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We Were Illegal
- Uncovering a Texas Family's Mythmaking and Migration
- Narrated by: Jessica Goudeau
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
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Publisher's summary
An award-winning author's deep exploration of pivotal moments in Texas history through multiple generations of her own family, and a ruthless reexamination of our national and personal myths
Seven generations of Jessica Goudeau’s family have lived in Texas, and her family’s legacy—a word she heard often growing up—was rooted in faith, right-living, and the hard work that built their great state. It wasn’t until her aunt mentioned a stowaway ancestor and she began to dig more deeply into the story of the land she lives on today in suburban Austin, that Goudeau discovered her family’s far more complicated role in Texas history: from a swindling land grant agent in the earliest days of Anglo settlement that brought slavery to Mexican land, up through her Texas Ranger great-uncle, who helped a sociopathic sheriff cover up mass murder.
Tracking her ancestors’ involvement in pivotal moments from before the Texas Revolution through today, We Were Illegal is at once an intimate and character-driven narrative and an insider’s look at a state that prides itself on its history. It is an act of reckoning and recovery on a personal scale, as well as a reflection of the work we all must do to dismantle the whitewashed narratives that are passed down through families, communities, and textbooks. And it is a story filled with hope—by facing these hypocrisies and long-buried histories, Goudeau explores with us how to move past this fractured time, take accountability for our legacy, and learn to be better, more honest ancestors.
* This audiobook edition includes a downloadable PDF with a family tree.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
Critic reviews
“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
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Around four thousand years ago, the mysterious Minoans sculpted statues of topless women with snakes slithering on their arms. Over one thousand years later, Sappho wrote great poems of longing and desire. For classicist Daisy Dunn, these women—whether they were simply sitting at their looms at home or participating in the highest echelons of power—were up to something much more interesting than other histories would lead us to believe. Together, these women helped to make antiquity as we know it.
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So comprehensive!
- By jf on 09-14-24
By: Daisy Dunn
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Keeping the Faith
- God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation
- By: Brenda Wineapple
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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The dramatic story of the 1925 Scopes trial, which captivated the nation and exposed profound divisions in America that still resonate today—divisions over the meaning of freedom, religion, education, censorship, and civil liberties in a democracy.
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A retelling but with more detail
- By WH Griesar on 09-14-24
By: Brenda Wineapple
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The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club
- A Novel
- By: Helen Simonson
- Narrated by: Fiona Hardingham, Helen Simonson
- Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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It is the summer of 1919, and Constance Haverhill is without prospects. Now that all the men have returned from the front, she has been asked to give up her cottage and her job at the estate she helped run during the war. While she looks for a position as a bookkeeper or—horror—a governess, she’s sent as a lady’s companion to an old family friend who is convalescing at a seaside hotel. Despite having only weeks to find a permanent home, Constance is swept up in the social whirl of Hazelbourne-on-Sea after she rescues the local baronet’s daughter, Poppy Wirrall, from a social faux pas.
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Well done
- By lydia jones on 07-31-24
By: Helen Simonson
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The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum
- The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss
- By: Margalit Fox
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1850, an impoverished twenty-five-year-old named Fredericka Mandelbaum came to New York in steerage and worked as a peddler on the streets of Lower Manhattan. By the 1870s she was a fixture of high society and an admired philanthropist. How was she able to ascend from tenement poverty to vast wealth? In the intervening years, “Marm” Mandelbaum had become the country’s most notorious “fence”—a receiver of stolen goods—and a criminal mastermind.
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A waste of time!
- By DGF on 07-23-24
By: Margalit Fox
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Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here
- The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis
- By: Jonathan Blitzer
- Narrated by: Jonathan Blitzer, André Santana
- Length: 18 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Everyone who makes the journey faces an impossible choice. Hundreds of thousands of people who arrive every year at the US-Mexico border travel far from their homes. An overwhelming share of them come from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, although many migrants come from farther away. Some are fleeing persecution, others crime or hunger. Very often it will not be their first attempt to cross. They may have already been deported from the United States, but it remains their only hope for safety and prosperity. Their homes have become uninhabitable. They will take their chances.
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How America Created its Own Border Problem
- By Amazon Customer on 04-19-24
By: Jonathan Blitzer
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Bear
- A Novel
- By: Julia Phillips
- Narrated by: Sophie Amoss
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Sam and Elena dream of another life. On the island off the coast of Washington where they were born and raised, they and their mother struggle to survive. Sam works on the ferry that delivers wealthy mainlanders to their vacation homes while Elena bartends at the local golf club, but even together they can’t earn enough to get by, stirring their frustration about the limits that shape their existence.
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Depressing drudgery
- By Catherine on 08-09-24
By: Julia Phillips
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The Cliffs: Reese's Book Club
- A Novel
- By: J. Courtney Sullivan
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr, Tanis Parenteau, Emily Lawrence, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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On a secluded bluff overlooking the ocean sits a Victorian house, lavender with gingerbread trim, a home that contains a century’s worth of secrets. By the time Jane Flanagan discovers the house as a teenager, it has long been abandoned. The place is an irresistible mystery to Jane. There are still clothes in the closets, marbles rolling across the floors, and dishes in the cupboards, even though no one has set foot there in decades. The house becomes a hideaway for Jane, a place to escape her volatile mother.
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Reese Witherspoon choice
- By L. T. Gerhardt on 07-06-24
What listeners say about We Were Illegal
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Physicist on Violin
- 08-11-24
Very good read
I really enjoyed this book. The author appears to have done extensive homework into a topic she feels personally invested in. The flow of the stories from one era to another is very good.
Understanding the cost of establishing and growing Texas into my 'Lone Star State', in terms of those who benefitted and those who lost, is well communicated. She conveys that history is not clean, and all who settled Texas did not wear white hats. However, she does not beat us over the head; instead, she wants us to be informed so we can understand the mosaic.
I would recommend reading 'Lone Star' by T.R. Fehrenbach as a contrasting book. It takes a macro view of the evolution of Texas. Further, he put it in terms of a primitive environment with competing and often hostile parties vying for territory.
Thank you Dr Goudeau!
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