María Ruiz de Burton
An item at American Writers Museum
María Ruiz de Burton was the first Mexican-American author to publish in English. An aristocratic native of Mexico, she lived her adult life in the United States. Her novels, published under pseudonyms, blend sentimental romance with realism to explore cultural identity, and offer scathing critiques of racial, gender, and class prejudices.
Ruiz de Burton's first novel, Who Would Have Thought It? (1872), satirizes the hypocrisies of New England abolitionists. The Squatter and the Don (1885) uses the story of an ill-fated Latino-American romance to chronicle the displacement of California families caught between Spanish culture and a false promise of American capitalism.
AMERICAN VOICES
An exhibit at American Writers Museum
American writing is distinctive, diverse, and comes in many forms from across the nation. The 100 authors featured here represent the evolution of American writing. Learn more about each writer on the timeline by turning the panels below their portraits. Explore centuries of writing by pulling, turning, and touching the interactive elements on the counter.
This is not meant to be a list of the greatest or most influential writers. Instead, we present authors and works as part of the American story as it grows and changes. Taken together, this rich literary heritage reflects America in all of its complexity: its energy, hope, conflict, disillusionment, and creativity.