Yasmin Ramirez Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Yasmín Ramírez is a published American author.

She is most known for her memoir, which was released by Lee and Low books. She would earn quite a bit of recognition for the work and has received awards for her writing. These include an honorable mention for the 2023 Américas Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature. She also won the 2023 Southwest Book Award from the Border Regional Library Association which showed how the author has contributed to regional literature.

Yasmín also has won a silver medal from the International Latino Book Awards for her memoir. She has been selected as one of the 2023 Top Ten List of the In the Margins YA Non Fiction Book Awards.

She is a Martha’s Institute of Creative Writing Author Fellow. She has also received the Woody and Gayle Hunt-Aspen Institute Fellowship award. The author has also gained recognition for her contributions to the literary world.

She attends El Paso Community College as an associate professor. She has also contributed to the Borderplex arts community on a regular basis and has served on the advisory board for the literary non-profit organization BorderSenses, concluding her position there in April of 2024.

Her fiction and writing have been featured in multiple places including Huizache and Cream City Review. She stays busy teaching Creative Writing, English, and Chicanx Literature at the community college and enjoys writing.

¡Ándale, Prieta!: A Love Letter to My Family is a memoir from author Yasmín Ramírez. She has lived an interesting and unique life and has now put her cultural experiences into print for readers to absorb and experience for themselves.

Told from her point of view, readers are immediately given a translation of the ‘Prieta’ in the title. It means dark or the dark one, and when she informs people who do not speak Spanish what this means, they often are surprised.

The author comments that their eyes frequently ‘pop open’ and a gasp escapes from them. She writes about how can she inform them that the word means something love and is not a term used poorly against her?

Every time that her grandmother said Prieta, it meant love. Every time that her grandmother let Prieta come from her lips, the author says that she was able to learn to love her dark skin and its uniqueness. These days, no one calls her that. She says that she has a longing to hear those words spoken aloud to her with love once more.

Her Ita was the one who called her Prieta, but the name came with her when she passed. Still, the author treasures that time in her life when her grandmother was there with her and would call her that. She was the tough grandmother, the one who showed her how she could stand strong and then throw a punch.

Through this memoir, Yasmín Ramírez talks about all the blows that life has given her at this non-traditional family of Mexican-American women who are exclusively tough and don’t take any guff.

The author spent many years when she was young feeling lost. She was working a job in retail that was extremely tough and she would go to bars in order to find relief and comfort. But when her grandmother finally passes away, she finds that she is unraveling.

She returns to El Paso, Texas, the place where people understand how they can spell out her name with the accent and her mother works with her and helps her to figure out what she would really like to do with her life.

She also decides to go after her passion for writing and works through her grief by going into detail about her Ita. This was the matriarch who was far from what you would think when it comes to the stereotype of a domestic abuelita.

The author goes into memories of her Ita, whether it was her singing old classic Mexican songs, going to boxing matches with her grandmother held at a dive bar, having a mastectomy scar, and the lesson on how you must ball your fist up properly in order to deliver a standard punch.

She also finds out more about why her grandmother was tough by interviewing her older sister and her mother. She goes into the abusive men, the toll that back-breaking jobs took on them, and the various guilt that she carried with her for the abortions which were against her culture.

Combining the prose of an author who has a gift with a down to earth tone of a close friend in her life, this memoir cannot help but allow Yasmín Ramírez to shine. This is a new author on the scene that readers will want to keep an eye on. Check out her memoir to understand more about this author and find solidarity in this work if you have been through a tough time in life too!