Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month

October 5, 2020 by Naomi Coquillon

For Hispanic Heritage Month, we are highlighting a few activities and interactive presentations that kids and families can do to honor the cultures and contributions of Hispanic and Latinx Americans:

Cartonera made by a visitor to the Young Readers Center in 2019. Photo by Monica Valentine.

• Make a Cartonera: Cartoneras are hand-painted books with cardboard covers that appeared in the early 2000s as a response to an economic crisis in Argentina. Create one based on cartoneras held in the Library’s Hispanic Division with this activity guide [PDF].
• Explore the Early Americas: Mesoamerica was one of five places in the world where written language was independently developed. The online exhibition Exploring the Early Americas includes a collection of Mayan vases that demonstrate the Maya writing system. This interactive presentation allows kids and families to examine them closely and learn to read a few glyphs.
• Meet a Poet Laureate: Create a response to Juan Felipe Herrera’s “La Familia”: What does family mean to you? How have you experienced it? Explore the work of former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, including his collaborative poem, “La Familia” and write your own entry on the meaning of family.
• Take a Trip through the PALABRA archive: Explore treasures from the PALABRA archive of audio recordings of prominent writers of the 20^th century from Latin America, the Iberian Peninsula, the Caribbean, and other regions with Luso-Hispanic heritage populations reading from their works at the Library of Congress. You can read more about the archive in this post.
• Enjoy a Concert: The American Folklife Center’s Homegrown concert series represents traditional music as interpreted in communities today. Enjoy this concert from Sones de México Ensemble, which performs Mexican American music from Chicago. You can find more Homegrown concerts here.
• Record a Conversation: The Hispanic Division and the American Folklife Center, in collaboration with StoryCorps, are calling on members across the Latinx communities to engage with the Library’s collections by browsing through selected collection items and recording conversations about them with a friend or loved one. We invite you to donate your recorded conversations to help us tell a richer, fuller, and more detailed story of the Latinx experience in the US. You can read more about the project here.