Reading Liberally Book Club

By Daniel Peña

Genre: Non-Fiction

In How to Look Away, Daniel Peña explores how fringe elements of his Texas childhood—AM radio, conspiracy theories, Post-Cold War paranoia—came to dominate the American political discourse and contributed to our extreme tolerance of human rights abuses against migrants from Latin America and elsewhere. He What compels us to look away from these abuses? And how do we wake ourselves into action?

These evocative essays braid journalism, cultural criticism, and memoir, roaming from the vestigial Comanche War battlefields of his native Austin, to the black markets of Mexico City, to the home of a cartel hitman’s family doomed to live in the unglamorous aftermath of his crimes. Writing from both Mexico and the United States, Daniel Peña reflects on two childhood demons and the death penalty. Or the answer to the question, “Do you ever really belong to yourself?” A question that serves as the looking glass through which Peña meditates on American citizenship and the kinds of people we are willing to disappear in the name of the American project.

How to Look Away conjures disquiet and longing beside clarity and hope as it offers a haunting account of the strange bond between two nations, this American moment, and the land upon which our bodies stand.

By Aiden Thomas

Genre: Fantasy/YA

When his traditional Latinx family has problems accepting his true gender, Yadriel becomes determined to prove himself a real brujo. With the help of his cousin and best friend Maritza, he performs the ritual himself, and then sets out to find the ghost of his murdered cousin and set it free.

However, the ghost he summons is actually Julian Diaz, the school's resident bad boy, and Julian is not about to go quietly into death. He's determined to find out what happened and tie off some loose ends before he leaves. Left with no choice, Yadriel agrees to help Julian, so that they can both get what they want. But the longer Yadriel spends with Julian, the less he wants to let him leave.

By Alejandra Marquez Abella

Genre: Biopic

A biopic about Jose Hernandez and his path from a farm worker to becoming an engineer and an astronaut. A tale of perseverance, community and sacrifice to accomplish a seemingly impossible dream.

In the late 1960s and 70s, José (Michael Peña) is a young boy whose family (Father Salvador Hernandez (Julio Cesar Cedillo), Brother Beto, mother Julia (Verónica Falcón) and sister Lety) travels from Michoacán as migrant workers picking grapes in California, his parents hoping to buy a house back home after they've made enough money. While they are working in the harvest season, José attends school and works in the fields with his family after.

It is thanks to one determinted teacher that he later finds a passion for math and engineering and focuses on his dream of one day becoming a NASA astronaut.

This film stars Michael Pena.