Supporting Latinx/e/a/o Communities

Many Latinx/e/a/o people within the U.S. today are thriving members of their local community, and nonetheless face daily discrimination informed by long-held resentments, misinformation, and racism.

Whether you seek ways to actively support Latinx/e/a/o friends, neighbors, or colleagues, or you identify as Latinx/e/a/o and seek educational resources, support, or wish to report a bias incident, we all play a part in supporting Latinx/e/a/o communities.

The resources below were compiled in partnership with students, faculty and staff from across the University for you to use in your exploration of this critical issue and the development of skills to combat Latinx/e/a/o racism. Requests to add additional items can be sent to [email protected]. 

The resources below include off-campus resources that Columbia is neither affiliated with nor explicitly endorses. This list is intended only to inform our community of available resources.

BOOKS

The books listed below are only a small sample of books available from Columbia Libraries on this topic. Please consult with a Columbia reference librarian for additional resources.

Book descriptions are visible when hovering over book covers.

Book cover for The Afro-Latin@ Reader
The Afro-Latin@ Reader focuses attention on a large, vibrant, yet oddly invisible community in the United States: people of African descent from Latin America and the Caribbean. (Image courtesy of Duke University Press)
The Afro-Latin@ Reader

edited by Miriam Jiménez Román and Juan Flores

Book cover for American Like Me
America Ferrera has always felt wholly American, and yet, her identity is inextricably linked to her parents’ homeland and Honduran culture. Speaking Spanish at home, having Saturday-morning-salsa-dance-parties in the kitchen, and eating tamales alongside apple pie at Christmas never seemed at odds with her American identity. Now, in American Like Me, America invites thirty-one of her friends, peers, and heroes to share their stories about life between cultures. We know them as actors, comedians, athletes, politicians, artists, and writers. However, they are also immigrants, children or grandchildren of immigrants, indigenous people, or people who otherwise grew up with deep and personal connections to more than one culture. Each of them struggled to establish a sense of self, find belonging, and feel seen. And they call themselves American enthusiastically, reluctantly, or not at all.
American Like Me: Reflections on Life Between Cultures

by America Ferrera

Book cover for The Chicana/o/x Dream
Based on interview data, life testimonios, and Chicana feminist theories, The Chicana/o/x Dream profiles first-generation, Mexican-descent college students who have overcome adversity by utilizing various forms of cultural capital to power their academic success
The Chicana/o/x Dream

by Gilberto Q. Conchas, Nancy Acevedo

Book cover for Debating Race, Ethnicity, and Latino Identity
The philosopher Jorge J. E. Gracia engages fifteen prominent scholars on race, ethnicity, nationality, and Hispanic/Latino identity in the United States. Their discussion joins two distinct traditions: the philosophy of race begun by African Americans in the nineteenth century, and the search for an understanding of identity initiated by Latin American philosophers in the sixteenth century. Participants include Linda M. Alcoff, K. Anthony Appiah, Richard J. Bernstein, Lawrence Blum, Robert Gooding-Williams, Eduardo Mendieta, and Lucius T. Outlaw Jr., and their dialogue reflects the analytic, Aristotelian, Continental, literary, Marxist, and pragmatic schools of thought.
Debating Race, Ethnicity, and Latino Identity

edited by Iván Jaksić

Book cover for The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader
This reader—which provides a representative sample of the poetry, prose, fiction, and experimental autobiographical writing that Anzaldúa produced during her thirty-year career—demonstrates the breadth and philosophical depth of her work. (Image courtesy of Duke University Press)
The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader

by Gloria Anzaldúa

Book cover for Hispanic New York: A Sourcebook
Hispanic New York is the first anthology to offer a comprehensive view of this multifaceted heritage. Combining familiar materials with other selections that are either out of print or not easily accessible, Claudio Iván Remeseira makes a compelling case for New York as a paradigm of the country's Latinoization. (Image courtesy of Columbia University Press)
Hispanic New York: A Sourcebook

edited by Claudio Iván Remeseira

Book cover for Inventing Latinos
In an unprecedented demographic shift, Latinos will comprise a third of the American population in just a matter of decades. While their influence shapes everything from electoral politics to popular culture, many Americans still struggle with two basic questions: Who are Latinos, and where do they fit in America's racial order? Laura E. Gómez, a leading expert on race in America, argues that it is only recently that Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, Central Americans, and others are seeing themselves (and are being seen by others) under the banner of a cohesive racial identity. And the catalyst for this emergent identity, she argues, has been the ferocity of anti-Latino racism. Part history, part guide for the future, Inventing Latinos argues that all Americans must grapple with Latinos' dynamic identity--an identity that is impacting everything we think we know about race in America.
Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism

by Laura E. Gómez

Book cover for The Latino/a Condition: A Critical Reader
The second edition of The Latino/a Condition brings together a wide range of new and classic Latino and Latina voices from the fields of law, sociology, history, media studies. Collecting a wealth of perspectives on the issues central to the Latino/a experience, Delgado and Stefancic offer a broad portrait of Latino/a life in the United States at the beginning of the twenty-first century. (Image courtesy of New York University Press)
The Latino/a Condition: A Critical Reader

edited by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic

Book cover for Latinx: The New Force in American Politics and Culture
In this groundbreaking discussion, Ed Morales explains how Latin political identities are tied to a long Latin American history of mestizaje, translatable as "mixedness" or "hybridity", and that this border thinking is both a key to understanding bilingual, bicultural Latin cultures and politics and a challenge to America's infamously black/white racial regime.
Latinx: The New Force in American Politics and Culture

by Ed Morales

Book cover for Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American
Cristina Mora uses an organizational lens and traces how activists, bureaucrats, and media executives in the 1970s and '80s created a new identity category—and by doing so, permanently changed the racial and political landscape of the nation. (Image courtesy of University of Chicago Press)
Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American

by Cristina Mora

Book cover for The Making of a Dream: How a Group of Young Undocumented Immigrants Helped Change What It Means to Be American
A journalist chronicles the next chapter in civil rights--the story of a movement and a nation, witnessed through the poignant and inspiring experiences of five young undocumented activists who are transforming society's attitudes toward one of the most contentious political matters roiling America today: immigration. (Image courtesy of HarperCollins)
The Making of a Dream: How a Group of Young Undocumented Immigrants Helped Change What It Means to Be American

by Laura Wides-Muñoz

Book cover for Understanding the Latinx Experience
The Latino presence continues to grow in traditional population enclaves and has tripled in areas that are not traditionally associated with this pan-ethnic group. The dramatic growth of this population in the U.S. requires a considerably deeper understanding of individuals that share this multifaceted identity. This timely book synthesizes new research and its implications for practice that is critical for professionals working with Latinos in educational and counseling contexts.
Understanding the Latinx Experience

by Vasti Torres, Ebelia Hernandez, and Sylvia Martinez

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