I couldnвЂ™t think straight except about, like, how do I survive? But here in South Texas itвЂ™s like five to 10 minutes from work, closer to nature, a different quality of life. I didnвЂ™t know I was going to be poet, to be part of something literary. In Los Angeles, he says, вЂњIвЂ™d been working all the time, stuck in traffic, and when I had a spare minute, I was catching up with life, going to a movie, out for drink. When he moved there in 2000 to join her and her familyвЂ™s barbecue business, he found that life suddenly slowed down. In the meantime, he was working himself up from busboy to restaurant manager to make ends meet.Д«ut what led him to writing and publishing poetry was another kind of falling in love, the online relationship he developed with Liliana RamГrez in San Benito, Texas, about five miles from the US-Mexico border along the Rio Grande. Eventually he discovered that both Wright and Rodriguez had written poetry, which led him to Neruda and GarcГa Lorca and more.

He saw other people reading on the bus and found it was the best way to pass the time - sometimes missing his stop and finding himself in Santa Monica, having to double back. VidaurreвЂ™s new love affair with reading got a boost when, after high school, he went to work in the restaurant industry, commuting two hours by bus from Boyle Heights to Beverly Hills. вЂњIt was all about the hood - for me, growing up in the Aliso Village projects, here was something I could relate to.вЂќ That led him to Richard Wright and other African American authors, then to Luis RodriguezвЂ™s memoir Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. That began to change when he complained to a teacher about finding ShakespeareвЂ™s language incomprehensible and she gave him a copy of Claude BrownвЂ™s 1965 autobiographical novel, Manchild in the Promised Land. вЂњPoetry,вЂќ he recalls, вЂњwas all written by dead people, as far as I could tell.вЂќ Meanwhile, he was an indifferent student, вЂњmore of a troublemakerвЂќ as he says, in part because what was presented in school seemed to have little to do with him. He also copied pages from the dictionary. He copied his favorite song lyrics, taking note of the songwriters at least as much as the singers, researching who else they had written for. Not creative writing, just the act of writing things down to reread them in his own script. He didnвЂ™t think of them as poetry he just liked how compressed and evocative they were. Back home, he read Hallmark cards in stores. Edward got hooked on Mafalda, an Argentine comic strip written and drawn by the cartoonist Quino. His uncle specialized in textbooks for university students, but he also sold comics. While growing up in Boyle Heights in a mixed Salvadoran Mexican family, he sometimes spent summers hanging out at his uncleвЂ™s bookstore in Santa Ana, El Salvador. But there are so many emerging Hispanic authors and newly-released Latinx books that are lesser known and should be on your radar, too.EDWARD VIDAURRE IS a poet and publisher transplanted from East L.A. Trailblazing authors such as Sandra Cisneros, Paulo Coelho, and Gabriel GarcГa MГЎrquez may not be here, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't read their work-you absolutely should. These are the kinds of books youвЂ™ll find on the list below.

Latinx readers have made it even easier to find these authors through their dedicated Instagrams and YouTube channels of recommendations. But in 2020 alone, Hispanic and Latinx authors have released some of the most talked about (not to mention award-winning) books, including Once I Was You by Maria Hinojosa, Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas, and Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo. So, yeah, itвЂ™s very much a work in progress. ThatвЂ™s not to say the publishing problem has been solved-only six percent of editors identify as Latinx/Latino/Mexican, according to the 2019 Diversity in Publishing Survey conducted by Lee & Low Books.

Now, a new light is shining on these talented authors that havenвЂ™t been as widely recognized. After years of (what seems like) only a few Latinx books finding their way into the mainstream-due in large part to the mostly white gatekeepers across the publishing industry-it feels like the tide has started to turn. It couldnвЂ™t be a more exciting time for Hispanic and Latinx authors.

Epic books in spanish