2026 House of Puerto Rico San Diego Book Club
Join us as we discuss books that are set in Puerto Rico, about Puerto Rico or Puerto Ricans, or written by Puerto Rican authors.
Meetings are held on Zoom, usually on the third Tuesday of the month at 7pm. RSVP at bookclub@houseofpuertorico.com to receive the Zoom link.
Books — All book club selections are available at the HPRSD Casita library. You do not need to be a member of the House of Puerto Rico San Diego to attend the book club, but you must be a current member in order to check out books from the library. Members can check out a copy of the books from the HPRSD Casita Library any weekend the Casita is open from 11am–4pm.
2026 Selections
February 17 | Love War Stories | Ivelisse Rodriguez
Puerto Rican girls are brought up to want one thing: true love. Yet they are raised by women whose lives are marked by broken promises, grief, and betrayal. This collection shows how these conflicts occur across generations that find themselves in the crosshairs of romance, expectations, and community.
March 24 | We Fed an Island: The True Story of Rebuilding Puerto Rico, One Meal at a Time | Richard Wolffe
The true story of how José Andrés and World Central Kitchen’s chefs fed hundreds of thousands of hungry Americans after Hurricane Maria ripped through the island and left many with no clean water, no food, no power, no gas, and no way to communicate with the outside world. We Fed an Island movingly describes how a network of community kitchens activated real change and tells an extraordinary story of hope in the face of disasters both natural and man-made.
April 21 | The Truth Is | NoNieqa Ramos
A powerful exploration of love, identity, and self-worth through the eyes of fierce, questioning fifteen-year-old Verdad who doesn’t think she has time for love. She’s still struggling to process the recent death of her best friend, Blanca; dealing with the high expectations of her hardworking Puerto Rican mother and the absence of her remarried father; and keeping everyone at a distance. But when she meets Danny, a new guy at school—who happens to be trans—Verdad suddenly has to deal with her mother’s disapproval of her relationship with Danny as well as her own prejudices and questions about her identity, and Danny himself, who is comfortable in his skin but keeping plenty of other secrets.
May 19 | A Delicate Marriage | Margarita Barresi
A Delicate Marriage takes the reader on a vivid tour of Puerto Rico forty years after becoming a U.S. colony, a time of great change and political turmoil on the island, and explores themes of class, oppression, and the effects of colonialism through the lens of a marriage.
Isabela, a wealthy woman, sacrifices her artistic aspirations to marry Marco, a penniless man dedicated to improving conditions on the island. As the government enacts pro-U.S. policies, Marco builds a real estate empire while struggling to maintain his populist principles. Meanwhile, Isabela feels unfulfilled in her traditional role as a wife and mother and begins to identify with anti-U.S. factions, leading a dangerous double life.
As political violence threatens the island, Isabela and Marco question whether their marriage, like the island’s relationship with the U.S., should continue.
June 16 | Hipster Death Rattle | Richie Narvaez
Murder is trending. Hipsters are getting slashed to pieces in the hippest neighborhood in New York: Williamsburg, Brooklyn. While Detectives Petrosino and Hadid hound local gangbangers, slacker reporter Tony Moran and his ex Magaly Fernandez get caught up in a missing person’s case—one that might just get them hacked to death.
Told with sardonic wit, this fast-moving, intricately plotted novel plays out against a backdrop of rapid gentrification, skyrocketing rents, and class tension.
August 18 | P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance | Vanessa Diaz and Petra R. Rivera-Rideau
Global superstar Bad Bunny, born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, like many other Puerto Ricans, has lived a life marked by public crises—blackouts, hurricanes, political corruption and oppression, among others—that have exposed the ongoing impacts of colonialism in Puerto Rico. Offering a portrait of the past and future of Puerto Rican resistance through one of its loudest and proudest voices, P FKN R draws on interviews with musicians, politicians, and journalists as well as ethnographic research to set Bad Bunny and Puerto Rican resistance in a historical, political, and cultural context, demonstrate Bad Bunny’s place in a long tradition of infusing both joy and protest into music, and honor the many evolving forms of daily resistance to oppression and colonialism that are part of Puerto Rican life.
September 15 | The Line of the Sun | Judith Ortiz Cofer
Set in the 1950s and 1960s, The Line of the Sun moves from a rural Puerto Rican village to a tough immigrant housing project in New Jersey, telling the story of a Hispanic family’s struggle to become part of a new culture without relinquishing the old. At the story’s center is Guzmán, an almost mythic figure whose adventures and exile, salvation and return leave him a broken man but preserve his place in the heart and imagination of his niece, who is his secret biographer.
October 20 | Andújar: The Robot Gentleman of San Juan | Carolina Cardona
It is said that Santos Andújar is more automaton than man. The mysterious aristocrat living in San Juan barely survived the unknown illness that killed his entire family and left him with multiple prosthetics to lead a reclusive existence inside his ancestral oceanfront home. Yet Santos’ darkly whimsical world is soon besieged by a visit from his beautiful and hedonistic cousin, Violeta Andújar. Far more interested in social intrigue and secret lovers than in the looming Spanish American War that threatens her world, Violeta is at first dismissive of her “invalid” and eternally masked relative until a series of odd and disturbing incidents reveal that enigmatic Santos’ ailment ventures into the paranormal and the oddly futuristic. Suddenly Violeta Andújar finds herself in the throes of political turmoil and a darkly bizarre seduction by a man who may not be a man at all.
November 17 | The Time it Snowed in Puerto Rico | Sarah McCoy
It is 1961, and Puerto Rico is trapped in a tug-of-war between those who want to stay connected to the United States and those who are fighting for independence. Eleven-year-old Verdita Ortiz-Santiago has always been safe and secure in her sleepy mountain town, far from the excitement of the capital city of San Juan or the glittering shores of the United States, where her older cousin lives. She will be a señorita soon, which, as her mother reminds her, means that she will be expected to cook and clean, go to Mass every day, choose arroz con pollo over hamburguesas, and give up her love for Elvis Presley. And yet, as much as Verdita longs to escape this seemingly inevitable future and become a blond American bombshell, she is still a young girl who is scared by late-night stories of the chupacabra, who wishes her mother would still rub her back and sing her a lullaby, and who is both ashamed and exhilarated by her changing body.