, and creative space of the author’s storytelling; the theorizing; and the deep and engaged readings of key film and literary texts in the Chicanx borderlands pantheon of creative/cultural production are all beautifully realized. Perez’s book will be a huge hit.”
Arturo J. Aldama, author of Disrupting Savagism: Intersecting Chicana/o, Mexican Immigrant, and Native American Struggles for Representation
Civil Rights in Black and Brown: Histories of Resistance and Struggle in Texas
Edited by Max Krochmal and Todd Moye
2022 Best Book Award, Oral History Association
“The oral historians on this project covered twenty urban and rural locations throughout Texas, and in doing so, have enriched the historical record in a way that should pay off for generations to come…this book is a praiseworthy testament to the power and usefulness of oral history, not only for the sake of new scholarship itself, but also to the communities served. Civil Rights in Black and Brown documents a model oral history project that many of us will benefit from for years to come.”
Oral History Review
Brown Trans Figurations: Rethinking Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Chicanx/Latinx Studies
By Francisco J. Galarte
Honorable Mention for the National Women’s Studies Association’s 2021 Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize
2021 Finalist Best LGBTQ+ Themed Book, International Latino Book Awards
2022 John Leo & Dana Heller Award for Best Single Work, Anthology, Multi-Authored, or Edited Book in LGBTQ Studies, Popular Culture Association
2022 AAHHE Book of the Year Award, American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education
“Brown Trans Figurations is an extremely well-written and groundbreaking book, accessible yet simultaneously quite complex, in Latina/o/x studies. It will be required reading in queer, trans, women’s, gender, and sexuality studies and in American studies and ethnic studies classrooms . . . Brown Trans Figurations is crucial reading for persons interested in the differences between queer and trans Latinx experience, the tensions between Chicana feminism and transgender and transsexual lives, and the racism that infects dominant representations of trans and queer Chicanxs and Latinxs . . . Galarte’s theorization of brown trans fgurations transforms Latina/o studies in profound ways.”
Latino Studies
¡Viva George! Celebrating Washington’s Birthday at the US-Mexico Border
By Elaine A. Peña
2021 Jim Parish Award for Documentation and Publication of Local and Regional History, Webb County Heritage Foundation
“A much-needed academic analysis of the history and meaning of the binational celebration of George Washington’s birthday…Are the cross-border cooperation strategies inspired by Washington’s birthday celebrations a solution to immigration restrictions or are they a sophisticated articulation of a longer history of exclusion on the border? This book provokes these and other important questions.”
Southwestern Historical Quarterly
Quinceañera Style: Social Belonging and Latinx Consumer Identities
By Rachel Valentina González
Winner of the Emily Toth Award for Best Single Work in Women’s Studies, Popular Culture Association
Co-winner of the Elli Kongas Maranda Prize, Women’s Section of the American Folklore Society (AFS)
“No prior scholarly approach to [the quinceañera] compares with Rachel Valentina González’s brilliant analysis…Quinceañera Style delivers on its promise to bring out an analysis for the twenty-first century of an established yet ever-evolving tradition in the Americas…In more ways than one, Quinceañera Style articulates the underlying reasons why families would spend beyond their means to honor their daughter’s transition from childhood to adulthood.”
Journal of Folklore Research
The Politics of Patronage: Lawyers, Philanthropy, and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
By Benjamin Márquez
Co-winner, Latino Politics Best Book Award, American Political Science Association
“The Politics of Patronage is a groundbreaking source for scholars of Mexican American civil rights and legal history…Marquez’s book successfully inserts MALDEF into the historical cannon alongside other important civil rights groups of the twentieth century, where it rightfully belongs.”
Western Historical Quarterly
Managed Migrations: Growers, Farmworkers, and Border Enforcement in the Twentieth Century
By Cristina Salinas
2020 National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS) Book Award Winner
Honorable Mention, Ramirez Family Award for Most Significant Scholarly Book, Texas Institute of Letters, 2019
“Managed Migrations provides a grounded history of Texas agribusiness in El Paso and the Rio Grande valley, and of its relationship to undocumented Mexican immigration and border enforcement . . . Managed Migrations will be deeply useful to historians of the U.S.-Mexico border and twentieth-century U.S. agribusiness and immigration. It will also be of value to anyone interested in the contemporary U.S.-Mexico borderlands–where border enforcement continues to manage labor and shape national politics.”
Journal of American History
