United States · Literary fiction
George Washington Gómez
Growing up in the Rio Grande Valley, George Washington Gómez confronts competing expectations about who he should become. His family’s Mexican heritage meets schooling, racial prejudice and the pressures of an American society increasingly dominant in the region.
Written in the 1930s, Paredes’s novel places the making of an identity within the making of modern Texas. Land disputes, violence and changing livelihoods shape its border landscape. It belongs to a journey through Mexican American life in the United States, rather than to a list of novels set in Mexico.
“An absorbing, heart-rending story told with sensitivity and wisdom”
Beaumont Enterprise, quoted by Arte Público Press
Coming of age; Borderlands; Identity; Mexican American life; Family