Latino Families

The Ramirez women of Staten Island orbit around absence. When thirteen‑year‑old middle child Ruthy disappeared after track practice without a trace, it left the family scarred and scrambling. One night, twelve years later, oldest sister Jessica spots a woman on her TV screen in Catfight, a raunchy reality show. She rushes to tell her younger sister, Nina: This woman's hair is dyed red, and she calls herself Ruby, but the beauty mark under her left eye is instantly recognizable. Could it be Ruthy, after all this time?

Born into a large, close-knit family in Nicaragua, Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez grew up surrounded by strong, kind, funny, sensitive, resilient, judgmental, messy, beautiful women. Whether blood relatives or chosen family, these tías and primas fundamentally shaped her view of the world—and so did the labels that were used to talk about them. The tía loca who is shunned for defying gender roles. The pretty prima put on a pedestal for her European features. The matriarch who is the core of her community but hides all her pain.

In his final days, beloved and ailing patriarch Miguel Angel de La Cruz, affectionately called Big Angel, has summoned his entire clan for one last legendary birthday party. But as the party approaches, his mother, nearly 100, dies herself, leading to a farewell doubleheader in a single weekend. Among the guests is Big Angel's half-brother, known as Little Angel, who must reckon with the truth that although he shares a father with his siblings, he has not, as a half gringo, shared a life. Across two bittersweet days in their San Diego neighborhood, the revelers mingle.

Seven-year-old Chula and her older sister, Cassandra, enjoy carefree lives thanks to their gated community in Bogotá, but the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside the neighborhood walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities and capture the attention of the nation. When their mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city's guerrilla-occupied slum, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona's mysterious ways.

More than anything, Jasmin wants to gain her mother’s love and trust, but first she must unravel family secrets When the chilling truth comes out, Jasmin’s world is forever changed! A child prodigy, with dreams of flying her homemade spaceship into the galaxy, uncovers explosive family secrets. An intriguing story of an extraordinary child, family dynamics, and complicated relationships. A disengaged mother demands the child confront challenges she never imagined. Can she overcome them? A doting grandfather encourages Jasmin’s genius, causing friction between her and her disengaged ...

When Cara stumbles across a stash of old postcards in the attic, their contents make her question everything she thought she knew. The story she pieces together is confusing and unsettling, and appears to have been patched over with lies. But who can tell her the truth? With her father sinking into Alzheimer’s and her brother reluctant to help, it seems Cara will never find the answers to her questions. One thing is clear, though: someone knows more than they’re letting on.

The four Grace sisters love their quiet life in the country village of Chevis Green. To some, their insular world might seem dull, but the sisters never seem to run out of conversation, jokes, and pleasant ways to pass the time together. They truly are the happiest of families. That is, until Aunt Rona comes to town. Rona intends to stay with the Graces indefinitely, and her meddlesome attitude immediately sets the sisters' teeth on edge. Throw in another unexpected houseguest, some potential suitors and a case of mistaken intentions, and the members of the Grace family suddenly find themselves quite out of their element.

Belén Dolores Itzel del Toro wants the normal stuff: to experience love or maybe have a boyfriend or at least just lose her virginity. But nothing is normal in East Oakland. Her father left her family. She’s at risk of not graduating. And Leti, her super-Catholic, nerdy-ass best friend, is pregnant—by the boyfriend she hasn’t told her parents about, because he’s Black, and her parents are racist.

Cuando Eufrasia Vela empieza a trabajar como cuidadora de ancianos, no sospecha que su oficio la llevará a una encrucijada existencial. La íntima relación que mantiene con doña Carmen, el doctor Harrison y Los Siete Magníficos —entrañables personajes que se apoderan de su pensamiento y su cariño— la obliga a replantearse su papel de madre y hermana, las vicisitudes de la longevidad, las formas de la compasión y el sorpresivo valor que los cuyes, esos conejillos de Indias tan peculiares, adquieren en su presupuesto moral.

Years ago, Saint walked away from the girl he loved to fulfill his duty. Now he’s struggling to build bridges between his drifting family, take on more responsibilities at his uncle’s construction company, figure out why his daughter refuses to talk at school and curtail his mischievous abuelo’s escalating pranks. Then she walks back into his life.

When his father falls ill, Andrés, a professor of public health, returns to his suburban hometown to tend to his father's recovery. Reevaluating his rocky marriage in the wake of his husband’s infidelity and with little else to do, he decides to attend his 20-year high school reunion, where he runs into the long-lost characters of his youth.

It's Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and 33-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his 15-year-old daughter, Angel, shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans for personal redemption. With weeks to go until her due date, tough, ebullient Angel has fled her mother's house, setting her life on a startling new path.

Antonia Vega, the immigrant writer at the center of Afterlife, has had the rug pulled out from under her. She has just retired from the college where she taught English when her beloved husband, Sam, suddenly dies. And then more jolts: her bighearted but unstable sister disappears, and Antonia returns home one evening to find a pregnant, undocumented teenager on her doorstep.

Three brothers tear their way through childhood—smashing tomatoes all over each other, building kites from trash, hiding out when their parents do battle, tiptoeing around the house as their mother sleeps off her graveyard shift. Paps and Ma are from Brooklyn—he’s Puerto Rican, she’s white—and their love is a serious, dangerous thing that makes and unmakes a family many times.

Highwire Moon narrates the journeys of a young mother and daughter divided. Serafina is a Mexican-Indian scraping by in Southern California; detained by immigration officials, she tragically lacks the English to tell them that Elvia, her three-year-old, is resting in a nearby car. After her deportation, Serafina tries in vain to return to the States, while Elvia must survive several foster homes, later to be reclaimed by her father. By the time Elvia is fifteen, she’s pregnant and surrounded by drugs.

Soy Maya Vidal, diecinueve años, sexo femenino, soltera, sin un enamorado, por falta de oportunidades y no por quisquillosa, nacida en Berkeley, California, pasaporte estadounidense, temporalmente refugiada en una isla al sur del mundo. Me pusieron Maya porque a mi Nini le atrae la India y a mis padres no se les ocurrió otro nombre, aunque tuvieron nueve meses para pensarlo.

Ernesto Vega has lived many lives, from pig farmer to construction worker to famed luchador El Rey Coyote, yet he has always worn a mask. He was discovered by a local lucha libre trainer at a time when luchadores—Mexican wrestlers donning flamboyant masks and capes—were treated as daredevils or rock stars. Ernesto found fame, rapidly gaining name rec­ognition across Mexico, but at great expense, nearly costing him his marriage to his wife Elena.

Miraflores never knew her father, and never thought he wanted to know her. But when she returns to the Chicago suburb where she grew up to care for her ailing mother, she discovers that her mother and father were greatly in love, and that her father had wanted a daughter more than she could have imagined. Now, Miraflores secretly plots a trip to Panama, in search of the man she hopes can heal her mother-and who can help her find the pieces of her own identity. What she finds is unexpected, exhilarating, and holds the power to change the course of her life.

In Tome, a small, seemingly sleepy New Mexico hamlet, Sofia and her four fated daughters reveal a world of marvels where the comic and horrific, past and present, real and fantastic coexist and collide. Over two crowded decades, Sofia tries to hold things together following the disappearance of her husband, Domingo, he of the Clark Gable mustache and the uncontrollable gambling habit. Adventurous Esperanza, Chicana campus radical turned television news reporter, travels farthest from home only to be reeled back in spirit.

When Nick’s wife Kerry falls ill and dies, he realises for the first time how fragile his happiness has always been, and how much he’s been taking his good life and wonderful family for granted. Now, he suddenly finds himself navigating parenthood alone, unsure how to deal with his own grief, let alone that of his teenage son, Olly.