13 books that help understand Latinos and the shift toward Trumpism

There’s a growing list of racist and dehumanizing rhetoric from Donald Trump about immigrants in this country. And yet, while the president elect lost the overall percentage of Latino votes to Vice President Kamala Harris, exit polls showed he made gains with voters, with 54% of Latino men and 38% of Latinas picking him in the 2024 election.
It also marked a record high for a Republican presidential nominee, per Reuters exit poll data.
Since Trump announced his candidacy in 2015, he has called Mexican immigrants “rapists” and referred to immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and African countries as “people from shithole countries.” Most recently, a Trump-supporting comedian called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” sparking backlash from the public and criticism from prominent celebrities including Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin.
So why are Latinos moving toward a seemingly antagonistic political movement? Journalist Paola Ramos, who recently released the book “Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America,” says the answer is complicated.
“At the end of the day, what’s so interesting … is that it’s really not about politics but rather it comes down to people’s individual journey to find belonging in this country,” Ramos says. “A search for belonging − more often than not − is now sort of driving some people toward Trumpism.”
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As Latinos continue to be seen as a homogenous group of voters, authors like Ramos, political consultant Mike Madrid and journalist Maria Hinojosa are working to correct that misunderstanding. Other authors like Karla Cornejo Villavicencio and Héctor Tobar are telling stories that humanize and shed light on the journeys of undocumented immigrants and their positive impact in the U.S.
Here are 13 books that can help us better understand the Latino community, how they shape American politics and why they are not a monolith.
Considered one of the country’s authoritative experts on Latino voters, and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, Mike Madrid’s “The Latino Century: How America’s Largest Minority Is Transforming Democracy” seeks to answer how and why Democrats and Republicans have failed to appeal to the Latino vote and the implications of that.
Using over three decades of research and campaign experience, Madrid argues Latinos make up the fastest segment of the most important swing states in the Electoral College, and “fitting neither the stereotype of the aggrieved minority nor the traditional assimilating immigrant group, Latinos are challenging both political parties’ notions of race, religious beliefs, economic success and the American dream.”
Ramos’ book explores how race, identity and political trauma have ignited a far-right sentiment among Latinos and how this group is shaping American politics.
To write her book, the Telemundo News and MSNBC contributor sat down with Gabriel Garcia, a first-generation Cuban American and former member of the Proud Boys, among other Jan. 6 rioters. She also spoke with a Latino border vigilante from El Paso, Latina members of Moms for Liberty, a conservative group pushing legislation such as Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, evangelical pastors and others.
Read more:In ‘Defectors,’ Paola Ramos explores the effects of Trumpism on the Latino vote
Author Laura E. Gómez, a UCLA School of Law professor, wrote a book to understand where Latinos fit in America’s racial order − the how and why of Latinx identity becoming a distinctive racial identity.
“Latinos have long influenced everything from electoral politics to popular culture‚ yet many people instinctively regard them as recent immigrants rather than a longstanding racial group,” reads Gómez’s website.
In her debut book, the Ecuadorian American writer centers immigrant stories in a way that isn’t inspirational or exploitative but simply real and raw. In New York, the author introduces us to undocumented workers who helped on Ground Zero after Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In Miami, Villavicencio highlights undocumented folks who frequent botánicas because they have no other healthcare options due to their status. In Connecticut, we learn about undocumented men in sanctuaries and the effects of family separation.
The Harvard graduate writes: “The twisted inversion that many children of immigrants know is that, at some point your parents become your children, and your own personal American dream becomes making sure they age and die with dignity in a country that has never wanted them.”
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Anthropologist Jason de Léon paints a more humanizing portrait of smugglers (or coyotes, as they’re most commonly called) as they shepherd migrants from South American countries through Mexico in hopes of arriving in the U.S.
For the book, de Léon spent seven years following the migrants (those from Honduras specifically) and their coyotes in an attempt to understand why smugglers fall into this line of work, and their responsibility over the migrants they’re tasked with guiding toward the possibility of the American dream.
In her book, Peruvian-born author and journalist Marie Arana argues that, as this election has shown, Latinos are not a monolith and they do not represent a single group.
In “LatinoLand,” Arana draws from her own experience as a daughter of a mixed-status family − her mother from Kansas and Boston, and her father a Peruvian-born civil engineer − to attempt to understand the fastest-growing minority group in America.
New Yorker staff writer Jonathan Blitzer covers about four decades of immigration policy and its political implications.
“My biggest hope is that someone might read through this book and attach actual people to all the narratives, slogans, and bromides they hear daily about the immigration issue more generally,” Blitzer said in an interview last month. “I am convinced that a tipping point exists where exposure to the true human drama can overtake callous preconceptions. In recent years, in the US and abroad, there seems to be this idea, masquerading as a kind of pragmatism, that the only way to deal with insoluble policy dilemmas is to harden our hearts against those who are suffering. Not only do I think that’s a false choice; it also gets the policy backwards.”
More:Illegal migration at US border drops to lowest level since 2020
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Héctor Tobar writes a definitive and personal exploration of what it means to be Latino in the U.S.
The journalist and English and Chicano/Latino Studies professor tackles the impact that colonialism, public policy, immigration, media and pop culture have had on decoding the meaning of “Latino” as a racial and ethnic identity.
“Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions” by Mexican novelist Valeria Luiselli is based on her experience as an interpreter for Central American child migrants seeking a new life in the U.S.
The book is structured around the forty questions she asks these undocumented children, whose ages range from 6 into their teens and are facing deportation.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa wrote “Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate In A Torn America” amid the 2020 presidential election. She said the anti-immigration rhetoric spewed by Trump and his supporters under his administration wasn’t new − it was history repeating itself.
“Anti-immigration feeling was and has been a naturally occurring, cyclical phenomenon in this country. It’s not a Republican or Democrat thing; it’s an American thing (until we decide it’s not),” writes Hinojosa in her book.
Historian Paul Ortiz spans more than two hundred years in his book, looking at the intersectional history of the shared struggles for African American and Latinx civil rights.
“I wrote this book because as a scholar I want to ensure that no Latinx or Black children ever again have to be ashamed of who they are and of where they come from,” Ortiz writes in the book’s introduction.
Juan González, a New York Daily News columnist from Puerto Rico, originally published “Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America” in 2000, and in 2022, the first new edition of the book was published. The book spans five centuries − from the European colonization of the Americas through the 2020 election.
“The Devil’s Highway” by Mexican American poet and novelist Luis Alberto Urrea tells the real-life account of a group of 26 men and boys who, in 2001, attempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert of southern Arizona through the deadliest region of the continent. Only 12 survived the trek.