Lifting Voices: Recommended Audiobook Listening for Hispanic Heritage Month
Latino audiobook narrator André Santana weighs in
For Hispanic Heritage Month, we are highlighting award-winning audiobook narrator and writer André Santana, who shares his thoughts and personal audiobook recommendations from Latin American voices—all available for free through your local library’s listening app!
While Santana’s home country of Brazil is not considered Hispanic—because its official language is Portuguese—Brazilians are welcomed as part of the Latino community due to their Latin American ancestry.
“I have learned Spanish, but I don’t come from one of the countries considered Hispanic,” says Santana. “The lasting impact that the language has had on me is no less diminished by that. When my parents moved to the United States, it was a Spanish-speaking church of Mexican immigrants that first welcomed us.”
According to the Audio Publishers Association 2023–24 sales survey, the number of non-English-language audiobook titles increased by 25 percent compared to 2023. However, these titles account for just 1 percent of overall revenue. Santana says he spent his early years in school participating in English as a Second Language classes, and while they helped him learn English quickly, his native Portuguese tongue began to diminish.
Sign the pledge to vote for libraries!
“It was my parents setting time aside at home that helped me retain it,” says Santana. “We often hear of Hispanic and Latino families expecting their children to abandon Spanish in order to better assimilate into the English-speaking world. But the truth is that it leaves us disconnected from the beautiful breadth of culture and history that comes attached to that native language.”
Santana urges that access to multilingual audiobooks in America is crucial for bridging cultural experiences for people from all walks of life and making storytelling a shared experience across all communities. It has added benefits of more work opportunities for Spanish-speaking professionals, additional media experiences for native speakers worldwide, and an expanded market for companies producing audiobooks for libraries to grow their multilingual collections.
Santana adds, “If you live somewhere with an 18 percent Spanish-speaking population like where I live in New York City, you shouldn’t have to wait until a translation is released in another country to experience the same culture and media that your next-door neighbor is experiencing in English.”
Overall, this month is a time for Santana to reflect with immense gratitude on the culture adjacent to his own—one with which his native Brazil shares so much in common—and to acknowledge all the tangible ways Hispanic people and culture have contributed to American culture as we know it today.
“Hispanic Heritage Month represents that sense of community to me, and this time is about celebrating a people whose unique pasts, traditions, and joys have built the foundation of the world I am in,” says Santana.
Take action today to support libraries!
Santana’s Listening Library for Hispanic Heritage Month
1. Oye by Melissa Mogollon; narrated by Elena Rey
Santana praises Oye for its “fascinating format” of telling a story via a series of one-sided phone calls from main character Luciana, the youngest in a large Colombian American family, to her older sister Mari. He highlights the stellar job of Mexican narrator Elena Rey, who brings Luciana’s high school struggles with her family to vivid life.
2. Into the Light by Mark Oshiro; narrated by Alejandro Antonio Ruiz
Santana recommends Into the Light, a coming-of-age novel that follows Manny, a seventeen-year-old who has recently escaped a cult and is concerned for his sister. An Indigenous Latin American actor, Alejandro Antonio Ruiz imbues the text with his own personal touch of tension to add to Manny’s struggles and create a compelling listen.
3. This Is Why They Hate Us by Aaron H. Aceves; narrated by Alejandro Antonio Ruiz
It is fitting that narrator Ruiz is an LA native, as that is where This Is Why They Hate Us, a queer young adult romance revolving around main character Enrique “Quique” Luna, is set. Accurately depicting the emotional rollercoaster of the teenage years, Aceves also touches on the struggles of coming to grips with bisexuality and cultural identity in America.
Sign the petition to fight book bans!
4. The Sunbearer Trials and Celestial Monsters (The Sunbearer Duology) by Aiden Thomas; narrated by Andre Santana
Santana loved narrating The Sunbearer Trials and Celestial Monsters so much that he even has a tattoo to remember the creative journey! This fantasy series inspired by Mexican folklore follows Teo, a half-human son of the Bird Goddess Quetzal, as he competes in a series of trials to help the sun god, Sol, retain his powers and keep the dark Obsidian gods locked away. It’s a fresh and fascinating take on historical Mexican myths.
The Sunbearer Trials, Book 1, is also a banned book in certain areas of the US due to its inclusion of LGBTQ+ themes and characters. You can help push back against censorship efforts like this by signing EveryLibrary’s petition to fight book bans across America.
5. Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino” by Héctor Tobar; narrated by André Santana
Santana shares that giving voice to Our Migrant Souls “permanently shifted the way I thought of myself.” Long-listed for The New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year 2023, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Héctor Tobar meditates on what the term “Latino” constitutes through the lens of his personal experience as the son of Guatemalan immigrants.
6. Sito by Laurence Ralph and André Santana
Santana applauds Laurence Ralph’s Sito for tackling the difficult biography of doomed Hispanic teen Luis Alberto Quiñonez (Sito) — shot to death in his car at the age of nineteen in San Fransico — despite not being Hispanic himself. Santana says, “This book has stuck with me through the hundred others I’ve narrated since.”
Visit www.everylibrary.org to learn more about our work on behalf of libraries.
#librarymarketers: Enjoy this story? Want to use it for your library newsletter, blog, or social media? This article is published under Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International and is free to edit and use with attribution. Please cite EveryLibrary on medium.com/everylibrary.
This work by EveryLibrary is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0