Today's meeting of the Valshi Band Book Club is officially beginning.

I'm MSNBC's Ali Velshi.

We've talked at length about the insidiousness of silencing LGBTQ plus and black stories.

What we haven't covered nearly as much on the Velshi Band Book Club are stories about heritage,

especially stories exploring Latino heritage.

Why?

The answer is simple.

There are so few books written about the Latino

experience due, at least in part, to an alarming lack of diversity in the publishing world.

A recent survey conducted by Lee and Low Books and Boston University found that a mere

6% of publishers identify as Latino, far too low a number

to account for the 20% and growing part of the U.S. population. But even outside that single-digit

number, you can see it when you're at your local bookshop. There are just a few books for such a large

and diverse group, the quickest growing

population in America. Titles like the two we are featuring today are all too few and far between,

but they are crucial. They celebrate a vibrant community and they help others to understand it.

Today on the Velshi Ban Book Club, we're exploring what it means to be Latino in America

in two beautiful novels. Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe by Benjamin

Illyre Signs and Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez. Both books are also deeply emotional in

raw love stories.

I warned you all last week, even the most calloused reader will be moved to tears by these two stories and their characters.

Let's start with Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe. Aristotle is angry. He has a brother in prison and a father who feels distant.

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