LatinoLand: Press Release
Here is the press release for LatinoLand from the publisher Simon & Schuster. Use the download button to open the full PDF.
“To tell the truth, we have no name. We never did,” writes Marie Arana, “We were simply tribes of this hemisphere, inheritors of a natural world… We gave ourselves a multitude of names. Thousands of years later, when we were invaded and conquered, first by Spain, then by a battery of occupiers and usurpers, we became colonies to power—united by the boot, the sword, the crown, the cross, and the Spanish language.”
In LATINOLAND: A Portrait of America’s Largest and Least Understood Minority (Simon & Schuster; February 20, 2024), the award-winning author and historian Marie Arana offers readers a sweeping, personal portrait of the largest racial and ethnic minority in the United States.
“Latinos” does not represent a single group – they were once some of the earliest residents of what is now known as the US, and they are some of the country’s newest arrivals; they are White, Black, Indigenous, and Asian; they are domestic workers, day laborers, successful artists, corporate CEOs, and US senators. Once overwhelmingly Catholic, they are now increasingly Protestant and Evangelical. Once faithfully Democratic, they now vote Republican in growing numbers. In LATINOLAND, Arana tells stories that often go ignored, encapsulating Latinos’ “grand diversity that defies any one label.”
Based on prodigious research, hundreds of interviews, and Marie Arana’s own life experience as a Peruvian American, LATINOLAND unabashedly celebrates the resilience, character, diversity, and little known history of our largest and fastest-growing minority. The author of several award-winning books – American Chica, Bolívar, and most recently, Silver, Sword, and Stone – Arana is a beloved member of the literary community, serving as the inaugural Literary Director of the Library of Congress and previously as the Books Editor of the Washington Post. Arana has devoted her career to exploring Latinos’ origins, identities, and histories in the United States, and is uniquely qualified to tell this massive story.
