Here at Latinas in Business we love supporting our fellow Latinas and we also love a good book! If you’re looking for a new read and enjoy Latina poetry then we have a list of must-reads we think you’ll love. Whether you’re looking for some romantic love poems, poems about Latina identity and womanhood, or self-love poetry, you’re sure to find something to love with these five poetry books by Latinas.
5 Must-read poetry books by Latinas
Déjame Contarte Lo Que Dice El Corazón by Paloma Alcantar
Synopsis:
This book is a walk through the different nuances of love. Each sentence written here is a mental note for the author, and for any heart willing to accept them. In them you will discover the fragility of life, and that sometimes it is essential to break everything to see clarity from another perspective. I wish that from the hand of poetry, you reconcile with your heart and open the door to this energy in all its forms.
Paloma Alcantar is a Mexican writer, author and poet living in Atlanta, Georgia. She is currently a content creator for the organizations Women’s Economic Empowerment Global Life, and Alquimia Global for Human Rights. Most recently she has studied various personal development topics as part of her own growth process.
Corazón by Yesika Salgado
Synopsis:
Corazón is a love story. It is about the constant hunger for love. It is about feeding that hunger with another person and finding that sometimes it isn’t enough. Salgado creates a world in which the heart can live anywhere; her fat brown body, her parents home country, a lover, a toothbrush, a mango, or a song. It is a celebration of heartache, of how it can ruin us, but most importantly how we always survive it and return to ourselves whole.
Yesika Salgado is a Los Angeles based Salvadoran poet who writes about her family, her culture, her city, and her fat brown body. She has shared her work in venues and campuses throughout the country. Salgado is a two time National Poetry Slam finalist and the recipient of the 2020 International Latino Book Award in Poetry. She is an internationally recognized body-positive activist and the writer of the column Suelta for Remezcla. Yesika is also the co-founder of Chingona Fire, a poetry collective based on highlighting Latina feminist poets.
Mujer de Color(es): A Poetic Experience by Alejandra Jimenez
Synopsis:
Concocted into a short collection of poems, lyrical essays, prayers, and portraits, Mujer de Color(es): A Poetic Experience is—an ode to imperfections, an ode to the divinity within the mundane, an ode to our metamorphic culturas, an ode to the reverberant voices of brown women and femmes.
It is the act of looking at your fears straight in the face and honoring them for trying to protect you but surrendering them to achieve growth. It is a reclamation of our feminine strengths: nurturing, resilience, sexuality, creativity, spirituality, and so many more. It is one path, of a billion, towards healing one person and, through it, the collective feminine consciousness; Y, esto es solo el principio.
Alejandra Jimenez, otherwise Aleja, is a self-identifying queer chicanx poeta. Aleja is the first-born, of 5 children, of two Mexican-Immigrant parents, from Zacatecas and Jalisco, MX. She grew up in Santa Ana, CA and later in the Inland Empire, epicenters of Latinx communities, as well as frequently visiting her parents’ native country, Mexico. Aleja’s writing is highly influenced by a desire to become the representation of her people, her culture, and herself she did not see growing up.
My Wicked, Wicked Ways by by Sandra Cisneros
Synopsis:
A collection of poetry by the author of The House on Mango Street attests to the author’s original passion and reveals her talent for employing the precision and musicality of language in verse both comic and sad.
Publishers Weekly said, “This collection reveals the same affinity for distilled phrasing and surprise, both in language and dramatic development, found in Cisneros’s volumes of short stories, Woman Hollering Creek and The House on Mango Street. Of the book’s four parts, the first two immerse the reader in the Chicana homefront, including the poet’s own place in it, presumably the San Antonio familiar from her prose work. The remaining two parts leave the barrio behind, as the author’s world becomes more cosmopolitan and still more personal.”
Sandra Cisneros is a poet, short story writer, novelist, essayist, performer, and artist. In addition to her writing, she has fostered the careers of many aspiring and emerging writers through two nonprofits she founded: the Macondo Foundation and the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation. As a single woman she made the choice to have books instead of children. A citizen of both the United States and Mexico, she currently lives in San Miguel de Allende.
If Love Had a Name by Davina Ferreira
Synopsis:
If Love Had a Name is a collection of poems centered around self-love & womanhood. It is a lyrical whirlwind of self-love, independence, and the courage a woman needs to explore the world without a partner holding her hand and leading her through it. Ferreira has gathered up every ounce of womanly pride necessary to stand on her two strong feet and placed it here between these pages.
Davina Ferreira is a bilingual poet, social entrepreneur, author, speaker, and founder of Alegría Bilingual Media. Davina was born in Miami but grew up in Colombia. She is the quintessential symbol of the immigrant’s American Dream. Upon arriving in the U.S. Ferreira attended college, receiving a B.A. in Fine Arts and worked as an actress with the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts. Later on, she began a career in journalism, which led her to launch ALEGRÍA Magazine.
Her book, Finding My ALEGRIA is an inspirational memoir, which she hopes will motivate young entrepreneurs around the world to pursue their dreams regardless of their circumstances.
We hope this list of poetry books by Latinas sparked some inspiration for your next read.
