A professor of Spanish in OSU’s School of Language, Culture and Society, García has just launched her newest book, Latino and Latina Leaders of the 21st Century, which celebrates the “Latino spirit” she embraced fully as a young girl and then internalized deeply over the decades.
It was tragic enough that Susana Rivera-Mills’ girlhood was visited by war. It was frightening enough to flee her hometown of San Salvador on a dark night bundled in the backseat of the family Fiat with her little brother Fabio. And yet, as improbable as it seems, the hardest part was still ahead.
The early findings from Independence reveal a community that is holding onto Spanish for five and six generations.