On March 8, the voices of millions of feminist women and men resounded in the streets, calling for an end to femicide and the implementation of truly egalitarian policies that would end a patriarchal neoliberalism that uses minorities when 'sparring' for its ambitions of power. 

Sadly, the news is getting out. The just demands were drowned out by the spread of COVID-19 around the world. However, the message of Latin feminists now, in these hard times of confinement for solidarity and uncertainty, is more necessary than ever.

We recommend five books written by Latina authors that remind us that conscience and care must always prevail, especially now.  

Alicia H. Puleo

The Argentinean professor and philosopher is one of the greatest exponents of ecofeminist thinking and connects the domination of women and nature in this essay. She poses what is the role of the new Ariadnes of the 21st century, heroines for whom equality and freedom are not possible with their backs to ecology.

Rita Segato

Is it appropriate to call something sexual violence when it is a crime of power? This is one of the questions asked by Segato, one of the most celebrated feminist anthropologists, who studies how power mediates gender relations - a minefield for women - and advocates for calling things by their name and facing reality with accurate words.

Gloria Anzaldua

How many borders besides physical ones shape us? What makes us frontier subjects? Mestiza, as its title indicates, is the work of the deceased Chicana and lesbian activist Gloria Anzaldua and is essential to understanding the complexity of the Chicana identity and gender politics. It is a mixture of essay and poetic autobiography by someone who always defined herself as a "border dweller."

Cherrie Moraga

This book from a pioneer of Chicano queer feminism is a collection of beautiful and fiercely intimate memories that focuses primarily on Moraga's mother. Her mother's lethargy and the author's awakening intersect.  The result is a critical and profound reflection on an intergenerational trauma, self-discovery and the history of the Mexican diaspora in the United States.

Sandra Cisneros

This puzzle-like autobiography of images and essays covers three decades in the life of the extraordinary Chicano writer, winner of the PEN/Nabokov Prize in 2018 and author of the novel “The House on Mango Street”. If Virginia Woolf claimed she needed a room of her own, Cisnero was looking for a home in which to put down roots. She found it in herself.