College can be a complex time for Latinas, who are traditionally expected to leave home when they get married. In her essay Only Daughter, author Sandra Cisneros remarks, After four years in college and two more in graduate school, and still no husband, my father shakes his head even now and says I wasted all that education.

Wise Latinas is a collection of personal essays addressing the varied landscape of the Latina experience in higher education. For some Latinas, college, where they are vastly underrepresented, is the first time they are immersed in American culture...