The “Coming of Age”of young Latina girls has always been a big deal in Latino families. Now, it’s also big business.

Known as a Quinceañera, the celebration marking the transition of a young girl into womanhood ranges from the simple backyard barbecue to the ultra lavish, catered dinner at an upscale ballroom.

Yet, as with all customs that are brought to the United States, the original intent of the celebration has been lost amid the preparations for “D” day which seem to be all about: the Dress, the Dance, the Dinner.

The traditional Mass and blessings from the church pastor, which used to be the heart of the day, has been supplanted and relegated to almost an afterthought.

Yet, that wasn’t the way it used to be.

According to the U.S. Census, Texas is home to the second largest Hispanic population in the country. Not surprising since Texas roots can be traced back to when the state was part of Mexico.

Texas has historically nourished many writers, especially Mexican Americans who have lived their entire lives straddling two borders, two cultures.

In the anthology Hecho en Tejas: An Anthology of Texas Mexican Literature, published by University of New Mexico Press, the works of many prominent Texas Mexican-American writers are featured in an attempt to showcase “a story of the Texas Mexican first as a Mexican, then as a Texan, again as Mexican…”

It used to be ABC books were just for pre-schoolers learning the letters of the alphabet and growing their vocabulary with very simple words.

A for apple. B for bus. C for cat — you get the idea. The ABC book was characterized for its colorful and eye-catching illustrations of the one word highlighted that began with that particular letter.

Children loved the books and they learned.

Since those early ABC books, the format has evolved to where today ABC books cover a spectrum of topics to introduce students of all ages to new information.

With book themes ranging from famous people and dinosaurs to citizenship and holidays around the world, the supply of topical ABC books is only limited by the imagination of the author.

Yet, there are still too few ABC books that focus on teaching two languages while showcasing the cultural handiwork of another country — until now.

It is said that the first printing press in the United States was a Spanish-language press that arrived almost 80 years before the first recorded arrival of the English-language press.

Yet, because the press was in Spanish, its presence is overlooked in the annals of the English-written U.S. history.

It’s the same story with today’s Latino writers and journalists. After years of penning short stories, poems or having bylines, the Latino/a contributions to popular literature and mainstream journalism have historically received little, if any, notice.

However it is changing, but it hasn’t come without a struggle by those first Latino/a authors.

As a way to remember those who blazed the trail for Latino literature and journalism, author Jamie Martinez Wood researched those authors and compiled them in the book Latino Writers and Journalists: A to Z of Latino Americans.

Why do Mexican migrants spend thousands of dollars, and almost always, risk their lives just to illegally enter the United States?

The full answer is complicated but in the book Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migrants by Sam Quinones and published by the University of New Mexico Press, the reasons become a little clearer.

Who was Pancho Villa?

Savior or outlaw? Saint or sinner?

One thing is certain. Francisco (Pancho) Villa is synonymous with the Mexican Revolution and a leader whose notoriety crossed borders.

Whether he was working the fields as a sharecropper or outsmarting his opponents by placing sombreros in strategic places among the hills surrounding a battlefield to give the illusion of a great army, Pancho Villa was a man from humble beginnings who rose to historical prominence.

When Guadalupe “Lupe” Valdez won the election for sheriff of Dallas County, Texas in 2004, it was a milestone on several fronts.

It wasn’t enough that Lupe was a Latina (a daughter of migrant farmworkers from Mexico), a woman and a lesbian. What sent her into the history books was that she was all three of these things AND a Democrat who won in a traditional Republican precinct by beating out her opponent with 51% of the vote.

Though Lupe’s story is inspirational, her’s is not the only tale of a Texas Chicana beating the odds to blaze a new political trail. In fact, Lupe joins a distinguished list of such Lone Star Chicanas, whose stories before now were only known to fellow Tejanas/os.