Hilary Mantel, whose literary archive is held at The Huntington, is one of the most critically acclaimed authors working today. Her unprecedented double Booker Prize wins for Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies combined with sell-out West End and Broadway stage adaptations and award-winning television dramatizations brought her unquestionable public prominence. But Mantel's Tudor novels constitute only one element of a writing career, which has spanned nearly 34 years, troubled myriad genres, and explored multiple forms.

Jesse Alemán, professor of English at the University of New Mexico, discusses the lives and letters of the Jimeno brothers, whose coming of age in the years before the U.S. Civil War demonstrates that the process of becoming Latino in the United States is a story of uneven assimilation, embattled acculturation, and divided loyalties to family, nation, language, and place.

This is the 2021 Ray Allen Billington Lecture in the History of the American West.