I'm looking for advice on Hispanic lit. Most of my students are Hispanic, and I want to make sure that there's a good proportion of Hispanic authors and poets available.

I may not teach them all, but I also feel like I should have a good background in Hispanic lit, just to be well-versed in making suggestions, etc.

Thanks!

What age-group, Erin?

Erin, I know an English teacher friend of mine taught >The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros.

9th and 10th grade.

I've read "House on Mango Street" and all of Isabell Allende's books, except the new Zorro, which I'm going to get as soon as I have some free income. I've read "1000 Years of Solitude" and "Like Water for Chocolate" and I love, love, love Neruda.

Oh, and "Time of the Butterflies" by Julia Alvarez.

But that's my extent of Hispanic Lit.

Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold is excellent, and not too long or heavy for adolescents. [link]

This is non-fic, but a very interesting look at a fascinating woman from 17th century Mexico. [link]

I'm looking for advice on Hispanic lit.

First you need to decide what you mean by Hispanic: Spanish language? Spanish language diaspora? Latin America? Central America/Caribbean? Hispanic American immigrants & their descendants? If something is written in English by an American is the subject matter enough to make it Hispanic? I'll even give a complicated suggestion which points up some of the problems: Los Bros Hernandez' Love and Rockets series. I don't think there's much doubt that it rises to the level of literature, but while Gilbert's Palomar stories are an easy sell as Hispanic, what about Jaime's Hopey and Maggie stories? They are Latinas (Esperanza and Margarita) living in Southern California.

I read Moby-Dick as a junior in high school and haven't read it since. Perhaps it's a book that just doesn't do well when the only time you read it is in high school?

Perhaps it's a book that just doesn't do well when the only time you read it is in high school?

Probably true unless it grabbed you immediately or you were lucky enough to have a teacher (or someone) tell you, "No, it's not you, the book is really really weird. You may not be getting it, but even if you are it's still weird. 30 pages of whale-related quotations, a narrative that stops and starts for the first 500 pages, lots of arcane digressions, more hoyay! than you can shake your Angel DVDs at, Melville's peculiar sense of humor, formal experiments. Some people find all that too off-putting, but if you stick with it and take it on its terms, get into its rhythms, it's pretty great. Odd, but great."

Jim, this may interest you.

Moby Dick is up there with Ulysses in the category of "Books Required for College Classes that I Suffered Through." But, they are both trumped by Fielding's Tom Jones, which is the only one in the category of "Books I Dropped the Class Rather Than Read."