76 books like Agent of Change

In 1881, a reporter described Texas as a “vast wilderness” that was “infested by roaming Mexicans, rattlesnakes, and braying jackasses.”

In other words, it was a land calling for white people to settle, civilize, and supplant the “indolent” Mexican. I was jolted by this and other visceral literary snippets, which De Leon drew from nineteenth-century travelogues, letters, and newspaper articles.

The book exposes the power of the printed word in forming and perpetuating early Euro-American stereotypes claiming Mexican Americans in Texas were unpatriotic, mixed blood, lazy, immoral, and cruel. Writing in 1983, De Leon concluded that these attitudes had shifted into subtler modern racism.

Yet the lynching of Mexican Americans persists in the nation’s second-largest state, with more than 23 massacred in a white supremacist attack at an El Paso Walmart in 2019.

Chavez modernizes the Mexican miscreant myth, explaining how vivid TV news scenes of immigrants inspire visceral reactions.

He argues that the emotions inspired by media coverage of vigilante groups rounding up immigrants are a potent part of “the spectacle” that plays out on the news. Chavez also gives the xenophobic storytelling of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century an updated name: The Latino Threat Narrative.

The book powerfully picks apart ideas posited by the late Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington, among others, that suggest that Mexican Americans won’t assimilate, making them perennial “others” who threaten American democracy. Another thing I like about this book is that it includes a chapter on Latinas and how media coverage of Latina fertility and sexuality plays into racist stereotyping.

The compelling, digestible, and often dangerous metaphor is the star of Brown Tide Rising.

Santa Ana clearly explains that it is the mediated metaphor that embeds itself in our brains, cementing ideas and tropes. Looking at Latino metaphors in historical issues of the Los Angeles Times, he offers a new application for linguist George Lakoff’s cognitive model of metaphor, which studies how metaphors map to each other.

For instance, Santa Ana identifies “flowing waters” as one such metaphoric tie-in that joins metaphors such as tides, surges, waves. I like this book because it is a great reminder about how the images conjured by words—in this case metaphors—make us “see” the world in certain ways. 

Lee & Low, the book’s publisher, describes Shame the Stars as a YA Romeo & Juliet story. This piece of historical fiction is so much more.

It draws on true stories of how Texas Rangers lynched and pillaged Mexican Americans in South Texas. These are stories that my parents heard growing up in San Antonio, Texas, and that were often orally passed on in families, though not so often in the history books of that era.

This novel is on my list because it flips the camera angle on images of Mexican Americans in media, with characters taking to the printing press to assert their rights and tell their stories. One such journalist/protagonist is the father of the character Juliet/Dulceña, who illuminates the misdeeds of the Rangers in his news accounts.

Without giving too much away, I’ll merely hint that the book draws inspiration from the long overlooked crusading Mexican… show more.

Grande’s memoir focuses on her life south and north of the U.S.-Mexico border, which seem like two distinct lives, though neither is easy.

Her life in Mexico is marked by longing for her father who migrates northward to better support his family. Her mother eventually joins her father, and the three children are left with a harsh and insensitive paternal grandmother. When her mother returns because her father has fallen in love with someone else, Reyna’s hopes for a happy family reunion are shattered.

Eventually, Reyna’s father visits and takes her to the US following a perilous journey through the desert. Reyna struggles to adjust to life in the US, but eventually is awarded citizenship. She finds refuge in reading and writing and eventually tells her family story.

I found Grande’s memoir moving because she writes it from a child's perspective and successfully captures the raw and fragile emotions of… show more.

Alice Embree’s story features growth and change. From a home-town girl in a once-sleepy college town, Austin, she becomes an early Students for a Democratic Society activist, a participant in the best—and worst—of SDS campaigns, a central worker—first typist, then writer and printer—in influential underground papers like Rat and especially The Rag. Embree also supported Latin-American progressives, especially in Chile. Most powerfully, she becomes a fierce and energetic trailblazer in the women’s liberation movement and the many activities that movement continues to open for all of us, even in deep red states like her native Texas.  Important for Americans to read, especially those who cannot imagine that girl and mother next door is a Democrat, much less—gasp!—a still-active Socialist.  

V. (Violet) Castro’s debut novel, released in 2021, put her on the horror map, and for good reason.

I loved how she blended Mexican legend and culture to tell a supernatural horror story that is rich in detail, dialogue, and dark humor. The setting is a Texas wedding held on a renovated farm.

But very bad things start to happen, all seemingly tied to a legend of a 1950s murder of a Mexican farmworker. But—so people say—the woman’s death piqued the interest of the Aztec Goddess of Death, who pledges herself to the murdered woman.

Castro’s expert storytelling upends classic tropes to make this book an exhilarating and frightening literary ride that is smart and timely.

The China Bayles series by Susan Wittig-Albert introduced me to characters who are brave without being superpowered.

China Bayles is a female protagonist who is strong-willed and intelligent. The stories about her never emphasize her looks other than describing things that would be overlooked on television.

She’s left her job as a Texas attorney and runs an herb shop (it expands in later books). She’s more likely to have dirt under her nails and sneakers on her feet rather than a fresh mani-pedi with stilettos for superhero-style espionage.

China is surrounded by a tight group of loved ones. These are characters that go through troubles. They support each other. The series gives middle-aged people something to embrace when typical pop culture never lets anyone age.

After reading some China Bayles stories, I noticed myself doing new things like planting small porch pots of pansies and herbs. With small steps come… show more.

The Time It Never Rained tells the grim battle between ranchers and drought in 1950s western Texas.

I grew up on a small Minnesota farm and remember my father’s struggle to keep the farm going, but at least he never faced a seven-year drought. A stubborn rancher who reminded me of my father, refuses to give in or ask for help.

I especially liked the secondary story of illegal immigrants, attitudes of ranchers toward the Feds tasked with arresting and deporting them, and the government programs that backfired in the end. It’s an excellent read that left me thankful for every drop of rain and blade of green grass. Its lessons of racism and kindness are pertinent to today’s world.

This is what I wrote when, as a judge in 2020, I recommended All God’s Children win the prestigious Spur Award for Best Traditional Western:

“From the opening sentence, the opening paragraph, and page, Aaron Gwyn sweeps us into an early nineteenth-century America bursting at the seams. He tells the tale of two very different folks, a young man disowned by his family in Kentucky, and a young slave girl from Virginia who refuses to accept her lot in life. Both their paths lead them to Texas. For Duncan, to fight in the revolution and serve heroically with the Texas Rangers, yet can never have true love; for Cecelia, to know freedom and love on the frontier, only to have both brutally snatched away in an instant. Beautifully written in simple, classic prose, Gwyn offers us a fresh, yet timeless glimpse into two American lives that finally find, in themselves… show more.