My idea to compile this list of classic Mexican books first came up while I was talking about Japanese authors. I had been thinking of doing an informal miniseries where I focus on the specific literary traditions and histories of different ethnicities and nationalities, when, during a workshop I was attending, I had mentioned that the first recorded novel in history came from a Japanese noblewoman. This, of course, set us down a path of not only the history of Japanese literature, but also the context in which said novel—The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu, in case you didn’t know—sprang from. But more on that another time.
Through this conversation, I was reminded of how many people don’t know about rich literary traditions, even when—as is the case with Mexico and the U.S.—they come from nearby places. The thing with books and literature is that they are just as much of their time as they can point towards the future. Through Mexican literature, you can hear the rhythm of the pre-Colombian Nahuatl poets, feel the consequences of war and colonialism, and see what happens as a land and a people are forced to forget their language and learn a new one. And, how that new language is bent and woven through ancestral stories to make something wholly new, such as the magical realism genre, as is the case with Latin America.
You’ll see exactly what I mean in the sampling of classic Mexican books below.
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In Reading Color
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Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
Our Managing Editor, Vanessa Diaz, has such a deep history with this monumental novel that I had to turn it over to her:
“The matriarch of the De la Garza family is a hard woman, the sort who runs her house with an iron fist and whose bad side you pray you never end up on. I spent most of the novel cursing Mama Elena for her constant emotional and physical abuse of Tita, then realized she is a poster child for the “hurt people hurt people” adage, if there ever was one. Her behavior is never excusable, but it is contextualized the more we learn about her life. I find it hard to put into words exactly why this character has had such an impact on me (my own mother is the best and nothing like her at all). I think it’s that Mama Elena and Tita remind me that there can be a sort of peace in accepting why a person is who they are and not having to like or tolerate it, either.
For more on the book and its significance in my reading life, here’s a post I wrote about it, including a small crash course on some Mexican history.”
Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo
Unsurprisingly, this highly influential book was one of the most translated books out of Mexico in 2021. Gabriel García Márquez was greatly inspired by it, and Jorge Luis Borges said it was one of the greatest literary works ever.
The linear passage of time is a mere suggestion in this 1955 release, which takes readers to a haunted village. It’s there that Pedro Páramo seemed to—at least at one time—be all things, from lover to murderer. When the son he has never met journeys to the village to find him, the man is met with hallucinations and mysteries that swirl around the enigmatic Páramo.
Labryinth of Solitude by Octavio Paz
Paz was one of Mexico’s most read writers and critics when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990. His work is exactly the kind of art that I think speaks to a people’s past and future, simultaneously. This collection of essays includes pieces that not only look at Mexico’s identity, but also how that identity interacts with the United States.
Also make sure to pick up The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz, which gathers 30 years of bilingual poetry on nature, love, language, and more.
More recent books that are by Mexican and Mexican American authors
- Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice by Cristina Rivera Garza- This Pulitzer Prize-winning work is part memoir, part true crime that shares the author’s sister’s life story before she was murdered by an ex-boyfriend.
- The Prince and the Coyote by David Bowles, illustrated by Amanda Mijangos- Full of poetry, this YA novel follows Prince Acolmiztli, who will survive a murderous coup, years of exile, and his own quest for revenge to become the legendary Nezahualcoyotl.
- Dreamers by Yuyi Morales- In this 2018 picture book, Morales tells the very real story of how she left Xalapa, Mexico with her infant to come to the US.
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