Books like Manifest Destinies — picked by fans

This book is required reading for anyone wanting to understand how race operates in the U.S. as an ever-changing social construct.

While many people only read Chapter 4 (the one usually assigned in college courses), I urge you to read the whole book—it’s packed with insights that are often overlooked. One line that stopped me in my tracks was on page 111: “Once specific concepts of race are widely circulated and accepted as a social reality, racial difference is not dependent on visual observation alone.” That sentence reshaped how I thought about race in education and beyond.

Omi and Winant’s work is foundational, and it’s one I returned to while writing “How Schools Make Race” to grapple with the complexities of racial formation.

I picked up this book because I was struggling to make sense of the different ways race is theorized in education. Zeus Leonardo’s work blew me away—it’s like he handed me a map to navigate the complexities of race frameworks. He breaks down four major approaches, critiques their limitations, and then introduces his own concept of “race ambivalence,” which completely shifted my perspective.

What I love most is how Leonardo doesn’t just theorize; he challenges readers to think critically about how these frameworks play out in real life. This book isn’t just for educators—it’s for anyone who wants to understand the nuances of race in society. It’s a book I keep coming back to, and it’s one I always recommend to friends who are ready to dig deeper.

This book taught me how the idea of “Hispanic” as a group was constructed—not as a natural category but as a deliberate effort by activists, bureaucrats, and the media. Cristina Mora’s research shows how power and influence created this category, challenging the assumption that commonality binds this group together.

Reading it helped me see that the creation of the Hispanic category is both intentional and ongoing, which deeply influenced how I think about race and racialization in my own work. If you’ve ever wondered how racial and ethnic categories come to be, this book is a must-read. It’s a powerful reminder that categories are not fixed but shaped by history, politics, and power.

After I finished writing my book, a friend recommended Osagie Obasogie’s book, and I’m so grateful they did! Obasogie challenges readers—and scholars—to rethink race in a way that goes beyond the usual nod to it being a social construct.

Through his groundbreaking research with individuals who have been blind since birth, he shows how race is not just something visual but something we learn to “see.” It’s a must-read for anyone who wants to move beyond surface-level discussions of race and grapple with its deeper implications. Obasogie’s book helped me complicate my understanding of race as a construct, and it has stayed with me, shaping how I think and write about race today.

Addie Ramirez, the main character of Tumble, is the kind of girl who takes charge of her situation—whether it’s searching for her father or meeting new people or speaking her mind about wrestling.

I felt such a personal connection to Addie; she loves her stepdad, but she still wonders about her father and embarks on a journey to find him and get to know him. And along the way, she meets her wrestling family and learns firsthand how powerful women wrestlers can be.

I loved that readers get to see powerful women in a sport traditionally dominated by men!

First of all, this sprawling novel is funny and entertaining, and those qualities would be reason enough that I would recommend it. Yet beyond those qualities, it created a strong sense of place and a real social and political conflict without ever becoming preachy or heavy handed—not an easy feat as I have learned.

The storyline, a conflict over land use and water rights, is repeated again and again throughout the West and Southwest in particular—in this case pitting real estate developers against impoverished locals. But the story is also about a conflict of cultures and how those cultures perceive and connect to the land. Exposing such conflicts is a boon of literature.

When I read So Far From God, it did two things. First, it helped me understand this genre that was created by Latin American authors. Lois Parkinson Zamora said, “Magical realism is characterized by...its capacity to create (magical) meanings by envisioning ordinary things in extraordinary ways.” I understood what that meant when I read So Far From God. In the first chapter alone, one of the main characters, La Loca, dies and comes back to life. Her death was ordinary and extraordinary. I was hooked. 

Perhaps more importantly, in reading Castillo’s novel, I saw our shared Latina history, culture, and perspective through the stories she told. It was the first book that validated my experience as a Latina which is why it’ll always be close to my heart.

Of the dozens of cult memoirs I’ve read, I like this one best. Why? Because Hollenbach turns her cult experience into a thing of sensual beauty. She skillfully evokes the scrubby yet lush feeling of the land near Taos, New Mexico, where she spent five life-changing months.

She also conveys the romance of throwing herself into a daring experiment and the longings her cult experience did and didn't satisfy. Finally, she shows how any intelligent adult might surrender her sovereignty to an egomaniac—then compost that detour into fertilizer for her next phase.

This is a nonfiction book and typical of New Mexico, as there are whole chapters of its history nobody really knows about. The (probably) first white American woman to come into the territory was a Jewish woman who accompanied her merchant husband and brothers. Even more interesting, merchants and traders weren’t even the first Jewish people - “Crypto-Jews” who were fleeing the inquisition came to New Mexico long before it was part of the US and kept their identity secret to assimilate. This is depicted with a character in Alburquerque and that perfectly encapsulates one of the overriding things about New Mexico and its tales – a deep sense of connectedness, across people, across the land. 

This is a gritty depiction of a young boy whose decisions are far from a child’s resolve. The portrait McCarthy gives the reader left me with trail dust in my throat it was so gritty. I was uprooted from my easy, protected life and transformed into the world of 16-year-old Billy as he chooses the hard way.

His decisions have consequences, but his resolve is strong.