Welcome to Litsy!

A quick read touching on Texas history that you may not know surrounding Indigenous and enslaved people. The author reminds us how important it is to know our history, and that you can both love and criticize something at the same time. This is an ongoing and important lesson to remember in these frightening times.

I went into this knowing very little about the Alamo, except that we are supposed to remember it. It was well researched and told the history of Texas leading up to the battle and the aftermath, up to present day (Phil Collins?? Really?)

It was disheartening to see how the myth of the Alamo has been used to oppress people of Mexican descent since the battle in 1836.

Libro.fm offered this audiobook for free on June 19th and I scooped it up and gave it a listen. It's a relatively short book, around 3 hours, but goes into the history of Juneteenth as well as the continued effects of slavery in our country afterwards and the author's personal experience as a Black woman growing up in Texas. Very informative and important, showing the integral role of African Americans in Texas history

Thank you to Libro.fm for making this audiobook free for Juneteenth! In this brief but sprawling and powerful exploration of Juneteenth, native Texan and Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard historian Annette Gordon-Reed weaves together history with her own experience growing up in Texas, uplifting the impact Black people have had on Texas history and providing a larger, more complex, and utterly alive historical and cultural context for the holiday.

#two4Tuesday

1) All 3 I think: I live in a little city completely within the city limits of San Antonio and very near downtown SA. So I‘m a city girl. We have a house at the lake, a little less than an hour north of here, the suburbs, and I enjoy time at my parents‘ farm where they moved when they retired, and where I spent a good part of my childhood with my grandparents when they were still alive

2) Love the tagged book!

Got this in San Antonio TX. Great book about the history of Texas and about black people‘s contribution to it, as well as the author experience as a black woman growing up in the state

Sale of the Century!! The Angel of Goliad is on sale today for 99¢ Get your copy while it lasts! Amazon might just run out of ebooks! #historicalfiction #timetravel #books #indieauthor #timebender #texashistory #historylover
https://amzn.to/3UCcjWh

Lawrence Wright is a writer, journalist and fellow at the Center for Law and Security at New York University. A mix of travelogue, anecdotes of his life in Texas and overview of Texas‘s history, politics and economy, I enjoyed Wright‘s conversational writing style but didn‘t feel like I understood the contradictions within the state, partly because he skewers towards the view of the privileged rather than those with a lower income.

Fantastic! This historiography (the study of historical writing (looked it up), was fascinating. A non-Texan living in Texas, I‘ve heard a lot about the Alamo & knew a lot of it was contradictory, but these authors researched it all, from every viewpoint, & wrote something true, thought provoking, & funny. They grabbed me from page 1 where they envision the ends of the Alamo spectrum as Phil Collins & Ozzy Osborne and it was as hard to put down.

Only got 6 Bingoes in June, but that is ok, it was a busy month and I‘m in that middle of 4 books right now so July will start off well. I moved 3 of the 4 I missed in June to July and am pushing to finish 6 ARCs and some off my #TBR. Love starting a month with a clean slate!