Renaming My #ShelfOfMexico

Renaming My #ShelfOfMexico

Earlier this year, I renamed my #ShelfOfAmerica; it’s now my #ShelfOfMexico. (I’ve written about this here, And here.)

And, to mark this occasion, I determined that I would read at least twenty-one books by Mexican and Latin-American and Spanish-language writers this year.

As a small way of celebrating the cultural contributions these authors and these communities have made to the literary landscape.

A way of celebrating the fact that even though I’m not reading in Spanish, and even though my national neighbour to the south has declared that the United States is a monolingual country now, I can exercise my freedom to read.

Thanks to Andrew, Anne, Bill, Jacqui, Mandy, Rachel, Rebecca, Reese, Sandy, Sue, Simon, Stefanie and Susan for recommending and musing on possibilities, and to everyone who expressed enthusiasm for and interest in the project, in comments and emails and conversations.

Isabel Allende’s A Long Petal of the Sea (Chile)
Selva Almada’s Not a River and The Wind Lays Waste (Argentina)
Julia Alvarez’s Love in the Time of the Butterflies and The Cemetery of Untold Stories (Dominican Republic)
Jorge Amado’s Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon (Brazil)
Austin Araujo’s At the Park on the Edge of the Country (Mexican-American)
Jazmina Barrera’s Lighthouses and Cross Stitch (Mexico)
Augusto Roa Bastos’ I, The Supreme
Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 and The Savage Detectives (Chile)
Jorge Luis Borges’ Fictions (Argentina)
Bernardo Esquinca (Mexico)
Laura Esquivel Like Water for Chocolate (Mexico)
Héctor Abad Faciolince’s Oblivion: A Memoir (Colombia)
Rosario Ferré Sweet Diamond Dust (Puerto-Rican)
Marcelo Figueras’ Kamchatka (Argentina)
Yuri Herrera’s Signs Preceding the End of the World (Mexico)
Clarice Lispector’s Hour of the Star (Brazil)
J. Estanislao Lopez’s We Borrowed Gentleness (Mexican-American)
Valeria Luiselli’s Faces in the Crowd, Lost Children Archive, Sidewalks, Tell Me How It Ends, The Story of My Teeth (Mexico)
Gabriela Mistral (Chile)
Claudia Pineiro’s Elena Knows and A Little Luck (Argentina)
Andrés N. Ordorica (Mexican-American)
Natalia Borges Polesso’s Amora (Brazil)
Esteban Rodriguez’s Loteria
Luis Sepúlveda’s The Shadow of What We Were (Trans. Howard Curtis) (Chile)
Juan Pablo Villalobos’ Quesadillas and Down the Rabbit Hole (Mexico)
Alejandro Zambra’s Ways of Going Home (Trans. Megan McDowell) (Chile)
Alia Trabucco Zerán’s The Remainder (Trans. Sophie Hughes) (Chile)

Here are some of the Ibero/Ibero-Amn books I read in 2025:

Agustina Bazterrica’s Tender is the Flesh (2017/2020), Nineteen Claws and a Blackbird 2020/2023, The Unworthy (2023/2025) Trans. Sarah Moses;
Clarice Lispector’s An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures (1968; Trans. Stefan Tobler 2021);
Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Daughter of Doctor Moreau (2022), Mexican Gothic (2020), Signal to Noise (2015), Silver Nitrate (2023);
Guadalupe Nettel’s After the Winter (2014/2018) and Stillborn (2020/2023) Trans. Rosalind Harvey;
Alfonso Zapico’s Le chant des asturies (2015-2023; Trans. Charlotte Le Guen);
Claudia Pinheiro’s Elena Knows (2007; Trans. Frances Riddle, 2021);
Alberto Álvaro Rios’ A Good Map of All Things (2020);
Carols Fuentes’ Great Latin American Novel (2011; Trans. Brendan Riley, 2016);
Cristina Peri Rossi’s Afternoon of the Dinosaur (Trans. loria Arjona, 2014);
Felisberto Hernandez’s Piano Stories (Trans. Luis Harss, 2014);
Isabel Allende’s Paula (Trans. Margaret Sayers Peden, 1994);
Valeria Luiselli’s Sidewalks (Trans. Christina MacSweeney, 2014);
Jazmina Barrera’s Cross Stitch (2021; Trans. Christina MacSweeney, 2023);
Eduardo Galeano’s Walking Words (1993; Trans. Mark Fried, Illus. Jose Francisco Borges, 1995);
Esteban Rodriguez’s Limbolandia (2023); and
Margarita Saona’s The Ghost of You (Trans. Luciana Erregue-Sacchi et.al., 2022)

I’d originally conceived of this as a one-year project, possibly a four-year project, but it’s permanently widened my reading selections: brilliant!

Miguel de Palol’s The Garden of Seven Twilights (2023; Trans. Adrian Nathan West); and