Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism

Named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR

An NPR Best Book of the Year, exploring the impact of Latinos’ new collective racial identity on the way Americans understand race, with a new afterword by the author

Who are Latinos and where do they fit in America’s racial order? In this “timely and important examination of Latinx identity” (Ms.), Laura E. Gómez, a leading critical race scholar, argues that it is only recently that Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, Central Americans, and others are seeing themselves (and being seen by others) under the banner of a cohesive racial identity. And the catalyst for this emergent identity, she argues, has been the ferocity of anti-Latino racism.

In what Booklist calls “an incisive study of history, complex interrogation of racial construction, and sophisticated legal argument,” Gómez “packs a knockout punch” (Publishers Weekly), illuminating for readers the fascinating race-making, unmaking, and re-making processes that Latinos have undergone over time, indelibly changing the way race functions in this country.

Building on the “insightful and well-researched” (Kirkus Reviews) material of the original, the paperback features a new afterword in which the author analyzes results of the 2020 Census, providing brilliant, timely insight about how Latinos have come to self-identify.

Laura E. Gómez is the Rachel F. Moran Endowed Chair in Law at UCLA and also a professor in the departments of sociology and Chicana/Chicano & Central American studies. She is a member of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Latino scholarly advisory committee and the author of Manifest Destinies, Mapping “Race,” and Misconceiving Mothers, as well as Inventing Latinos (The New Press). She lives in Los Angeles.