Early Childhood Bilingual Storytime
2025-11-18 | NHCC Library, 1701 4th Street SW, Albuquerque, NM, 87102
10:00 am
NHCC | HLA Library
Stories come to life through art, movement, and more! For children ages 3 to 5 and caregivers.
Bilingual Storytime is designed for children ages 3 to 5 and their caregivers. For school, childcare, or homeschool groups; please reach out to NHCC Librarian Amy Padilla at amy.padilla@dca.nm.gov or the NHCC HLA Interim Program Manager Robin Moses at robin.moses@dca.nm.gov to find out about group options and available dates. We are unable to accommodate these groups during the Bilingual Storytime on third Tuesdays.
Free community event, generously supported by NM Gas. Please let us know who will be attending by registering below.

Early Childhood Bilingual Storytime (Cancelled)
2025-12-16 | NHCC Library, 1701 4th Street SW, Albuquerque, NM, 87102
NOTE: This event has been cancelled for the month of December. We apologize for the inconvenience.
10:00 am
NHCC | HLA Library
Stories come to life through art, movement, and more! For children ages 3 to 5 and caregivers.
Bilingual Storytime is designed for children ages 3 to 5 and their caregivers. For school, childcare, or homeschool groups; please reach out to NHCC Librarian Amy Padilla at amy.padilla@dca.nm.gov or the NHCC HLA Interim Program Manager Robin Moses at robin.moses@dca.nm.gov to find out about group options and available dates. We are unable to accommodate these groups during the Bilingual Storytime on third Tuesdays.
Free community event, generously supported by NM Gas. Please let us know who will be attending by registering below.

NHCC Book Club: Malas by Marcela Fuentes
2026-02-25 | HLA Conference Room
Wednesday, February 25, 2026
6:00 pm
The NHCC invites lovers of literature, folks who love to read, and those who enjoy talking about the history and the vast array of identities that contribute to Latinidad/Hispanidad to join us! We will meet on the fourth Wednesday of every month in the Center’s HLA Conference Room.
For the month of February 2026, the NHCC Book Club will be featuring Malas by Marcela Fuentes.
PLEASE MAKE YOUR RESERVATION HERE!
A story full of passion and revenge, following one family living on the Texas Mexico border and a curse that reverberates across generations–“Fuentes has achieved something rare and indelible with this story of complex women.” (Erika L. Sánchez)
In 1951, a mysterious old woman confronts Pilar Aguierre in the small border town of La Cienega, Texas. The old woman is sure Pilar stole her husband and, in a heated outburst, lays a curse on Pilar and her family.
More than forty years later, Lulu Muñoz is dodging chaos at every turn: her troubled father’s moods, his rules, her secret life as singer in a punk band, but most of all her upcoming quinceañera. When her beloved grandmother passes away, Lulu finds herself drawn to the glamorous stranger who crashed the funeral and who lives on the alone and shunned on the edge of town.
Their unexpected kinship picks at the secrets of Lulu’s family’s past. As the quinceañera looms—and we move between these two strong, irascible female voices—one woman must make peace with the past, and one girl pushes to embrace her future.
Rich with cinematic details—from dusty rodeos to the excitement of a Selena concert and the comfort of conjunto ballads played at family gatherings—this memorable debut is a love letter to the Tejano culture and community that sustain both of these women as they discover what family means. (Goodreads).
This book is available at the NM State Library: 1 ebook, 1 audiobook; the Albuquerque Public Library: 1 audio on Libby, 1 Kindle, 2 hardbacks, 5 Large Type, 2 in Spanish.
This is a free community event. Please let us know who will be attending by registering below.
PLEASE MAKE YOUR RESERVATION HERE!

NHCC Book Club: The Anatomy of Magic by J.C. Cervantes
2026-04-22 | HLA Conference Room
6:00 – 7:30 pm
The NHCC invites lovers of literature, folks who love to read, and those who enjoy talking about the history and the vast array of identities that contribute to Latinidad/Hispanidad to join us! We will meet on the fourth Wednesday of every month in the Center’s HLA Conference Room.
For the month of April 2026, the NHCC Book Club will feature: The Anatomy of Magic by J.C. Cervantes:
PLEASE MAKE YOUR RESERVATION HERE!
A young woman learns to embrace all the messy imperfections of life and love with some help from her magical family in this next novel by New York Times bestselling author J.C. Cervantes.
Lilian Estrada seemingly has it all: an ob-gyn star on the rise, a master at balancing work with whirlwind romances and part of a family of fiercely loyal and exceptional women, all bound together by an extraordinary secret. The Estrada women each possess a unique power, and Lily shines with the rare gift to manipulate memories. Yet not even her mystical abilities can shield her from a harrowing event at the hospital, one that sends her powers—and her confidence—spiraling out of control.
Seeking solace, Lily retreats to her family’s ancestral home in Mexico, only to find herself face-to-face with a ghost from her past—Sam, the first love she never forgot. Nearly a decade since she last saw him, Sam is hardly the boy she once knew, and as old flames spark to life, Lily must navigate the mysteries of their shared history and the depths of her own heart if she hopes to control her unpredictable magic. (Goodreads)
This book is available at the Albuquerque Public Library: 3 copies plus 1 audiobook on Libby, 1 ebook at NM State Library
This is a free community event. Please let us know who will be attending by registering below.
NHCC Book Club | New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs

NHCC Book Club: Liliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice by Cristina Rivera Garza
2026-06-24 | HLA Conference Room
Wednesday, June 24, 2026
6:00 – 7:30 pm
The NHCC invites lovers of literature, folks who love to read, and those who enjoy talking about the history and the vast array of identities that contribute to Latinidad/Hispanidad to join us! We will meet on the fourth Wednesday of every month in the Center’s HLA Conference Room.
For the month of July, we will be reading Cristina Rivera Garza’s Puliter Prize Winning Memoir Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice.
PLEASE MAKE YOUR RESERVATION HERE!
Can you enjoy yourself while you are in pain? The question, which is not new, arises over and over again during that eternity that is mourning.
In the early hours of July 16, 1990, Liliana Rivera Garza was murdered by her abusive ex-boyfriend. A life full of promise and hope, cut tragically short, Liliana’s story instead became subsumed into Mexico’s dark and relentless history of domestic violence. With Liliana’s case file abandoned by a corrupt criminal justice system, her family, including her older sister Cristina, was forced to process their grief and guilt in private, without any hope for justice.
In luminous, poetic prose, Rivera Garza tells a singular yet universally resonant story: that of a spirited, wondrously hopeful young woman who tried to survive in a world of increasingly normalized gendered violence. It traces the story of her childhood, her early romance with a handsome–but possessive and short-tempered–man, through the exhilarating weeks leading up to that fateful July morning, a summer when Liliana loved, thought, and traveled more widely and freely than she ever had before.
Using her remarkable talents as a scholar, novelist, and poet, Cristina Rivera Garza returns to Mexico after decades of living in the United States to collect and curate evidence–handwritten letters, police reports, school notebooks, architectural blueprints–in order to render and understand a life beyond the crime itself. Tracing the full arc of their childhood and adolescence in central Mexico, through the painful and confusing years after Liliana’s death, Rivera Garza confronts the trauma of losing her sister, and examines from multiple angles how this tragedy continues to shape who she is–and what she fights for–today.
“In this gut-wrenching blend of memoir and reportage, Rivera Garza (No One Will See Me Cry), a Hispanic studies professor at the University of Houston, investigates her younger sister Liliana’s 1990 murder by an abusive ex-boyfriend, who remains at large. Placing her sister’s death in the context of the femicide crisis in Mexico, Rivera Garza interweaves startling facts and statistics (an average of 10 women are killed per day in Mexico) with lyrical meditations on her family life and Liliania’s efforts to break away from her obsessive high school boyfriend, Ángel González Ramos.” (Goodreads)
This book is available at the Albuquerque Public Library: 2 copies available, plus Kindle ebook and Libby Audiobook
This is a free community event. Please let us know who will be attending by registering below.
NHCC Book Club | New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs

NHCC Book Club: The Witches of El Paso by Luis Jaramillo
2026-07-22 | HLA Conference Room
NHCC Book Club: The Witches of El Paso by Luis Jaramillo
Wednesday, July 22, 2026
6:00 pm
NHCC | HLA Conference Room
For the month of July, we will be reading The Witches of El Paso by Luis Jaramillo.
A lawyer and her elderly great-aunt use their supernatural gifts to find a lost child in this richly imagined and empowering story of motherhood, magic, and legacy in the vein of The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina and La Hacienda.
If you call to the witches, they will come.
1943, El Paso, teenager Nena spends her days caring for the small children of her older sisters, while longing for a life of freedom and adventure. The premonitions and fainting spells she has endured since childhood are getting worse, and Nena worries she’ll end up like the scary old curandera down the street. Nena prays for help, and when the mysterious Sister Benedicta arrives late one night, Nena follows her across the borders of space and time. In colonial Mexico, Nena grows into her power, finding love and learning that magic always comes with a price.
In the present day, Nena’s grandniece, Marta, balances a struggling legal aid practice with motherhood and the care of the now ninety-three-year-old Nena. When Marta agrees to help search for a daughter Nena left in the past, the two forge a fierce connection. Marta’s own supernatural powers emerge, awakening her to new possibilities that threaten the life she has constructed. (Goodreads)
This book is available at the Albuquerque Public Library: 5 copies, plus 4 audiobooks via Libby, 2 ebooks via Libby
This is a free community event. Please let us know who will be attending by registering below.
RESERVE YOUR TICKETS HERE!

NHCC Book Club
2026-08-26 | HLA Conference Room
NHCC Book Club
Wednesday, August 26, 2026
6:00 pm
NHCC | HLA Conference Room
The NHCC invites lovers of literature, folks who love to read, and those who enjoy talking about the history and vast the array of identities that contribute to Latinidad/Hispanidad to join us! We will meet on the fourth Wednesday of every month in the Center’s HLA Conference Room.
Free community event. Please let us know who will be attending by registering below.
RESERVE YOUR TICKETS HERE!

NHCC Book Club
2026-09-23 | HLA Conference Room
NHCC Book Club
Wednesday, September 23, 2026
6:00 pm
NHCC | HLA Conference Room
The NHCC invites lovers of literature, folks who love to read, and those who enjoy talking about the history and vast the array of identities that contribute to Latinidad/Hispanidad to join us! We will meet on the fourth Wednesday of every month in the Center’s HLA Conference Room.
Free community event. Please let us know who will be attending by registering below.
RESERVE YOUR TICKETS HERE!

NHCC Book Club
2026-10-28 | HLA Conference Room
NHCC Book Club
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
6:00 pm
NHCC | HLA Conference Room
The NHCC invites lovers of literature, folks who love to read, and those who enjoy talking about the history and vast the array of identities that contribute to Latinidad/Hispanidad to join us! We will meet on the fourth Wednesday of every month in the Center’s HLA Conference Room.
Free community event. Please let us know who will be attending by registering below.
RESERVE YOUR TICKETS HERE!
