If you’re a high schooler or college student, there’s a list of books and famous works you know you’re going to have to read at some point in your career. A Shakespeare play or two, some Hemingway or Faulkner, To Kill a Mockingbird so you can talk about how white people were nice enough to end racism. And these books are all great, and important to understanding the culture – white/Western/American culture that is. And while there’s some overlap between that and Latinx culture, what if you want to read the foundational texts of Latinidad? Below is a list of nine books that you can read in addition to (or, we don’t want to tell you not to do you your homework, buuuut…) the canonical texts on your curriculum.

Deciding what books are “in” and which are “out” of a canon, particularly on the basis of historical popularity can be a messy, racist, sexist endeavor, especially that historically, a lot of power (including artistic power) was given to European men. We’ve tried to counteract that here, but know there’s still a lot missing. We’ve also tried to go a little farther than the authors already on your shortlists (if you’re wondering where Gabo, or Cisneros, or Neruda are).

And remember, the best part of making your own curriculum is debating and amending it, so have at it in the comments.

Editor’s Note: This post has been updated to explain the curation process and to add a new author.