María Amparo Ruiz de Burton

Lola Medina, a Mexican child living in the mid-nineteenth century, comes to live with a New England family who eventually appropriate all of her funds, in this parody of domestic nineteenth century novels

Who Would Have Thought It?

The Squatter and the Don, originally published in San Francisco in 1885, is the first fictional narrative written and published in English from the perspective of the conquered Mexican population that, despite being granted the full rights of citizenship under the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848, was, by 1860, a subordinated and marginalized national minority.

The Squatter and the Don

"Inviting comparison to Uncle Tom's Cabin, María Amparo Ruiz de Burton's illuminating political novel [originally published in 1885], is also an engaging historical romance. Set in San Diego shortly after the United States' annexation of California and written from the point of view of a native Californio, the story centers on two families: the Alamars of the landed Mexican gentry, and the Darrells, transplanted New Englanders-and their tumultuous struggles over property, social status, and personal integrity."--Cover.

Who Would Have Thought It? (1872) is a novel by Mexican American author María Amparo Ruiz de Burton. The novel, Ruiz de Burton’s debut, is a semi-autobiographical story of race, class, and gender set before and during the American Civil War. Central to its focus are the ways in which the Californio elite were forced into competition with Anglo-American settlers arriving out west after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican American War. While on a geological expedition in the American Southwest, Dr. Norval is tasked with rescuing a young girl from her Apache captors. He finds Maria Dolores Medina, a ten-year-old girl from a prominent Californio family of Spanish-Mexican heritage, and is asked by the girl’s mother to adopt her and take her back to New England. Norval promises to do so and returns with the girl, surprising of his wife who harbors deep racial prejudices and mistrusts anyone born into the Catholic faith. As the American Civil War begins, Dr. Norval, a Democrat, is suspected of harboring Confederate sympathies and is eventually forced into exile in Egypt. When he leaves, Lola stays behind with his wife. Both personal and political, historical and fictional, Who Would Have Thought It? is a novel that captures a complex moment in American history without losing sight of the humanity at its heart. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of María Amparo Ruiz de Burton’s Who Would Have Thought It? is a classic of Mexican American literature reimagined for modern readers.

A Novel

Beatrice Pita

Rosaura Sánchez

María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, the recently discovered nineteenth-century novelist, broke many of the boundaries that circumscribed the life of both women and Hispanics in the southwestern territories of the United States. Not only was she the first Hispanic novelist to write English, but her courage and resolve took her into the circles of governmental and financial power where very few women had tread before. Conflicts of Interest captures the conflicted personality of María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, a woman pulled in different directions by tensions of class, race, gender, and nationality. The trajectory of Ruiz de Burtons life through her correspondence makes for a compelling and revealing narrative, one that brings to life the evolution of discourse and culture in the Southwest as it was becoming integrated in the United States a process which, some might argue, continues today. This volume is as complete a collection of the Ruiz de Burton letters as is possible, given the imperfect historical record. Included are various personal and business documents and a collection of articles about her family. Among her correspondents were such important historical figures as Samuel L. M. Barlow, E. W. Morse, Prudenciana Moreno, and Platón Vallejo. But this album is not a simple collection of letters and documents; rather, researchers Sánchez and Pita have made great efforts to reconstitute Ruiz de Burtons life and times through their analysis and commentary.

María Amparo Ruiz de Burton

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