Publishers Weekly
04/01/2024
Disturbed by a rise of xenophobic extremism in her home state of Texas, journalist Goudeau (After the Last Border) sets out in this ruminative account to investigate whether her family has always been as welcoming toward strangers as they were during her childhood. She is shocked to discover that her ancestors tore a destructive path across America that included owning slaves and participating in lynchings and feuds. Tracing her family’s migration from Virginia—where in the late 18th century her great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Slowman Reese was a plantation overseer—to Tennessee and then Texas, Goudeau unspools a narrative in which the family’s early entrenchment in slavery festered as white supremacist beliefs and a penchant for violence in Slowman’s descendants—whom, in Goudeau’s telling, went on to play surpisingly pivotal yet below-the-radar roles in Texas history. Among them are Robert Leftwich, a land grant agent involved in early 19th-century schemes to get Anglo Texans to rebel against Mexico; Sam Houston Reese, a sheriff who waged a deadly feud with his political rivals in the 1890s; and the author’s great-uncle Frank Probst, a Texas Ranger implicated in the 1945 murder of a Latino migrant worker family. Introspective and detailed, Goudeau’s questing narrative, which strikes out in many directions in search of answers, at times feels circuitous. Still, it’s a valuable contribution to Texas history. (June)
From the Publisher
Texas occupies a complex space in the American landscape. Goudeau argues that the state's history is essential to understanding some of American society’s most important contradictions around liberty, faith, and personhood...some of the most moving parts of the book come from Goudeau finding the people helped—and harmed—by her ancestors’ choices. This is an empathic and thoughtfully told work, sure to encourage reflection on the legacies we choose to inherit.” —Booklist
“This is not just a book about one family, or one state. At a time when history has become a primary battlefield in the culture wars, We Were Illegal models for us how to engage the darker chapters of our individual and collective stories, and shows us why we must. With unflinching honesty and deep empathy, Jessica Goudeau brings readers to a place of hard-earned hope. Thoroughly engrossing, this book is a gift to a divided nation.”
—Kristin Kobes Du Mez, New York Times bestselling author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation
“A riveting and honest look at the myths that become our official histories, our laws, and the stories we tell ourselves. Goudeau makes history come alive and feel more relevant than ever.” —Bryan Burrough, co-author of Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth
“Clear-eyed, deeply moral and rigorously researched…We Were Illegal is a necessary corrective, and a gripping read for anyone interested in how our national myths are shaped." —Alejandra Oliva, author of Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith and Migration
“You start turning over rocks in Texas and there’s no telling what will crawl out. Jessica Goudeau digs centuries deep into her family’s past and emerges with some astonishing tales: land thefts, murder and official corruption, but also great bravery, perseverance, and heroic sacrifice. In a state where the whitewashing of history is government sanctioned, We Were Illegal delivers the real story. This is a courageous book.” —Doug J. Swanson, author of Cult of Glory: The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers
“In this richly written epic, Goudeau deftly takes on myths so important to Texans, arguing that the way we’ve long told our stories has created the extreme political climate we see today. Beneath this enthralling saga beats, at its heart, an impassioned plea: that setting the record straight will allow Texas, and the nation, to live up to its lofty ideals at last.” —Roxanna Asgarian, author of We Were Once a Family, winner of the ALA Carnegie Medal
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2024-04-25
An invigorating history that will displease legislators and would-be despots throughout the Lone Star State.
In 2019, Stephen Harrigan’s Big Wonderful Thing asked difficult questions about Texas from a macro level. Goudeau, a San Antonio native with a bloodline in the state stretching over two centuries, examines some of the same issues through the lens of her family history. Though she “loved Texas my whole life,” what she uncovered is not pretty. For example, an ancestor executed by Santa Anna’s forces at Goliad was one of a generation of newcomers who was part of “an ad hoc system that grew from the machinations of desperate men trying to make a buck and get ahead.” That system, if it were to be successful, relied on the labor of enslaved people, and one reason to revolt against Mexico was that Mexico planned to abolish slavery. The political fortunes of many Anglos hinged on keeping the Latinx population terrified. One Texas Ranger relative, Goudeau writes, very likely “lied under oath to free a serial killer” in that interest. The author is consistently thoughtful and unsparing, and although she hits on just the right formula to explain the Texas attitude of conquest and control (“our right to flourish was God-given, and higher than anyone else’s rights”), she catalogs as many failures as successes among forebears who wound up full of lead and forced from land and power. Throughout, she skillfully connects past to present. The redlining that marginalized communities in big chunks of Texas cities, for instance, is part and parcel of the habit of right-wing Texas politicos to consider everyone with a Spanish surname to be in Texas illegally.
Expect to see bans of this powerful book, one that every Texan should read.
