Top of page

Category: Hispanic and Latino

Black and white photo is a street photo of a protest with rows of marchers looking towards the camera. Signs in Spanish protest the Vietnam War.

Raúl Ruiz, La Raza Collection Lands at the Library

Posted by: Neely Tucker

Journalist, photographer and activist Raúl Ruiz was a driving force at La Raza, the newspaper and magazine devoted to the Chicano movement in the 1960s and '70s. The Library announced today that it has acquired his collection, some 17,500 photos by Ruiz and original page layouts for La Raza. It also has nearly 10,000 pages of manuscripts, which include original correspondence, the unpublished draft of Ruiz’s book on Los Angeles Times journalist Ruben Salazar and handwritten minutes from the staff meetings of La Raza. It's a major addition to the Library's holdings in modern Hispanic culture.

Medium distance photo of Ada Limon on stage behind a plexiglass podium, smiling broadly.

Ada Limón’s Final Lecture as Poet Laureate: “You have to love.”

Posted by: Maria Peña

U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón's final lecture last week in the Coolidge Auditorium was a love letter to poetry to libraries and librarians. Her lecture, titled “Against Breaking: On the Public and Private Power of Poetry,” framed poetry as a shared, not solitary, experience and as a celebration of humanity’s range of voices and perspectives.

A midcentury hardcover cookbook, showing caricatures of a dancing man and woman in colorful holiday attire

Historical Holiday Cookbooks … Did We Really Eat This Stuff? (Yes)

Posted by: Neely Tucker

Holidays are often defined by the foods cooked up in the kitchen, although those foods and how they're prepared change over time. Among the Library's collection of more than 40,000 cookbooks are plenty devoted to the craft of preparing those special occasion meals. But what might have been a great Thanksgiving dinner in 1920 certainly looked different than one in 1965, and Christmas foods are always changing. Different cultures have unique traditions for each holiday, making for an ever-evolving American smorgasbord.

Wide shot of a rocket lifting off, with clouds of smoke and fire at its base, headed into a crystal blue sky.

NASA and the Library Send Poetry into Space

Posted by: Brett Zongker

NASA's Europa Clipper has set sail for a moon of Jupiter to explore the possibilies of life. Launced last week, the craft carries a metal vault plate inscribed with the poem “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa,” by Ada Limón, the national poet laureate. NASA, Limón and the Library invited people worldwide to sign on to the poem and send their names to space with it on a microchip. More than 2.6 million people did so. Their names, alongside the poem, are aboard the Clipper for a six year journey to Europa.

Movie poster for "El Norte," with an illustration of young man and woman at bottom, framed by a silhouette of a bird opening its wings into a blue sky overhead

Finding Latinos in Film

Posted by: Maria Peña

In his epic “El Norte,” award-winning filmmaker Gregory Nava charted the tragic journey of siblings Enrique and Rosa from Guatemala to Los Angeles in pursuit of the American dream. The 1983 film was inducted into the Library's National Film Registry in 1995 and still resonate in this Hispanic Heritage Month, two decades into a new century. It's one of the highlights of the Library's work in preserving Latino films.

Wide shot of a woman looking up at a giant Redwood tree. The photo only shows the base of the tree, which is nearly 75 feet in circumference.

Ada Limón & Poetry in the National Parks!

Posted by: Neely Tucker

U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón kicked off her "You Are Here: Poetry in the Parks" project at several National Parks around the country this summer, from Cape Cod to California. With installations in the parks, she's hoping to showcase "the ways reading and writing poetry can situate us in the natural world." Her tour continues in October at Florida's Everglades National Park and at Arizona's Saguaro National Park in December.

Half length photo of a smiling man with arms crossed, wearing a V-neck shirt.

Catching a “Curveball” with Pablo Cartaya

Posted by: April Slayton

Pablo Cartaya’s novels touch on themes of family, culture and community, so it was no surprise when my 11-year-old daughter connected with the young characters of his latest book, “Curveball.” This weekend at the National Book Festival, Cartaya will be talking about "Curveball" and reading from an earlier book, "Tina Cocolina: Queen of the Cupcakes." In this piece, he answered a few of our most pressing questions.