Advance Praise for LatinoLand
This is a collection of advance praise and reviews for Marie Arana’s book LatinoLand: America’s Largest and Least Understood Minority.
Reviews
New York Times review: A Journalist Asks, How Do You Define ‘Latino’?
The New Yorker review: Who Are Latino Americans Today?
The Washington Post review: Tracing the sprawling, complicated boundaries of ‘LatinoLand’
Foreign Affairs review: ‘LatinoLand: A Portrait of America’s Largest and Least Understood Minority’
Book Page review by Alejandro Ramirez
Advance Praise
“A significant, engaging read… Arana has a fascinating, complex, and deeply personal story to tell, and she narrates it with abundant verve and intelligence.”
—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
“The celebrated Arana unpacks one of the most contentious demographic categories in the U.S. by examining race, religion, politics, and professions among Latinos…. Arana’s keen grasp of history and incisive writing brings each chapter to life.”
—Booklist, Starred Review
“As a Latina/Latinx/Hispanic/Dominican-America who has lived through six decades of identity iterations and labels on USA soil, I think I know myself and my story pretty well, but Marie Arana’s magisterial LATINOLAND has enlarged my understanding, not just of myself, but of so many of us included under the one identity umbrella of Latinos. Comprehensive, thoroughly researched, balanced, generous and penetrating, LATINOLAND is destined to become the text we all turn and return to in understanding not just this country but our hemisphere.”
—Julia Alvarez, author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and Afterlife
“In a just world Marie Arana would be everyone’s favorite writer and her monumental LATINOLAND would be everyone’s book of the year. Arana has achieved the impossible – she has produced a searching, moving portrait of one of the most misunderstood and singularly important communities in our country. LATINOLAND is indispensable, unforgettable. A work of prophecy, sympathy and courage.”
—Junot Díaz, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
“Marie Arana has accomplished the herculean task of defining us as a community, meticulously separating the threads that unite as well as divide us. LATINOLAND is a fascinating introduction for those who need to know us. And—surprise—an especially illuminating read for those of us who thought we knew ourselves.”
—Sandra Cisneros, a The House on Mango Street, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories
“Marie Arana does something beautiful in this book: she captures all the strands that form the fabric of the one-fifth of our nation she calls LATINOLAND. This burgeoning population contains many different narratives, as she shows, but there are a number of commonalities. Her book not only helps explain LATINOLAND but also America itself.” —Walter Isaacson, author of Elon Musk
“Only Marie Arana could hold this infinitely complex, endlessly shifting subject in her mind, and then write a book that explains it all in language that is at the same time dazzlingly vibrant and surgically precise. LATINOLAND doesn’t just speak, it sings.”
—Candice Millard, author of River of the Gods and The River of Doubt
“Unfolding across four hemispheres and dozens of nations, Marie Arana’s new book is a sweeping, comprehensive, and impassioned introduction to the centuries of history and activism that have given us the term ‘Latino.’” —Héctor Tobar, author of Our Migrant Souls
“Marie Arana’s sprawling portrait of Latinos in the United States is rich and nuanced in its depiction of the diversity of “the least understood minority.”
—Ilan Stavans, author of Spanglish