Hello again!

Dear friends, hello again! I hope you’re enjoying summer!

Once again, it has been too long since I’ve been in touch. Let me explain.

The most important development that’s responsible for my silence: since I last posted, I’ve become a Contributing Writer at The New Yorker. I have been, and will be, writing there about Latino history, politics, and culture. This thrilling development has led me to ask, what will Latinos In Depth be for if you can read most of my opinions and analysis there?

So, after thinking on it for a couple months, I’ve decided that Latinos In Depth will be, almost exclusively, about the teaching of Latino History. I’ve been teaching a virtual course for the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History—The History of Latina and Latino People in the United States—which has convinced me that teachers (and students) have a real hunger for Latino history, in part because, as this report from UnidosUS and Johns Hopkins makes clear, it has been taught poorly or insufficiently, if at all. It has been a real pleasure for me to spend much of this summer talking and meeting with K-12 teachers about their classrooms, their students, and their desire for a more inclusive U.S. history than what they’ve offered until now.

I will therefore be posting here lesson plans, primary sources, brief biographical sketches, overviews of important historical events, and interesting archival findings I come across in the process of researching and writing my book, A Thousand Bridges, a history of Latinos over the past 500 years and more. Some subjects could include colonialism, patriotism, culture, and racial and ethnic and political identity.

History teachers, if this sounds right up your alley, please encourage other teachers to subscribe!

It may be that at least some of you signed up to receive this newsletter because you’re looking for cultural and political analysis, rather than my ideas about the teaching of Latino history. If this describes you, and you therefore plan to unsubscribe, I totally understand, and I would encourage you to read and perhaps subscribe to The New Yorker, so you can read more from me—and Graciela Mochkofsky and Stephania Taladrid. But even if you’re mainly interested in culture and politics, maybe you’re also interested in history, in which case, please stick around for awhile!

See you here soon, with a post about Bernardo de Gálvez, how he’s remembered today, and whether or not he’s Latino or has meaning for Latinos in the present. I’ll tell you all about my fascinating meeting with Teresa Valcarce in Washington D.C. She’s the person who’s almost single-handedly responsible for a portrait of Bernardo de Gálvez being hung in the U.S. Congress.