A Lesson on Culture, a Look at History : Latinos have been a part of America since its start. But few are aware of their impact, says Himilce Novas, who has written a stereotype-shattering book about their cultures.

Himilce Novas is a walking contradiction of Latino stereotypes, particularly those of Cuban Americans:

Latinos have big families? Novas is an only child--and both her parents were, too.

Latinos marry young and start having babies immediately? Novas, in her mid-40s, has never married and has no children.

Cuban exiles flock to Miami? After leaving the island in 1960, she and her parents settled in New York. And whether Fidel Castro is ever overthrown, she has no desire to live in Cuba again.

In fact, she now considers herself more Mexican than Cuban. Who better to write a book called “Everything You Need to Know About Latino History”?

The book, published by Plume last October, seeks to debunk stereotypes about Latinos within a historical perspective.

“Everywhere I turned I saw no information about Latinos whatsoever,” Novas said. “Suddenly I noticed that I was becoming the token Latino among people I knew. People were asking me questions about the culture.

“People seemed to know more about other cultures than they did the Latino culture, yet we have a much greater impact. We are not contributing to American history, we are American history.”

The more people know about other cultures, the lower their risk of misunderstanding or accidentally insulting someone.

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Novas hopes the book will teach Latinos about other Latino cultures, but in the wake of Proposition 187, which seeks to deny most public services to illegal immigrants, she especially wants to show that Latinos, particularly Mexican Americans, have been contributing to this country for a long time.

“That’s my key message,” said Novas, who last year moved to Santa Barbara from her longtime home in New York. “Guess what? We are not foreigners. There have been 17 generations of Mexicans in this country. Santa Fe is older than Jamestown. Not only have we gotten a lot from this country, we’ve given a lot more.”

The publisher would not release any sales figures, but the book is in its second printing and a third is expected soon.

“The book is selling very nicely,” said Deborah Broady, who edited the book for Plume, a division of Penguin Books USA. “We’re very pleased. We expect it to sell well for a long time.”

The book’s popularity may be attributed in part to its question-and-answer format and light writing, which Novas says was designed for broader consumer consumption.

“I thought that if I wrote kind of a cloudy, heavy book nobody would read it,” said Novas. “People hate dates, they don’t want to be lectured. But if I wrote it in a question-and-answer format, where they could pick and choose cafeteria-style, and if I made it somewhat humorous, then it would be more appealing. I wanted to make it a book that was accessible and ready to eat.”

(Unfortunately, the book has more than a few cliches, and the first edition also contained some typos: Chicago city Treasurer Miriam Santos is identified as “Santas,” and former KMEX-TV general manager and ex-NFL kicker Danny Villanueva as “Villarosa.”)

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Writing the book was an education for Novas, who earned her bachelor’s degree in English literature from Hunter College in New York.

“I began this project cherishing some of the same misinformation and stereotypes subscribed to by many with no Hispanic background whatsoever,” Novas confesses in the introduction of the book. “My exposure to Latino history was virtually nonexistent in school, and my introduction to Latino culture came almost exclusively through observations of American writers viewing Latinos rather than Latinos viewing themselves.”

Novas said learning about various Latino cultures has been her dominant interest for 20 years.

“I’m always jotting down notes,” she said. “This is where the magnet of my heart takes me. I call myself a cultural anthropologist, meaning that’s what I’m interested in.”

Her interest in Latino cultures extends to her next projects, including a compilation of biographies of Latinos in U.S. history. The book, “The Hispanic 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Latinos in American History, Past and Present,” will be published by Carol Publishing in May.

“The toughest thing was deciding who made the list and ranking them,” she said. “I didn’t want to rank them. Why should I say that Gloria Estefan is more important than Tito Puente? But that’s what they wanted.”

She is now working on a cookbook with Rosemary Silva, to be published by Knopf next year as part of a series on American cooking. Along with recipes, the book will include a history of each dish and how the ingredients may have changed from generation to generation.

She also was recently contracted to write a study guide and oversee a video production for a Latino art and culture exhibit at the National Museum of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution.

And Novas just completed negotiations for her first novel, written in 1991, to be published by Arte Publico. Titled “Mangos, Bananas and Coconuts: A Cuban Love Story,” it is a tale of a brother and a sister who were separated at birth and later meet and fall in love.

She has completed a second novel, “Fidel Was Handsome Back Then,” about an American man married to a Cuban woman. Only after they separate does he set out to learn about her culture.

Novas may have inherited some of her literary talent from her parents. Her father, Lino Novas Calvo, was Cuba’s official translator of Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and James Joyce. He was also an author (“El Negrero”) and one of the first to write in the magic realism style commonly associated with Latin American writers. Her father, who taught at Syracuse University, died in 1983.

Her mother, Herminia del Portal, was the founder of Vanidades, a popular Spanish-language magazine. Novas began working for her mother as a child and went on to work as a researcher for Time-Life, as an editor for Scholastic Magazine and, at 23, as a senior editor in the multimedia division of Doubleday.

In 1972, her play “Free This Day: A Trial in Seven Exhibits” was published in Scripts, journal of the New York Shakespeare Festival.

From 1986 to 1991, she ran her own public relations firm in New York, where her clients included the Mexican tourist board. In addition to her writing, she hosts two weekly radio talk shows, one broadcast in the New England area, the other Saturdays on KQSB-990 AM in Santa Barbara.

“I love to talk,” Novas said. “I’ve interviewed people all my life, and now I do it on the air.”

Although she will be busy the next few years finishing writing projects, Novas does not like to look too far into the future.

“I don’t know where I’m supposed to be,” she said. “I don’t have any idea. All I want to do is to do the best I can every day. To show up for life, be as loving and conscientious as I can and be mindful of what I am doing.

“If I’m going to insult someone, I want to make sure that I know that I’m insulting them.”

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For Your Information

Here are some excerpts from “Everything You Need to Know About Latino History”:

If Columbus was Italian, why do Latinos celebrate Columbus Day?

Columbus may have come from Genoa, Italy, but his voyage was commissioned by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, and he sailed with a mostly Spanish crew under the Spanish flag. In Latin America, Columbus Day is celebrated as dia de la Raza , day of the races, in recognition of the coming together of the Spanish and Amerindians.

What role did Latinos have in the success of California mining?

When word broke out in 1848 that gold had been discovered in the Sacramento Valley, among the first prospectors to arrive were from Chile and Peru, having sailed up the Pacific Coast. They were soon followed by Mexicans from the state of Sonora and Mexican Americans from throughout the Southwest. Anglos from the East and Europe soon followed and quickly outnumbered the Latinos. The Anglo prospectors knew little of mining, so they learned from Latinos, who used a flat-bottomed pan called a batea .

Was the California Constitution drafted and signed exclusively by Anglos?

Among the delegates who helped draft the California Constitution were such influential Mexican Americans as Pablo de la Guerra, Mariano Vallejo and Jose Antonio Carillo.

Is chocolate really Mexican?

The native people of Mexico made an art of husking, roasting and grinding cacao seeds. Before the Europeans came to Mexico, chocolate was a beverage unknown to them. The Aztecs liked drinking their chocolate with very hot chilies.

Why do Spaniards say “Ole”?

Ole is the Spanish language adaptation of “Allah,” the Arabic word for God. The phrase originally meant “Praise Allah,” a reflection of the seven centuries of Muslim domination of Spain.

Why do Puerto Ricans call their island “Borinquen”?

Borinquen means “the land of the brave lord,” and it is what the original Arawak Indians called the island. Puerto Ricans often call each other Boricua .