The Penguin Book of Latina Writings

A collection of essential writings by Latinas from the 1900s to 1960 that documents the undeniable presence of the Latina community in the United States and stands as a testament to the dismissal and erasure of their intellectual and feminist contributions to the nation
A Penguin Classic

The first book of its kind, The Penguin Book of Latina Writings shines a light on a robust community of U.S.-based Latina voices that have been historically overlooked and underrepresented in literature, and demonstrates the valuable contributions Latina writers have made to the literary and intellectual community. The curated selections in this unique anthology elucidate U.S. Latina writers’ intersectionality and give readers an understanding of the various positions they are writing to and from. In addition to providing valuable information about their individual time periods, these documents show instances where the silencing or policing of women’s writing often led writers to resort to the use of pseudonyms in order to publish their work. While some authors’ publications are scarce, they represent essential voices responding to issues that impacted women, children, and Latine communities at large, including feminism, workers’ rights, colonialism, racism, exile, immigration, citizenship, and religion. The writers featured are public intellectuals, educators, feminists, poets, editors, and homemakers who produced a variety of published and unpublished manuscripts, editorials, poetry, recipes, correspondence, performances, and historical documents accessed through Arte Público Press’s Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage program archives.

Carolina A. Villarroel is the Brown Foundation Director of the Research of the Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage, a national program whose goal is to identify, preserve, study and make accessible the written production of Latinos/as in the United States from the colonial period until 1960. She is a co-founder and co-director of the U.S. Latino Digital Humanities Center at the University of Houston.

Gabriela Baeza Ventura is associate professor of Spanish with a specialization in U.S. Latinx literature in the Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of Houston. She is the executive editor of Arte Público Press and a co-founder and co-director of the U.S. Latino Digital Humanities Center.