It’s been one year since our launch of Huertos Familiares and over the course of that time we have seeded and supported several gardens in San Antonio, Austin, Cedar Park, Houston, Tucson, Chicago, and Dallas. We have shared lessons, photos, and fruits from our gardens. We’ve deepened our commitments to each other, to the land, to gathering in community. In the Spring of 2025, we hosted our first Harvest Sobremesa with everyone that participated in the pilot launch of the project. It was an...

The Fall Equinox once again finds us with our hands in the soil, harvesting the last of the summer crops, prepping the soil for the Fall and Winter gardens, reflecting on all that the land has gifted us. It finds us pulling overgrown weeds from a garden which was left largely untended during the long summer months. One bed in particular required a tremendous amount of attention and care. The vines, which had previously offered more beans than we could eat or share, were curled up and brittle....

On Nov. 2nd, Books in the Barrio joined the Mexican American Studies Program at St. Philip’s College for the Día de los Muertos Symposium. It’s now been two weeks since that event and it’s difficult to put into words the significance of the experience. We began the day with a panel discussion on the importance of culturally grounding the work that we do. Professor Kelli Rolland-Adkins and UTSA graduate student Cynthia Aguilar both spoke about the need to understand a person’s cultural...