The University of Arizona Press
November 7, 2025
We are pleased to share that four University of Arizona Press books were selected as winners and recently honored at the 2025 International Latino Book Awards in Los Angeles!
The International Latino Book Awards recognize excellence in literature, honoring books written in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, with the goal of “growing the awareness for books written by, for and about Latinos.”
See more about the winning books and their authors below.
Best Academic Themed Book, College Level – English (Gold Medal), Best Women’s Issues Book (Silver Medal), & Best Latina Themed Book (Silver Medal)
Founded in 1997, Mujeres de Maiz (MdM) is an Indigenous Xicana–led spiritual artivist organization and movement by and for women and feminists of color. Chronicling its quarter-century-long herstory, editors Amber Rose González, Felicia ‘Fe’ Montes, and Nadia Zepeda collect diverse stories with attention to their larger sociopolitical contexts. Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento: Spiritual Artivism, Healing Justice, and Feminist Praxis crosses conventional genre boundaries through the inclusion of poetry, visual art, testimonios, and essays.
Victor Villaseñor Best Latino Focused Nonfiction Book Award (Gold Medal)
A haunting, an obsession, a calling: Tim Z. Hernandez has been searching for people his whole life. Now, in this highly anticipated memoir, he takes us along on an investigative odyssey through personal and collective history to uncover the surprising conjunctions that bind our stories together. They Call You Back is the true chronicle of one man’s obsession to restore dignity to an undignified chapter in America’s past, while at the same time making a case for why we must heal our personal wounds if we are ever to heal our political ones.
Best Women’s Issues Book (Gold Medal)
Frontera Madre(hood) explores how the topic of mothers and mothering transcends all spaces, from popular culture to intellectual thought and critique. Editors Cynthia Bejarano and Maria Cristina Morales bring together this collection of essays that bridge both methodological and theoretical frameworks to explore forms of mothering that challenge hegemonic understandings of parenting and traditional notions of Latinx womxnhood. This book articulates the collective experiences of Latinx, Black, and Indigenous mothering from both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Best Academic Themed Book, College Level – English (Silver Medal)
Rafael A. Martínez, an undocu-scholar, intricately weaves his lived experience into this deeply insightful exploration. Martínez’s interdisciplinary approach will engage scholars and readers alike, resonating with disciplines such as history, American studies, Chicana and Chicano studies, and borderlands studies. Illegalized shows that undocumented youth and their activism represent a disruption to the social imaginary of the U.S. nation-state and its figurative and physical borders. It invites readers to explore how undocumented youth activists changed the way immigrant rights are discussed in the United States today.
Congratulations to all!
