Latinx and Hispanic Heritage month kick off Sept. 15 and the Randolph Campus library has a plan to celebrate great literature by authors who reflect this culture. SPA’s upper school library puts up these displays monthly but students hardly take the time to notice these great recommendations. This month they have put up signs and books in the library that all share one theme, Hispanic or Latinx culture.

Each month, the library puts out books to display for heritage months and for special topics. The library assistant Vicki Janisch-Tri organizes the books to put on shelves and chooses the books for each heritage month. There are books in every genre, young adult, historical fiction, fiction, autobiographies. “I think it’s important to draw from different genres because some people like fiction, some people love poetry and it’s a way to expand options.” said Janisch-Tri. Most of the featured authors representing their culture overlap in other aspects, “Like for instance, somebody is a woman and they’re and African American and they identify with the queer community. So you can have those kinds of intersectionalities in almost every display we have.” said Janisch-Tri. She also looks for books that have won awards like New York Times bestsellers and National Book Awards.

Campus librarian Kate Brooks recommended Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older which is part of a three-book series. This book left an impression on her because of the opening scene, murals painted in Sierra Santiago’s neighborhood start morphing into faces of terror and cry in horror.“That was such a cool concept that you have these paintings in the world with these spirits that are in this other world. You see it through these murals crying.” said Brooks.

The featured theme this month is on translated literature, the library has a large collection of books written by people of other languages translated into English. “You can read books by someone who wrote something originally in Korean or German or Arabic. It’s kind of a nice way to pull things out that people don’t necessarily look for,” said Janisch-Tri.