Back in 1992, my first year on the library faculty at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, I remember talking with my colleague Donald Barclay (now Interim University Librarian at the University of California-Merced) about the lack of reference materials for students researching topics from their own Mexican American/Chicano/Latino/Hispano heritage—things like El Dia de los Muertos, quinceañeras, Spanglish, Homies or descansos. Donald joked, “Just tell them to look it up in “The Quinceañera Encyclopedia.” Well, that was twenty-two years ago and nothing of the kind existed, though New Mexico’s population then (and now) was nearly 50 percent Hispanic. Since 2000, the Hispanic/Latino population nationwide has increased by more than 40 percent—a demographic shift reflected in the availability of many reference materials like this excellent new work edited by University of Arizona scholar Charles Tatum.

While acknowledging the predominance of Mexican heritage among Hispanic/Latino Americans, the Encyclopedia of Latino Culture includes information on traditions from other nationalities and ethnic origins—from Central and South America, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and other Caribbean nations. However, the index contains no entries for Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama or the Dominican Republic, though Cuba and Puerto Rico figure prominently as would seem appropriate based upon the relative influence of those cultures in the United States population as a whole. It is important to note that by far, most of the articles in the reference work are about Mexican cultural influences in the United States.

The encyclopedia offers a brief overview of Latin American and Latino history, a chronology, and a useful discussion of the varied and sometimes confusing terms used to identify Latino/Hispanic Americans. The bulk of the articles that follow—written by more than 150 contributors with a variety of academic expertise in the arts and humanities—describe and comment upon cultural expressions arranged alphabetically: arts, celebrations and holidays, family and community, food, literature, media and sports, music and dance, religion and spirituality, and theater. Under each of these major themes is an alphabetical arrangement of subtopics—a blend of thematic and alphabetical arrangement that does not add to ease of use. Various “Spotlights” appear throughout the volumes focusing on celebrities, historical figures, artists, or something else that did not fit into the main sequence.

To find any particular topic, the user must consult both the table of contents and the index at the end of the third volume. A reference work arranged this way must rely on its index to point the user to what might be relevant material contained within various entries. However, in my scan of the index, I found difficulties such as: descansos spelled descanos, Baez spelled Boez, Tejano music listed only under “Music, Tejano,” Selena Quintanilla Perez listed only under “Quintanilla,” as well as many compound expressions beginning with the Spanish articles el, la, los, las listed only once under the article and not at all under the accompanying noun.

The comprehensive Encyclopedia Latina: History, Culture and Society in the United States, edited by Ilan Stavans (Grolier Academic Reference, 2005), covers a wider range of topics in a more standard encyclopedic arrangement, but it is now nearly a decade old. Cordelia Candelaria’s Encyclopedia of Latino Popular Culture (Greenwood, 2004) is more restricted in scope for a field where currency is of major importance. Latino History and Culture: An Encyclopedia, edited by David J. Leonard and Carmen Lugo (Sharpe Reference, 2010) is arranged for easier use but does not provide the depth of coverage in the arts and literature as the newer work.

Despite its organizational difficulties and faulty index, I would recommend this new reference work to public, school, and college libraries—especially in areas of the country where Hispanic/Latino populations are growing in size and influence—and that would be just about everywhere in the United States today.