Hispanic Heritage Month

Recommended Books, TV Shows & Films

What To Read

What To Watch

100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colombia) Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (Spain) The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende (Chile) Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel (Mexico) The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo (Brazil)

Resources

National Hispanic Heritage Month is celebrated each year on September 15 through October 15 and is an opportunity to honor and celebrate the culture, history, diversity, influence and endless contributions of Hispanic & Latinx Americans in the U.S. & of past generations who came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central & South America.

What is Hispanic Heritage Month?

Notable Hispanic/Latinx Figures in History

Co-founder of the United Farm Workers Association Co-founder of the United Farm Workers Association, Dolores Clara Fernandez Huerta is one of the most influential labor activists of the 20th century and a leader of the Chicano civil rights movement. Born on April 10, 1930 in Dawson, New Mexico, Huerta was the second of three children of Alicia and Juan Fernandez, a farm worker and miner who became a state legislator in 1938. In 1962, Huerta and Chávez founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), the predecessor of the United Farm Workers’ Union (UFW), which formed three year later. Huerta served as UFW vice president until 1999. Huerta is the originator of the phrase, "Sí, se puede". As a role model to many in the Latino community, Huerta is the subject of many corridos (Mexican or Mexican-American ballads) and murals. In California, April 10 is Dolores Huerta Day.

Dolores Huerta

Actress The proud queer Afro-Latina (Puerto Rican descent) actress becomes an Oscar winner! The singer and actor won in the category of Best Supporting Actress for her role as Anita in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story. After winning, she makes history as the first Afro-Latina with an Academy Award and the second Latina to ever receive the Oscar statuette.

Ariana DeBose

Fashion Icon / Entrepreneur / Philanthropist A Dominican fashion designer whose work, blended European luxury with American ease, helped define standards of elegant dressing among socialites, U.S. First Ladies, and red-carpet celebrities during a career that spanned some 50 years. He is perhaps best known for his evening wear and suits for women, which over the years became wardrobe staples for his faithful clientele of socialites and celebrities (notably actresses Amy Adams, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Penélope Cruz) and for former first ladies Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Nancy Reagan, Hillary Clinton, and Michelle Obama.

Oscar de la Renta

Documentarian / Journalist / Speaker / Author / Philanthropist Soledad O’Brien is an award-winning documentarian, journalist, speaker, author and philanthropist. She is the CEO of Soledad O’Brien Productions, a multi-platform media production company dedicated to telling empowering and authentic stories on a range of social issues and a thought leader whose public engagement garners wide attention. O’Brien has had national impact with her books and speeches, and her presence on the nation’s op-ed pages, including the New York Times and Huffington Post. She is very active on social media, particularly Twitter where she has over 1.3 million followers. Her mother, Estela Lucrecia (Marquetti y Mendieta), was a black high school teacher from Havana, Cuba, and her father, Edward Ephram O'Brien, was a white Australian, a mechanical engineer, who was of three quarters Irish and one quarter Scottish descent. Soledad has been honored by African-American, Hispanic-American, and Irish-American groups for her contributions to journalism. She studied at Smithtown High School East in St. James, N.Y., and went to Harvard, but dropped out at age 21 to become a newswriter and producer at Boston's WBZ-TV. Most recent documentaries include Black in America: The New Promised Land - Silicon Valley and Latino in America.

Soledad O’Brien

What To Listen To

Hispanic Heritage Foundation

Marly Gallardo

The Labyrinth of solitude and Other Writings by Octavio Paz (Mexico)

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (Dominican Republic)

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz (USA)

Musica Roots

Hispanic / Latin Countries

Panamá: Panamá City, San Blas (Guna Yala), Coiba Island, Bocas del Toro, Costa Rica: Guanacaste, Puerto Viejo, Arenal Volcano, Monteverde, Santa Teresa Nicaragua: San Juan Del Sur, Managua, Islets of Granada, Masaya Volcano, Laguna de Apoyo El Salvador: San Salvador, Cerro Verde National Park, Joya de Cerén Honduras: Roatán, Utila, Copan Ruinas Belize: Belize City, Ambergris Caye Ecuador: Galápagos Island, Española Island, Quito, Guayaquil Spain: Santiago de Compostela, Valencia, Seville, Barcelona, Madrid, Marbella Puerto Rico: Viejo San Juan, Flamenco Beach, Castillo San Felipe del Morro Dominican Republic: Santo Domingo, Boca Chica, Punta Cana, Cap Cana, Casa de Campo

Peru: Cusco, Lima, Machu Picchu Venezuela: Los Roques, Angel Falls, Roraima, Margarita Island Mexico: Mexico City, Tulum, Puebla, San Miguel de Allende, Cabo San Lucas, Guadalajara, Puebla, Oaxaca Colombia: Bogotá, Cartagena, Medellín Argentina: Buenos Aires, Mendoza, Iguazú Falls, Patagonia, Bariloche Chile: Santiago de Chile, The Atacama Desert, Easter Island, Valparaiso Uruguay: Montevideo, Punta del Este, Colonia del Sacramento Brazil: Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Fernando de Noronha, Florianapolis Paraguay: Asuncion, Presa de Itaipu, Monday Falls Bolivia: La Paz, Salar de Uyuni, Tiwanaku, Lake Titicaca

Viva Latino Baila Reggaeton Pop Latino Bachata Classics Bossa Nova Salsa Nation Merengue Clásico Rancheras Clásicas

Recommended Spotify Playlists

While Hispanic and Latino are sometimes used interchangeably, they have different meanings. Hispanic refers to individuals who are Spanish-speaking or have a background in a Spanish-speaking country. Latino refers to those who are from or have a background in a Latin American country. These terms encompass culture, ethnicity, and identity and are rooted in shared cultures and not racial categories. When using one of these terms to refer to a specific person, always respect their preference.

TV Shows

Movies

Learn Spanish in a Fun & Free Way

Duolingo is a game-style language learning tool that's based online. It offers a digital way to learn a whole host of new languages for students of varying ages and abilities. Duolingo comes in app form as well as being available on the Duolingo site itself. This makes it super accessible, and it can be downloaded by students onto their own devices. This kind of access, along with the ability to create game avatar characters, adds up to a great sense of ownership for students. All that helps make this more immersive and a tool that students choose to come back to.

GET STARTED WITH DUOLINGO

CHANGING Today's WORLD

Sonia Maria Sotomayor is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was nominated by President Barack Obama on May 26, 2009, and has served since August 8, 2009. Born in New York City in the borough of the Bronx, where she spent her formative years. Her parents, Juan and Celina, were both born in Puerto Rico. Juan was a factory worker, Celina a nurse. When Sonia was three, shortly after the birth of her brother, Juan, the family moved from a small apartment in the South Bronx to the Bronxdale Homes, a public housing project. In 2013, her autobiography, My Beloved World, received excellent reviews and became a bestseller in both English and Spanish-language editions.

Sonia Sotomayor

Born in 1950 in San José, Costa Rica. Díaz became the first Hispanic astronaut when NASA selected him in 1980. A mechanical engineer, physicist and former NASA astronaut. He is the sole founder and CEO of Ad Astra Rocket Company as well as a member of Cummins' board of directors. He became an American citizen in 1977.

Chang Díaz

Meet Luis von Ahn the 43 year old Guatemalan entrepreneur and a consulting professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is known as one of the pioneers of crowdsourcing. Think back to when you last signed up for a website or had to import personal information. You were probably asked to fill out a CAPTCHA, right? You have Dr. Von Ahn to thank for the “Methods and Apparatuses for Controlling Access to Computer Systems and for Annotating Media Files,” and its successor, the reCAPTCHA. He’s also the founder and CEO of Duolingo.

Luis Von Ahn

Rosalía

MJ Rodriguez

Robert Vargas

Roselly Monegro

petruzzi.art

Lionel Messi

Footballer / Humanitarian Lionel Messi is an Argentinian soccer player who plays forward for the FC Barcelona Club and the Argentina national team. At the age of 13, Messi moved from Argentina to Spain after FC Barcelona agreed to pay for his medical treatments. He has established records for goals scored and won individual awards en route to worldwide recognition as one of the best players in soccer. Messi has won FIFA's Player of the Year six times. He's also won the European Golden Shoe for top scorer six times, two more than his nearest rival, Cristiano Ronaldo. See him play at this year’s Fifa World Cup in Qatar.

LATIN COMEDIANS - LOL

Anjelah Johnson-Reyes

Ian Lara

Matteo Lane

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