‘El Librotraficante’: Getting banned Latino books into readers’ hands
Lupe Mendez was a self-described hobby poet when he first met Tony Diaz. Today, Mr. Mendez is the poet laureate of Texas, and he looks back at receiving Mr. Diaz’s business card that day as one of the first turning points in his career.
The name Tony Diaz didn’t mean much to him, nor did the organization, Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say. What jumped out to him was the picture of the Mayan calendar on the card.
“I thought, ‘This is dope!’” recalls Mr. Mendez. “At the time I hadn’t run into anything that was very pro-Latino.”
Mr. Diaz is, if nothing else,
