Maria Montalvo speaks with emotion, her eyes shining as she recounts her reading experiences. She says she especially enjoys books by Isabel Allende, Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, Erika L. Sánchez ...

When Tandy Cobb was a young girl growing up in Clarksville, Tenn., in the 1950s, her parents, who were avid readers, would regularly take her and her brother to the local library to check out books.