When Fernando Mendoza won the Heisman Trophy This weekend, as another Latino finalist watched from the crowd, the Cuban-American quarterback did more than just become the first Indiana Hoosier to win college football's top prize and only the third Latino to do so. He also subtly made a radical statement: Latinos don't just belong in this country, they are essential.
At a time when questions swirl around the largest minority group in this country that cast us in a demeaning, symbolic light—how could so many of us vote for Trump in 2024? Why don't we assimilate faster? Why does Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh think immigration agents can classify us based on race? — the fact that two of the best college football players in the country this year were Hispanic quarterbacks didn't attract the same headlines they would have a generation ago. This is because we are now in an era where Latinos are a part of sports in the United States like never before.
This is the untold thesis of the four great books I have read this year. Each is rooted in Hispanic pride, but treats their subjects not only as athletic wonders and pioneers, but as great athletes who have been and continue to be the backbone of not only their professions and communities, but society as a whole.
Shea Serrano writing about anything is like a really big burrito: you know it's going to be great, and it exceeds your expectations when you finally take a bite of it, you swear you're not going to gulp it all down at once, but have no regrets when you inevitably do. He could write about concrete and it would be true, but his latest New York Times bestseller (four in total, which likely makes him the only Mexican American writer to receive such an honor) thankfully focuses instead on his favorite sport.
“Dear Basketball” finds Serrano at his best, a mixture of humblebrag, rambling and fun (longtime San Antonio Spurs fan Rasheed Wallace wrote that the star forward “collected technical fouls with the same enthusiasm and determination with which little children collect Pokemon cards”). Proud Tejano's mixture of styles—straightforward essays, listicles, repeated phrases or words repeated like incantations, copious footnotes—ensures that he always keeps the reader guessing.
But his genius is that he notices things that no one else can. Who else would be journeyman power forward Gordon Hayward, the “fall guy” in Kobe Bryant's last game, the one in which he scored 60 points and led the Lakers to a thrilling fourth-quarter comeback? Linked the Carlos Williams poem a friend texted him by mistake to WNBA Hall of Famer Sue Bird? We're reminded that the hapless Charlotte Hornets, who haven't made the playoffs in nearly a decade, were once considered so tough that two of their stars were featured in the original Space Jam? Basic Basketball is so good that you'll swear you'll read just a couple of Serrano's essays and not regret the day, which flies by as quickly as Nikola Jokic's assist.
“Mexico-American Baseball in the South Bay”
(Gustavo Arellano/Los Angeles Times)
I recommended “Mexican-American Baseball in the South Bay“in my usual column three years ago, so why am I including its second edition? First, the audacity of its existence—how can you possibly justify turning a 450-page book about an unknown stretch of Southern California into an 800-page one? But in an age when telling your story because no one else will or will do a bad job with it is more important than ever, the authors of this volume prove how true it is.
“Mexican-American Baseball in the South Bay” is part of an ongoing series about the history of Mexican-American baseball in Latino communities in Southern California. What's so great about this novel is that it boldly asserts the history and community narratives that are too often overlooked in Southern California Latino literature, in favor of the Eastsides and Santa Anas of the region.
As series editor Richard A. Santillan noted that the response to the original South Bay book was so positive that he and others involved with the Latin American Baseball History Project decided to expand it. Well-written essays introduce each chapter; long captions for family and team photos serve as yearbook entries. Of particular value are newspaper clippings from La Opinión, showing the vigor of Southern Californians that have never been featured in the English-language press.
This book will probably only be read cover to cover by people with ties to the South Bay, and that's understandable. But it's also a challenge for all other Latino communities: If people from Wilmington to Hermosa Beach to Compton can cover their sports history in such detail, why can't the rest of us?
(University of Colorado Press)
One of the most amazing books I read this year was Jorge Iber's book “The Sanchez Family: Mexican American High School and Collegiate Wrestlers from Cheyenne, Wyoming“, a short read that examines two topics that are rarely written about: Mexican American freestyle wrestlers and Mexican Americans in the Equality State. Despite its novelty, it is the least polished of my four recommendations. Because this is ostensibly a scholarly book, Iber loads the pages with quotes and references to other scholars to the point that it sometimes reads like a bibliography, and one wonders why the author doesn't focus more on his own work. And in one chapter, Iber references his own work in the first person – teacherYou're cool, but you're not Rickey Henderson.
“The Sanchez Family” overcomes these limitations with the strength of its plot, whose main characters are descended from Guanajuato-born ancestors who arrived in Wyoming a century ago and founded a multi-generational wrestling dynasty worthy of the much more famous Guerrero clan. Iber documents how the success of several Sanchez men on the wrestling mat led to success in public life, and encourages other scholars to study how prep sports have long served as a springboard for Latinos to break into mainstream society—because nothing creates recognition like winning.
“We have teachers, engineers and other professions in our family,” Iber quotes Gil Sanchez Sr., a member of the first generation of grapplers. “It’s all because a 15-year-old boy [him]…decided to become a fighter.”
Have you heard that boxing is a dying sport? Editorial staff of the magazine “Rings of Dissent: Boxing and Riot PerformancesRudy Mondragon, Gay Teresa Johnson and David J. Leonard not only refuse to support this idea, but also call such criticism “rooted in racist and classist mythology.”
(University of Illinois Press)
They then offer a stirring, eclectic collection of essays on the beautiful science that showcases the sport as a metaphor for the struggles and triumphs of those who have practiced it for more than 150 years in the United States. It's no surprise that California Latinos are getting the lead roles. Cal State Channel Islands professor Jose M. Alamillo digs into the case of two Mexican boxers who were denied entry into the United States in the 1930s because of the racism of the time, unearthing a letter to the Department of Labor that reads like a Stephen Miller rant: “California now has a surplus of cheap boxers from Mexico, and something must be done to prevent others from entering.”
Roberto José Andrade Franco retells the saga of Oscar De La Hoya vs Julio Cesar Chaveznot so much on the side of the former, but rather pointing out the assimilationist façade of the Golden Boy. Mondragon talks about Central Valley welterweight Jose Carlos Ramirez's political activism both inside and outside the ring. Despite the excitement and love that each of the members of Rings of Dissent displays in their essays, they do not romanticize it. No one can appreciate its beauty and sadness more clearly than Mondragon's fellow Loyola Marymount student of Latinos. teacherPriscilla Leyva. She examines the role of boxing gyms in Los Angeles, focusing on three—the Broadway boxing gym and the City of Angels boxing gym in South Los Angeles, and the since-closed Barrio boxing gym in El Sereno.
“Trying to imagine a different future for yourself, your community, and your city is not a guarantee of unambiguous success,” she writes. “Rather, as in boxing, dissent requires a fight.”
If those aren't the wisest words for Latinos in the coming year, I'm not sure what are.
