Recommended Readings
The Gone to Texas Project has curated a recommended reading list books that educate and inspire action on issues related to immigration in Texas (and the United States). You can view that full list below.
Set in Brownsville, Where We Come From tackles the crisis of U.S. immigration policy from a deeply human angle. Cásares explores the ways that family history shapes us, how secrets can burden us, and how finding compassion and understanding for others can ultimately set us free.to
It’s to overstate the influence of queer Chicana literary scholar Gloria Anzaldúa. Before her death in 2004, the Rio Grande Valley native pushed the boundaries of feminism and social justice activism, powerfully articulating what it means to be from the border. Her most famous book, Borderlands/La Frontera, blends prose and poetry, Spanish and English, literary theory and memoir into a true tour de force.o hi
These remarkable oral histories of undocumented men and women struggling to carve a life for themselves in the U.S. “[fill] a gap in our understanding of [immigration] by humanizing the people at the center of an otherwise cold debate” (Huffington Post).
The welcoming and acceptance of immigrants and refugees has been central to America’s identity for centuries–yet America has periodically turned its back at the times of greatest humanitarian need. After the Last Border is an intimate look at the lives of two women as they struggle for the twenty-first century American dream, having won the “golden ticket” to settle as refugees in Austin, Texas.
“This book is about homelessness, not in a traditional sense, but in the unsettled, unmoored psychological state that undocumented immigrants like myself find ourselves in. This book is about lying and being forced to lie to get by; about passing as an American and as a contributing citizen; about families, keeping them together, and having to make new ones when you can’t. This book is about constantly hiding from the government and, in the process, hiding from ourselves. This book is about what it means to not have a home.”
A collection of short stories in which the writers share powerful personal stories of living between cultures and languages while struggling to figure out who they are and where they belong. Editor Nikesh Shukla has compiled essays that are poignant, challenging, angry, humorous, heartbreaking, polemic, weary and – most importantly – real.