Hispanic Heritage Month Reading Recommendations from NBLA

Genre: Newsletter/blog

Science Friday is a well-known talk show that covers news and entertaining stories in science. It airs every Friday on over 470 public radio stations in the US and is also available as a podcast. In addition to the show, there are fascinating blog-style articles on the show’s website. One series of these articles is Astronomy: Made in Latin America. This series is a special collaboration between Science Friday and the Spanish newspaper El País: América Futura. It originally took the form of a seven-week long series of newsletters that started in May 2024, so the stories are very recent, which is great. All of the articles are available in both English and Spanish.  

In the style of Science Friday, this collection is highly readable, engaging, and enlightening. It covers the humanistic side of astronomy as well as giving readers insight into the amazing world that is astronomy in Latin America. 

Two quotes from the article “Two Last Names: Reflections From A Colombian Astronomer” by Juan Diego Soler Pulido that exemplify this:

I forget the lines for visas that we use to justify our existence in the countries that have the resources to exploit our talent.

The exceptionally clear and dry skies of the Atacama Desert, which are cloudless almost 300 days a year, have attracted more than half of the world’s astronomy infrastructure.

In other articles, I learned that the Extremely Large Telescope in Chile, scheduled for completion in 2028, is expected to outperform the James Webb Space Telescope, which is very exciting. I learned about the ridiculously cool science done by three leaders in space science from Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Argentina, including the construction of a supersonic parachute inspired by the shape and movements of jellyfish that landed on Mars. There truly is something interesting for everyone.

Although the seven week period of the newsletter is over, you can sign up to receive notifications about new articles and segments on their signup page. I hope they will renew the newsletter!

Genre: Nonfiction book

This book comes highly recommended by our new historian at the American Institute of Physics, Rebecca Charbonneau!

From the publisher: “In the 1940s military and scientific personnel chose the Pajarito Plateau to site Project Y of the secret Manhattan Project, where scientists developed the atomic bomb. Nuevomexicanas/os and Tewa people were forcibly dispossessed from their ranches and sacred land in north-central New Mexico with inequitable or no compensation.

Contrary to previous works that suppress Nuevomexicana/o presence throughout U.S. nuclear history, Nuclear Nuevo México focuses on recovering the voices and stories that have been lost or ignored in the telling of this history. By recuperating these narratives, Myrriah Gómez tells a new story of New Mexico, one in which the nuclear history is not separate from the collective colonial history of Nuevo México but instead demonstrates how earlier eras of settler colonialism laid the foundation for nuclear colonialism in New Mexico.

Gómez examines the experiences of Nuevomexicanas/os who have been impacted by the nuclear industrial complex, both the weapons industry and the commercial industry. Gómez argues that Los Alamos was created as a racist project that targeted poor and working-class Nuevomexicana/o farming families, along with their Pueblo neighbors, to create a nuclear empire. The resulting imperialism has left a legacy of disease and distress throughout New Mexico that continues today.”

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Genre: Nonfiction book

The Zia Company was the firm responsible for building and maintaining the secret city and labs of Los Alamos. Many of the Zia workers were Neuvomexicanos or Hispanos, a term used to differentiate the unique identity of people from this region, often with Hispanic and Indigenous ancestry. This book, newly acquired by the Niels Bohr Library & Archives, is a history of the company.

Many other people and organizations have worked to promote and preserve the history of the Hispanos and local workers at Los Alamos. In 2021, Los Alamos National Lab spoke with Dimas Chavez, whose father worked at Los Alamos after World War II, about his experience living at Los Alamos. Chavez also wrote a Letter to the Editor of the Los Alamos Daily Post about his experiences, including what it was like to go to school with the children of eminent and famous scientists when his first language was Spanish:

Going to school with children of eminent scientists was not an easy task. I recall John Bradbury who was in my class whose father was Dr. Norris Bradbury who became the second Director of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory.

I experienced a great amount of teasing for not being able to speak properly, and what words I learned were spoken with a very pronounced accent. There were very few other Spanish speaking students in my class, but they were more advanced then myself as they had grown up in an English speaking environment.

He also writes specifically about the contributions of men like his father with the Zia Company:

These Mexican-American and Native-Americans made up the nucleus of the Model Minority Myth that involved those who helped usher in the final development of the atomic bomb, and the finalization to World War II.

What has always been bothersome to me, and continues, is that these pioneers, side by side with the scientists and technicians, sacrificed and endured many hardships while overcoming racial hurdles at the work site to help end World War II, and yet all the pomp and congratulatory praise that followed the end of World War II was totally focused on the scientific input.

The Los Alamos National Laboratory Museum serves as a reminder to the scientific achievements, and stands as a constant reminder to the residents of Los Alamos and the many visitors that frequent the museum. Nothing of praise was ever written or erected to honor the many men and women from Zia, and other contributing factors who equally made this historic achievement a reality.

The 1950 history of Zia Company is a bit tricky to track down (check out the WorldCat link below to see if a copy is in a library near you), but I urge you to spend some time reading and listening to the stories of Dimas Chavez to learn a bit more about how Hispanos, Hispanic people, and Indigenous people contributed to nuclear history.

WorldCat

Genre: Children’s biography

Sylvia Acevedo is a former industrial engineer and was CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA from 2016-2020. In this 2018 memoir aimed at a middle grade audience, she describes her childhood growing up in New Mexico with her Mexican mother and Mexican-American father and her siblings. Sylvia describes the daily trials and tribulations of childhood as well as more serious events, like when her little sister got meningitis. She also writes about a wide range of interests, like basketball, the Girl Scouts, and yes, rocket science and math. Through her determination she was able to get a scholarship to New Mexico State University to study industrial engineering. Her first summer internship at Sandia National Laboratories involved field testing rockets, but they didn’t even have a bathroom for women in the test labs; she had to bike to the building the secretaries used. Eventually they got her a portable bathroom that said “HERS” on the outside. After college she worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab on the Voyager 2 team, but her childhood dream was to attend Stanford University, which she was eventually able to do with the help of a GEM fellowship. Her memoir ends with her entry to Stanford, but she leaves readers, especially young girls, with a message: “I hope that my life story will prove to you that dreams do come true and that it will inspire you to create your own opportunities and adventures. Have the courage to work to make the world a better place - and I will cheer you on as you do!”

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Genre: Nonfiction book

This book is made up of a series of articles that give advice for Latinx students from high school through college and getting a job in a STEM field. It is clearly laid-out as a seven-step program:

1. Preparing for a Career in STEM
2. Choosing a College and STEM Program
3. Paying for College
4. Surviving Thriving in the First Year of College
5. Choosing a STEM Major
6. Continuing on to Graduate School in STEM
7. Choosing a Career in STEM

Easy-peasy! In all seriousness, having a roadmap to early adulthood is quite a valuable thing. Though the book is specifically aimed at Latinx students, the advice and information could be applicable to other students as well. The language in the book is engaging and approachable for high-school level comprehension. Overall, I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in pursuing a STEM path, especially if they are from a Latinx background. I will note that the formatting of the book makes it look like an academic textbook, which might be a turnoff for some students and doesn’t reflect the contents of the book.

I was excited to see that the last major section of the book is all testimonials (Testimonios) from STEM students, graduates, and scientists from different stages in their careers. If I were a student looking for a direction, I would love to see this in a book. The scientists talk about what they did specifically to end up where they are, and subsequently discuss school choices, their families, and the importance of mentorship. Some even have an “advice” section for readers. However, I was very disappointed to find that none of the 14 Testimonios feature physicists. I can’t say this with certainty, but it feels like a mirror of the lack of diversity found in physics. For more on this, check out the American Institute of Physics’ Statistics report, “Attrition and Persistence in Undergraduate Physics Programs.”

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Genre: Children’s biography

Mario Molina (1943-2020) was a Mexican physical chemist who obtained his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley and worked at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Lab and MIT. Molina discovered the Antarctic ozone hole and was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for connecting the cause to chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gasses. For more about the impact of this discovery, including how it led to the monumentally important Montreal Protocol, check out this documentary made by our middle school 2022 National History Day contest winners on the subject. Molina was only the third Mexican-born person to receive a Nobel prize in any category, and the first to receive a chemistry prize. This picture book biography tells his story for children.

From the publisher: “The true story of how a scientist saved the planet from environmental disaster–now in paperback!

Mexican American Mario Molina was a modern-day hero who helped solve the ozone crisis of the 1980s. Growing up in Mexico City, Mario was a curious boy who studied hidden worlds through a microscope. As a young man in California, he discovered that CFCs, used in millions of refrigerators and spray cans, were tearing a hole in Earth’s protective ozone layer. Mario knew the world had to be warned–and quickly. Mario went on to become a Nobel laureate and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His inspiring story gives hope in fighting the ongoing climate crisis.”

Check out this read-along on YouTube from Read Right Now if you’re too impatient to wait for your copy from the library.

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Genre: Collected biography

Paths to Discovery is a collection of short memoirs from ten remarkable Chicana scientists in fields including biology, chemistry, mathematics, environmental engineering, and more (although none from physics). Their stories not only tell us about their own experiences, but also shed light on the common experiences they shared that allowed them to be successful. A common thread tying them all together is the immense support they received from their families, teachers, and communities. As Aida Hurtado notes in the introduction, these stories challenge most prevalent narratives about people of color, which “claim that these communities do not value education and that their children have to fight tooth and nail to overcome parental objections to their commitment to achieve educationally.” Indeed, their stories show how important having strong networks of support are in educational achievement, and we would do well to take these lessons to heart when thinking about nurturing the next generation of scientists, be they Chicana or otherwise.

From the publisher: “In Paths to Discovery a group of extraordinary Chicanas trace how their interest in math and science at a young age developed into a passion fed by talent and determination. Today they are teaching at major universities, setting public and institutional policy, and pursuing groundbreaking research. These testimonios-personal stories-will encourage young Chicanas to enter the fields of mathematics, science, and engineering and to create futures in classrooms, boardrooms, and laboratories across the nation.”

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Genre: Bilingual board book

Ellen Ochoa became the first Latina in space when she served on a nine-day mission on the Discovery space shuttle in 1993 to study Earth’s ozone layer. Ochoa is a classically trained flutist, and she took her flute on her first trip to space, joining many other astronauts who took musical instruments to space, including most iconically (in my humble opinion) Ron McNair, who played his soprano saxophone in space. Ellen Ochoa went to space three more times after that, including in 1999 for the first docking of a space shuttle with the International Space Station (ISS). In total, she spent almost 1,000 hours in space. She went on to become the director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

From the publisher: “Inspired by the space travels of Ellen Ochoa, astronaut and first Latina to go to space, this bilingual board book will provide early introduction to astronomy and lay the foundation for further exploration of the universe as they grow older.

Take a trip around our solar system with Ellen Ochoa, the first Latina in the world to travel into space. This book will introduce little ones to the Sun, Moon and planets in English and Spanish.”

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Genre: Nonfiction book

From the publisher:

“The essays in this volume study the creation, adaptation, and use of science and technology in Latin America. They challenge the view that scientific ideas and technology travel unchanged from the global North to the global South—the view of technology as “imported magic.” They describe not only alternate pathways for innovation, invention, and discovery but also how ideas and technologies circulate in Latin American contexts and transnationally. The contributors' explorations of these issues, and their examination of specific Latin American experiences with science and technology, offer a broader, more nuanced understanding of how science, technology, politics, and power interact in the past and present. 

The essays in this book use methods from history and the social sciences to investigate forms of local creation and use of technologies; the circulation of ideas, people, and artifacts in local and global networks; and hybrid technologies and forms of knowledge production. They address such topics as the work of female forensic geneticists in Colombia; the pioneering Argentinean use of fingerprinting technology in the late nineteenth century; the design, use, and meaning of the XO Laptops created and distributed by the One Laptop per Child Program; and the development of nuclear energy in Argentina, Mexico, and Chile.”

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Genre: Children’s Nonfiction

How to Hear the Universe is a picture book about Dr. Gabriela González and her research into Albert Einstein’s theory of ripples in space-time. In 1916, Einstein theorized that collisions in space could cause sound waves in the fabric of space-time, but that they would be too faint to detect on Earth. A century later, Gaby González, an immigrant from Argentina who studied space-time ripples, joined the LIGO team that proved Einstein’s theory. As the spokesperson for LIGO, she was part of the group that made the announcement about their discovery in February 2016.

Written by Patricia Valdez, a molecular biologist who loves writing for children, How to Hear the Universe is perfect for both young readers and their grown-ups. It makes complicated science accessible to kids, but also includes more detailed information and further resources at the end of the book. The illustrations by Sara Palacios are engaging and emphasize diversity in the field of physics. 

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