When Fernando Mendoza won the Heisman Trophy this weekend with another Latino finalist looking on from the crowd, the Cuban-American quarterback did more than become the first Indiana Hoosier to win college football’s top award, and only the third Latino to do so. He also gave a strong statement: Latinos don’t just belong in this country, they matter.
At a time when questions are swirling around the nation’s largest minority group that casts us in a derogatory, symbolic light – how could so many of us vote for Trump in 2024? Why don’t we measure quickly? Why does Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh think it’s OK for immigration agents to release our racial information? – The fact that two of the best college football players in the country this year were Latino quarterbacks didn’t draw the headlines they would have a generation ago. That’s because we now live in an era where Latinos are more part of the fabric of sports in the United States than ever before.
That is the inexplicable thesis of the four great books I read this year. Each is rooted in Latino pride but treats their subjects not just as sportsmen and pioneers but great athletes who were important and significant not only in their careers and community but in society as a whole.
Shea Serrano’s writing about anything is like an oversized burrito – you know it’s going to be good and exceed your expectations when you finally bite into it, vowing not to finish the whole thing in one go but not regretting anything if you do. He can write about concrete and this may be true, but his latest New York Times bestseller (four in all, possibly making him the only Mexican American author with that distinction) is thankfully about the sport he loves.
“Expensive Basketball” finds Serrano at his best, a mixture of humblebrag, rambles and joy (of Rasheed Wallace, a lifelong San Antonio Spurs fan wrote the forward “would collect technical fouls with the same zeal as young children collect Pokémon cards.”) The boastful Tejano words, the repeated styles or the repeated styles of Tejano expressions, the many footnotes – confirm that he always keeps the reader guessing.
But his genius is in noticing things that no one else can. Who else would have decorated power forward Gordon Hayward as the fall guy for Kobe Bryant’s final game, where he scored 60 points and led the Lakers to a thrilling fourth-quarter comeback? Did you tie a Carlos Williams poem that a friend accidentally texted to WNBA Hall of Famer Sue Bird? Remind us that the hapless Charlotte Hornets — who haven’t made the playoffs in nearly a decade — were once considered so cool that two of their stars were featured in the original “Space Jam”? “Essential Basketball” is so good that you could swear you’d read a few of Serrano’s articles and not regret a fleeting afternoon as Nikola Jokic’s assistant.
“Mexican American Baseball in the South Bay”
(Gustavo Arellano/Los Angeles Times)
I recommended “Mexican American Baseball in the South Bay” on my regular walk column three years ago, so why am I linking its second edition? First, the integrity of its existence – how on earth can one justify turning a 450-page book in an unnamed part of Southern California into 800 pages? But in a time when telling your story because no one else will or will do a bad job is more important than ever, the participants of this volume prove how true that is.
“Mexican American Baseball in the South Bay” is part of a long-running series about the history of Mexican American baseball in Southern California Latino communities. What stands out about this one is that it boldly asserts the history and issues of a community that is often overlooked in Southern California Latino literature in favor of the region’s Eastsides and Santa Anas.
As series editor Richard A. Santillan noted, the response to the first South Bay book was so positive that he and others in the Latino History Baseball Project decided to expand it. Well-written essays introduce each chapter; long captions for family and group photos that serve as yearbook entries. Most important are the newspaper clippings from La Opinión that showed the movement of Southern Californians who never made it to the pages of English-language publications.
Maybe only people with South Bay connections will read this book cover to cover, 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 piece together their sports history so well, why can’t the rest of us?
(University of Colorado Press)
One of the most amazing books I’ve read this year is Jorge Iber’s “The Sanchez Family: Mexican American High School and Collegiate Wrestlers from Cheyenne, Wyoming,” a short read that addresses two topics rarely written about: Mexican freestyle wrestlers and Mexican Americans in the State of Equality. Despite its novelty, it is not perfect for my four recommendations. Appearing to be an academic book, Iber loads the pages with quotes and references to other scholars until it reads like a textbook and one wonders why the author doesn’t focus more on his work. And in one chapter, Iber refers to his work in the first person – the professoryou’re cool but you’re not Rickey Henderson.
“The Sanchez Family” overcomes these limitations with the power of its title, whose characters come from ancestors born in Guanajuato who arrived in Wyoming a century ago and established a diverse wrestling dynasty worthy of the well-known Guerrero family. Iber writes how the success of many Sanchez men on the wrestling mat led to success in public life and urges other scholars to examine how preparatory sports have long served as a basis for Latinos to enter mainstream society – because nothing creates acceptance like winning.
“In our family, we have teachers, engineers and other professions,” Iber quotes Gil Sanchez Sr. a member of the first generation of grapplers. “It’s all because of a 15-year-old boy [him]…he decided to be a champion.”
Have you heard that boxing is a dying sport? The editors of “Rings of Dissent: Boxing and Performances of Rebellion” will have none of it. Rudy Mondragón, Gaye Theresa Johnson and David J. Leonard not only refuse to accept that view, they call such criticism “based on myths of racial and class discrimination.”
(University of Illinois Press)
Then they go on to offer an electrifying, unique collection of science fiction essays that show the game as a metaphor for the struggles and triumphs of those who have been doing it for more than 150 years in the United States. Surprisingly, California Latinos get the starring role. Cal State Channel Islands professor José M. Alamillo digs into the case of two Mexican boxers who were denied entry to the United States in the 1930s, due to the racism of the time, unearthing a letter to the Department of Labor that reads as Stephen Miller said: “California currently has an abundance of cheap boxers from Mexico, and something must be done about the others.
Roberto José Andrade Franco recounts the saga of Oscar De La Hoya versus Julio Cesar Chavez, coming down a little on the former side rather than pointing to the Golden Boy’s assimilationist facade. Mondragón talks about the political activism of Central Valley light welterweight José Carlos Ramírez both in and out of the ring. Despite the verve and love each of the contributors to “The Opposition” have in their stories, they do not act like love. No one is more clear about its beauty and sadness than Loyola Marymount Latino’s Mondragón studies. the professorPriscilla Leiva. He examines the role of boxing gyms in Los Angeles, focusing on three – Broadway Boxing Gym and City of Angels Boxing in South LA, and the now closed Barrio Boxing in El Sereno.
He writes: “Efforts to envision a different future for yourself, your community, and the city do not guarantee that they will be undeniably successful. Instead, like a boxing match, disagreements require struggle.”
If those aren’t the smartest words for Latinos to embrace next year, I’m not sure what is.
