Kate Carpenter: Welcome back to Drafting thePpast.

I'm Kate Carpenter, and this is a podcast all about the craft of writing history.

In this episode, I'm joined by historian Dr.

Omar Valerio-Jiménez.

Omar Valerio-Jiménez: Well, thank you for inviting me.

Kate Carpenter: Omar is a Professor of History at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where he is also an Associate Dean for Graduate Studies.

He originally worked as an engineer before going back to school to become a historian.

And his work focuses on histories of Mexican American civil rights, citizenship, education, andmemory.

His first

book was called River of Hope: Forging Identity and Nation in the Rio Grande Borderlands.

And his second book, which we talk about in this interview, is Remembering Conquest: Mexican Americans, Memory and Citizenship.

It came out last year, and it has been honored with several awards.

Remembering Conquest explores the collective memories of the US-Mexico war and how those memories motivated civil rights campaigns among several generations of Mexican Americans.

Omar is a pleasure to speak with, and his thoughtful approach to his work came through in our conversation.

Keep an ear out especially for his work log system, which I just might have to try out for myself.

Here's my conversation with Dr.

Omar Valerio-Jiménez.

Omar Valerio-Jiménez: I will say that I began writing as a historian, I guess, in graduate school and early on in my graduate career, I was invited to write these two essays or two entries for an encyclopedia.

That sort of was my foray into writing for a general audience, and I really enjoyed that.

You know, it has its pluses and minuses, obviously, like all like academic writing as well, but I've continued to accept those requests to write for general audiences, like anthologies that are more for geared towards, you know, a general audience, or op ed pieces or things like that.

And I believe I would hope that those kind of experiences have improved my writing.

And so I think I'm, I'm fortunate that I had those early experiences.

But I also worked with a very good advisor who was a an editor himself of a journal, and so that was that also helped me, although, you know, we can talk about it later, but I there was some, there were some pluses and minuses, because when you're in graduate school, you have more doubts about your writing, right?

And so when my my advisor would return chapters, and sometimes, I remember once he returned a chapter and he had line edited sort of two pages, and I had given him, like, you know, 25 pages, and he just said, I'll just stop here, because I think there's some, some real serious problems.

And I felt, I felt so defeated.

But eventually we got over it, right?

But anyway, so throughout my career, I've published in various avenues, so I have two monographs right, and several anthologies, some for a general audience, others for more academic audiences, and then as well as articles and encyclopedia entries.

And so that, I think has helped me overall, sometimes.

Oh, and actually, I should mention one another thing that I that I would like to sort of develop.

Now, several years ago, I got invited to write a chapter or a book targeting middle school students, and I thought that was I wasn't sure what to do.

I wasn't sure whether to accept, but I did accept, and that was a really good learning experience.

And then since that time, I've heard of other academics, right, who have written children's books.

I mean, this wasn't really a children's book, it was more towards a younger audience than usually, than what I usually write my essays or chapters on.

But I had a good time, and I also learned that sometimes my writing is geared to a more advanced audience, and so I had to figure out how to, how to choose different words and use shorter sentences and so forth.

And I thought that also helped, you know, that that helped me understand, sort of keep, keep your audience in mind, you know.

And I've, I've always sort of thought, well, there's a general sort of adult audience, and then there's an academic audience.

I had never really considered, what about middle school children, right?

So that helped.

I think the other thing I would say is that I've learned that writing this second book, the second monograph, was not as difficult as the first, although I think I confronted a different set of challenges.

For instance, you know, there are, there are more demands on my time as a faculty member than as a graduate student, as a as an assistant professor, right?

So I had, and you're starting from scratch, you're not starting from dissertation, right?

So there's more time management issues.

Then there's also the, because you're, you're in the world on your own, you haven't really had, you have to actually actively seek feedback.

You don't have a dissertation committee right to to give you feedback or a dissertation advisor.

So that has been, that was, you know, this, those are some obstacles that are, that were different.

But I think I also had, you know, on the positive side, I had a better understanding of how the publication process worked.

I was a published author, so I had a little bit more confidence than when I was, you know, than in my first book.

And I also had just generally more writing experience overall.

So I remember a professor in graduate school, Joyce Appleby, who's a colonial U.S.

historian, who was a colonial Americanist, and she's passed away.

But I remember her telling us, as we were her students, saying, you know, writing never gets easier.

And I think on some level, that I knew what she meant.

Now, you know.

And it was, it was, I think she was saying it just let us know that writing is difficult regardless of where you are in your career, right, for some people.

And she was admitting something, and that was perhaps a admitting something to us that we we never would have imagined, right?

Like, oh, we think the great Joyce Appleby, she would be.

She'd an incredible writer and a very, very well published and so forth.

But she was saying, you know, it's still hard.

And I think that was hard, that was, I think, for our benefit, to say, look, when you're struggling, you know, we all struggle with our writing.

And I think that was a useful lesson.

Kate Carpenter: We are going to come back to your background a little bit more in a minute, but first I'm going to ask you all these practical questions.

So when and where do you like to do your writing?

Omar Valerio-Jiménez: So I thought about this question, and I think one of the things I'll say is that this has changed over the years, right, and throughout my career.

So as you can imagine, in graduate school, since I was much younger, I could write it late at night.

I wasn't married, I didn't have a family.

I could pull all nighters if I had to, and that obviously isn't the case anymore.

I'm older.

I cannot write at night.

I can, I cannot pull an all nighter.

But in graduate school, I remember writing wherever.

I could write in coffee houses, you know, in libraries, on trains or whatever.

But at my age, I sort of, I have to, I have to, sort of know my limitations, right?

And so I've tried to stay flexible as I've experienced several changes in my life.

So for example, when I had a postdoc and I was commuting back and forth.

I was recently married, and I was commuting back and forth to see my wife who had a job in another state you use sort of write where you can write.

But getting married, getting your first tenure track job, having kids, all that sort of changes your routine.

And so I'll say this, that there's been times when my children were young, and, you know, took up a lot of our time.

And I was a faculty member, and my wife is a faculty member.

We had, you know, very little time to write.

And I remember, I'm not sure if someone gave me this idea or I heard it somewhere, but I decided I'm going to start getting up an hour early before everyone else gets to sleep and gets gets up and and trying to write.

And that really helped, because then it was, I got up, I would write, and then I would try to, you know, try to write, and then eventually, you know, an hour became an hour and a half.

And I don't think I ever got the two hours, but, you know, but that helped a lot.

And I've used it, you know, since then, I've used that routine since occasionally, like, if I have certain deadlines, right?

And I can't find the time because of meetings or teaching or or my children, looking after my children.

So I also, these days, I can't really write in coffee houses.

I can't unless I'm forced to.

So I usually, generally write in the morning.

I prefer to write in the morning after I walk my dog and I write at home.

Usually I write in my study or sometimes, if my wife isn't home and my dog and I are the only ones home, I'll write it, you know, at the kitchen table.

But I generally try to write, how do I say this, away from people?

I can't write in coffee houses anymore unless, like I said, I'm forced to, and then I have to use headphones or something, because I I'll start listening to other conversations.

And I can't, I can't tune it out very easily.

Or worse, you know, bad music, and I just can't, I can't handle it.

So that's how I do it.

And, you know, last year, I spent the academic year in Providence, Rhode Island, and I took a few trips by train up to Boston, and I had such a wonderful time riding on the train that I I sort of envy the people who who can do that because of their daily commute.

I just thought, Oh, this is such a wonderful experience.

Because, you know, there was people on the train, but I don't know they weren't, at least the trains I was on, they weren't carrying on loud conversations, so I could focus.

And then just something about moving, moving, you know, along on the train that just, I don't know it was, it was sort of very calming, but, but back to your original question.

I think I generally write in the morning.

I generally write, you know, in my study at home.

Kate Carpenter: As you were talking, I was fantasizing about booking a trip from on the train from Kansas City to Chicago, just as like a moving writing residency.

Omar Valerio-Jiménez: Yeah, no.

I mean, I first did that when I was in graduate school.

I took a train from Las Vegas to Sacramento, California, and it was, it was in the winter, and there was snow on the ground, and I just thought, Oh, this is lovely.

Kate Carpenter: What sorts of tools do you use to organize yourself?

Omar Valerio-Jiménez: So that also has also changed since I am an old person, I have, you know, I never did use note cards, though, so that I'll say that, thankfully, I never did, but I did make lots of copies right in graduate school.

I it was before digital cameras were widely available, and then I started using digital cameras right and, and, and now it's my phone to take photographs right of sources when they're permitted and when they're not.

Obviously, you know, use your laptop.

I use my laptop, but I it's a combination I've, I've used for my last book, for remembering conquest.

I organized some of my sources with zotero, but also wrote down a lot of things, you know, by hand, not by hand, on the computer.

And had files.

I also had scanned images of either PDF files of newspapers or documents right whenever the they were available at a library or in an archive or photographs.

But I didn't have a very good way of organizing my photographs, so I kept, sort of an index.

I kept the file, an index of, like, you know, this file, this photograph, has this information, and this photograph has is the second part of that document, or whatever.

And that got very unwieldy, right?

And so when I heard about Tropy, I started using it, and I'm using it for my current book, so I'm still learning to use it.

So I'm not an expert, but I think that's just a wonderful tool.

And I'm also using, I don't know if I pronounced this correctly, but I'm using Devonthink, to or to sort of organize my sources PDF files and my written sources as well.

And to, you know, use links and so such, and to sort of cross reference things, use tags, so that's, you know, so useful.

And, you know, occasionally I still have a copy, you know, a physical copy, but I try to scan those in so that they're available whenever, wherever they're wherever.

When I'm traveling, I don't have to be trying to look it up, you know, or trying to, you know, carry with me.

Kate Carpenter: Where in your research price list Do you like to start writing?

Omar Valerio-Jiménez: I think, well, I love to do research.

So one of the things that is always the temptation is to do more, right, to do more research before you can start writing.

But what I've learned is that deadlines are a great way of of sort of motivating you to write, to start writing.

And so I have used deadlines, whether they're for conference papers, right?

So I intentionally say I'm going to write a I'm going to apply for a panel, you know, to be on a panel or something, when I'm not quite sure if I'll have enough material, right?

But that will force me to to say something with the material that I have, and I think that really helps.

But other times, you know, it's been deadlines where someone has invited me to contribute something to an anthology, and then I think, Okay, I think I can do that.

I'm going to have to take a section of this chapter that I'm working on, and I'm just going to have to polish it for, you know, for this anthology, and that really helps.

And one of the things I know is that used to, I used to think, if I do that, then I won't be able to use it for my chapter.

But one thing I've learned is that even when you take, like, a section of a chapter, for us, you know, use as an article or as an anthology chapter, that by the time your book comes out, it's going to be very different.

So you will have changed it as well, you know, I mean, there might be some paragraphs that are similar to what you've already published, but, but generally it's going to be different.

You know, some paragraphs will be moved around, or there'll be a different emphasis, you know, for the overall chapter.

But what I will say is also that there's been times when I have started writing while, you know, take on on a research trip, like if I take a research trip for a week or something in the summer, and I find something great in the archive.

I will then that evening, start writing and just say, Wow, this would be a great vignette, for example.

So I'll start writing the vignette.

And you know, it's going to go through several iterations right before it sees the light of day.

But when you have that inspiration, is just a great time to to write, I think, or at least it works for me.

And then there's other times when I just, I'm, you know, I'm in the archives, and I find something, and it might not lead to sort of a structured paragraph, but it might lead for me to create, like, a file where I brainstorm, where I say, Oh, maybe I can use this document to make this point, or to make or to link it to this other chapter, perhaps link two chapters together, right, or emphasize a point that I've made in another chapter.

So I'll say I'll begin writing as soon as I sort of find inspiration in my sources.

But in terms of sitting down to write a chapter, I don't really have, I don't really wait necessarily like to have all the research done.

I sometimes just start and say, I'm going to start writing, and then we'll see how far I get.

And if I don't get very far, or if I, if I get to a certain point, like, you know, half the chapter, and then I realize I need to do more research, then that's useful as well.

Kate Carpenter: That leads well into my last practical question, which is, what is your approach to revision?

Omar Valerio-Jiménez: So for my for revision, I one of the things that I try to do is I try to revise as I write.

So if I've written, let's say, you know, 10 pages of a chapter, and I will try to edit those, those 10 pages at some point before I finish the chapter, and especially during those days when I'm having trouble writing.

So when I have trouble writing, one of the things that I have sort of allowed myself to do is to say, okay, if I'm having trouble generating new paragraphs, then let's let's shift gears, and let's do something else that will still contribute to making progress towards this chapter.

And one of those things is editing.

And so if I'm having trouble writing, I'll edit, you know what I previously written?

And that sometimes gets my, my sort of creativity going, or reminds me of, like, oh, that's where I was saying, that's what I'm trying to say.

And therefore, the the next time I sit down to actually write, you know, some some new paragraphs, it will be a little bit easier.

So that's, that's how I do it.

And then, of course, you know, when you finish the chapter, I also then go and print it out, and then, re, you know, edit the whole thing again, right?

And, or when you, when you send it out to friends or to a writing group or something, that's when you also edit it, you know, after they give you some feedback, right?

So I think I would say my editing process is, is sort of, there's multiple stages of it, right?

There's sort of your everyday or every or weekly editing that you do as you're just trying to get stuff out.

And then there's editing after you finish something, and you just edit the whole thing.

Kate Carpenter: So I'm eager to know, in preparing for this interview, I learned that before you were a historian, you worked as an engineer, which I didn't know, how did that background shape your approach to writing?

Omar Valerio-Jiménez: So that's a really interesting question, and I'll tell you that it's something I've never thought about.

As former engineer, I did have a graduate colleague once, when I was in graduate school, asked me something about engineering, but it was because she was in sort of studying history of science, and she had some question, so I answered her questions, but I've never wondered about how engineering shaped my writing, until you posed this question.

And I'll say this, I'll start by saying this, that, as you probably know, most engineers don't do a whole lot of writing, but there is sort of an approach to how we tackle problems, right, how we think about problems, and how we think about solutions to problems.

So I imagine that that's that must be, in some ways, how I approach writing.

I don't know.

I haven't really considered it and sort of analyzed that, but I will say, I mean, engineers, or, you know, people in STEM are usually very, sort of focused on data, right?

And one of the things that I left out of your previous question is that I keep a log, a writing log, right?

And so I do, I use the, I think it's the Pomodoro method, right, where you you write for a certain amount of time.

In my case, it's 40 minutes, and then I take a 15 minute break, or five minute break, and then I do another 40 minute session.

And then after two sessions, I take a longer break.

And I also have make sure I reward myself with something, you know, after I've completed whatever number of sessions, and I keep a log, a writing log of.

Of what I do every day, and I write, call it a writing log.

But I also keep a log of other things, like I spent this amount of time in email or whatever, and I think that sort of obsessive, deep attention to detail, of like jotting down, like what I've spent my time on is probably from my engineering past, right?

Of, like logging things and like keeping tabs of, like the minutes or whatever.

But I think in my case, the log has really helped.

And I've had I've had it.

I've been doing it for many years, and it helps remind me, because, like other people, like a lot of you know, scholars, we have short memories of but what we do ourselves right on a weekly basis, and if I don't keep a log, or, you know, there's, there'll be days when I forget to enter things, and then I'll think, what did I do for the past two days that I did get to my writing?

And then I think, Oh, I had this faculty meeting, or I had this, these emails, or whatever it is that you had to do or prepare for a class.

And that helps me, because it sort of keeps me honest, and it helps remind me, oh, I didn't get that done because I was doing all these other things.

But it also helps me, because it helps me remind me, like, Okay, if I've for the past two days I haven't had structured time, then I need to structure that time for my writing.

So the log is, is a log, but it's also sort of a set of goals, because I'll say for tomorrow or at the beginning, you know, sometimes at the end of the day, I'll say, Tomorrow, I need to do this.

I'm going to try to do you know, three sessions, or four sessions, or whatever, at the most is probably four.

I can never do more than that, unless I have a deadline.

But, you know, I need to do three writing sessions then, and I also have to do all these answer emails or attend this meeting.

And it just, it helps me sort of set sort of these daily goals.

One of the things that I will, I'll add to to this, is that I think that my my exercise routine, and I thought about this for a while, so let me see how I can say this, my exercise routine is sort of part of my writing routine.

And let me explain.

So I run, you know, weekly, or I'll swim, or I'll just walk, right?

And when I do these things, when I do this, this exercise, it helps remind me.

So first of all, running, at least running, swimming, not so much, but running, I get inspiration and I get ideas about my writing.

So when I go for a run, I don't necessarily think about my writing, right, but sometimes somewhere along the run, I might remember something I'm trying to struggle with, and then I get, I get an idea, and it's not uncommon.

It happens a lot to me, whether it's an idea of how to interpret a source or how to restructure a paragraph or restructure a chapter.

And I've always found those really wonderful, what you know, to be a wonderful experience.

But the other way is that, you know, there's days when I wake up and I don't, I've told myself I'm gonna go running, and then I feel tired, or I feel I don't, or it's too cold, or here in Texas, it's usually too hot, and I don't want to run, right?

But then I remember that I usually feel really good after, once I get out that door, and once I start running, or at the or after I complete the run, I feel great and and so I try to take those kind of ideas into my writing.

And I say, You know what?

I might not want to I might not feel like writing today, but think about when I do exercise, sometimes I don't want to do it, but after I do it, I feel really good.

And so and the other, the other example I want to say, the other comparison I can make with, you know, exercise and writing, is that with exercise, I know that sometimes, like I don't necessarily go running and say I or swimming and say I want to have a certain establish a certain pace, I just say I'm going to do a certain number of miles, or, you know, or or swim for a certain number of minutes, right?

And, and it's the same thing with writing.

I'm not the kind of person who works well when I tell myself I'm going to write a certain number of words or a certain number of pages.

But instead, if I say I'm going to write for 40 minutes, that will help and with exercise, right?

When I run, it's not so much how fast or whatever, it's just going out there and doing it because it makes me feel good, but also it helps build my strength, right, my endurance and running or swimming, and I think it's the same.

I tell myself, it's the same thing with writing, because it's not so much the volume that you you produce, the amount of pages or the amount of words, it's that you devote this time to it.

And by devoting that time, you sharpen arguments.

You.

You sharpen ideas and you just become better as a writer.

But it's about logging that time, and I think so this is once again, going back to the engineering part of me.

I think that whole process of logging and sort of writing down, like the minutes or whatever, that must come from my engineering background.

Kate Carpenter: To take a little closer look at his approach to writing his latest book, Remembering Conquest, I picked out a passage for Omar to read for us.

This section comes out of the introduction.

Here's Dr Omar Valerio-Jimenez reading

from Remembering Conquest: Mexican Americans, Memory, and Citizenship.

Omar Valerio-Jiménez: On a long drive across Texas to attend my aunt’s funeral in Matamoros, Cristi, my oldest niece, started a conversation about the war with me.

She had spent several years living in and attending school in Mexico, where my brother (her father) had worked for several years.

By 1993, when our conversation occurred, my brother’s family was living in Arlington, Texas, where Cristi was a third grader.

Once she understood that I was in graduate school to become a historian, she told me about her experiences attending public schools in Mexico and Texas, and then asked a question that was much harder to answer than any that had preceded it.

She explained that when she was in school in Mexico, the other children (Mexican nationals) would associate her with the invading United States when discussing the Texas Revolution and the US-Mexico War.

But once in Texas, the other students perceived her as Mexican, so they blamed her for the Alamo and the US-Mexico War.

Cristi wanted to know why this was the case.

I recognized her question as one that Mexican Americans often encounter as they try to situate themselves in relation to past events.

However, I stumbled to provide a satisfactory answer.

My niece’s question led me to complicate the European American versus Mexican version of events that she had presented by explaining Tejanos’ role in the secessionist struggle in Texas and the subsequent US-Mexico War.

I explained that the United States had waged an offensive war against Mexico to obtain the latter’s northern territories, and that Mexicans living in these lands had become Mexican Americans after the war.

But I sensed that Cristi was not completely satisfied with my explanation.

Her question, I realize now, was also about identity.

While I offered my interpretation of historical events, my answer did not address identity directly.

She was trying to understand the paradox of being a Mexican American and of being caught between two nations.

My conversation with Cristi illustrates how the US-Mexico War continues to influence the identities of Mexican Americans, which is part of its legacy.

Kate Carpenter: You know, I really appreciate here how you foreground your family's experiences in this introduction.

How did that shape the project?

Omar Valerio-Jiménez: I think, as probably other writers have told you, you write the introduction and the conclusion of your book at the end, right?

When you know what you've already what you're gonna what you've already said, right?

So it's in some ways the easiest part to write.

In my case, I really enjoyed writing the introduction because I could include these my family experiences, and because my book is about collective memory, and about how collective memory is passed on from one generation to the next, I thought, wow, this is great.

Now I can use, not only, for example, my father's memory of collective memory of the war, my my siblings, and now the next generation, right, my niece.

I thought this is one way I can sort of explore that these you know how generations pass collective memories to one another.

So I had some of these stories or some of these collective memories in the back of my mind when I was writing the book, but it wasn't until I wrote the introduction that sort of they all came together that I realized, like, oh, I can use them all in different ways.

And so partly because, as I, as I was writing the book, I was reading about history and memory, I was reading scholars who've written about about this topic, these topics, and I was thinking about, how do I use some of these concepts that I'm learning about from these scholars in my chapters, and then these experiences, these family experiences, sort of found their way into into the introduction and into sort of making a point about how we use collective memories, how they're how they're how we use them strategically, how I.

Our understanding of the past, sometimes very much differs from someone else's understanding of the past.

And so that's how those stories came to the introduction, right?

I think there were stories that I ran across in several, you know, in primary sources, that reminded me of my family's experiences.

And so that also helped, because not that, I mean, I took this primary sources and I interpret them for their own sake, right?

And I placed them historical context, but, but it reminded me, oh, you know, my family has had a similar experience, right?

And then I would write.

So, like I said, I keep a, well, maybe I didn't say this already, but I keep a file of sort of just sort of brainstorming ideas for each chapter.

So I'll have chapter one, and I'll say, Oh, I had this idea, and I'll just write it down, just so I don't forget it.

And so I would have those kind of ideas, like I would say, Oh, I just saw this source, and this reminds me of my dad's story, or this reminds me of my niece's story.

So that's how, that's how I would say it influenced my my book.

Kate Carpenter: As you just mentioned, a big part of what you're doing in this book is that, of course, you tell readers what happened, what the historical events are, so that they can follow, but you're also talking about how those events are remembered, often in conflicting ways and over spans of time, which seems like kind of a lot of things as a writer to try to juggle and write clearly about.

There are lots of layers of meaning and memory.

How did you keep track of all of that?

Omar Valerio-Jiménez: That was, that was tough in some cases.

But you know, the easiest part, I would say, is writing what, writing about what happened, right?

Like writing about how a certain journalist or a certain activist, Mexican American activist, wrote about the war or the treaty.

So my book makes this general argument, one of my one of my arguments is that the US Mexican War and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the war, helped motivate Mexican American activists to press for civil rights reforms across five generations.

That's the basic, sort of big argument that I'm making, right?

And they do this very strategically in many cases.

And that's what memory scholars have sort of explored, you know, like, how is collective memory used strategically or used for social and political purposes in different at different times.

So describing sort of, okay, this is what happened.

This is what this newspaper said.

This is what these activists said, or this is what this civil rights organization did.

Is, is sort of the easiest part, but then trying to explore, or exploring how they interpreted the war or the treaty, or how they strategically use, you know, these their their collective memories of the war and treaty, and how they might have used it in contradictory ways, right?

That was a little tougher.

But when it so, whenever possible, I tried to look for secondary sources that might have might have also used a similar second, a similar primary source, like if it was a, say, a well known political figure or well known activist, right, and that that activist had written this, some source or some pamphlet or given a speech, and other people had have written about this, Other scholars, then we'll try to look at that what they said as well, sort of as confirmation for, am I interpreting this the right way?

Because in, you know, in most cases, there isn't another, there isn't an easy way to confirm how I'm interpreting their their view.

So that's, that's how I sort of confirmed or, or became a little bit more confident in my interpretation of these conflicting views of the war and treaty whenever they were conflicting, I mean, sometimes, say, an organization, or the members of an organization, or at least the sources that I, that I was able to obtain for this organization, didn't, didn't necessarily see show any conflict within the members.

And so then I didn't, I didn't have to explore that.

But occasionally there were, like, for instance, the various activists that were involved in the League of United Latin American Citizens, LULAC, they didn't all necessarily agree with sort of the lulax official stand on certain issues, and I think that was really interesting to explore, but other people have done that for different purposes, not not for what I was doing.

Kate Carpenter: I was also really interested in how you organize the book, because you you do it by generation, as how you describe it, and how each sort of subsequent generation understood the US Mexican War.

How did you settle on that organization?

Is that?

Did you start with that?

Or did it come about as you were working on the book?

Omar Valerio-Jiménez: I think it came about while I was working, but it came about early on because one of the things I started, I started writing, or should I doing research on with the sort of the most easily available sort.

Right?

So, so, so, some some memoirs, some oral histories that I knew about and I could obtain.

And this was for 20th century, this 20th century portion of my book.

And so I realized early on that there was these big differences in the way certain groups of people were, or organizations were thinking about civil rights issues, because the civil rights issues that were important in this a 1930s are going to be different than those sometimes that are important later on in the 1950s or 1970s but another so, so that was one thing that I realized, like there these are they're emphasizing different things, different civil rights issues.

But another thing is so for the 19th century, for example, right in mid 19th century and afterwards, there's some of the civil rights issues are the loss of land for Mexican Americans and how the various elites, especially whether it's in New Mexico, California or Texas, they start losing land both through legal and illegal means, and so that's a big civil rights issue as well as lynching becomes a civil rights issue in California and in parts of Texas.

But later, you know, there's going to be, say, school segregation as as a more important or more pressing civil rights issue in the early 20th century, but, but I will say that the other thing that happened is, in my field, in Mexican American history, there have been various scholars who have used a generational model to make make these distinctions between how one generation thinks about a political issue, and the sub the subsequent generation thinks about it.

But then finally, so, so I was familiar with that generational model from my own field, right?

But finally, you know, one of the things I was exploring, as I mentioned earlier, is how collective memory gets passed along from one generation to another.

And so that's that sort of helped, but it was also once I settled on it, it was sort of, it was easier to organize my my work, because I could think of, okay, I'm going to think about the 1850s to the 1880s right, as you know, or 1840s the 1870s as one generation, and then what's the next generation?

And it also helped me, because then I could, I could find where were there holes in my knowledge and in my in my research?

Because for certain sort of generations, I didn't know that much about what were the pressing civil rights issues, and so I had to go and look for that, that information so that you know, it helped me in my research as well.

Kate Carpenter: In the last part of our interview here, I want to switch gears a little bit to talk about your own influences and inspirations and also advice passed along.

So one of the reasons actually, I've been excited to talk to you is that I know from our conversations and also from hearing from your former students that you are a dedicated teacher and a thoughtful teacher and mentor.

How do you talk about writing with your students?

Omar Valerio-Jiménez: So I'll say this, I had the privilege of working with a, you know, as I mentioned before, dissertation advisor.

His name is Norris Hundley Jr.

at UCLA, who was an a past editor, or was, was a, was an editor of the Pacific Historical Review.

He was very good at giving me these, this, you know, at editing my work, right?

And and telling me, giving me suggestions.

And so I try to do that for my students.

I line edit their work whenever possible.

And then I, you know, give them suggestions, right?

But I also, you know, as I've obtained suggestions on writing.

I also pass along those suggestions to them, but I tell them, you know, there isn't one sort of one way to do your to to write.

There isn't one way to come to a come to your conclusion or come to your thesis, right?

There are multiple ways.

And I tell them what I learned in graduate school when I I asked my advisors, like, if I'm writing about this issue and someone else is writing about it, I'm not going to be able to say anything different.

And they they would laugh and say, you know, if you get 10 faculty in a room, and they're always going to disagree about something, and you get two people or three people to read the same source, you're going to have different interpretations, so don't worry about it.

So those kind of lessons, those those kind that kind of advice, I pass them on to my students as well, but I also give them the advice that I've, you know, I've just sort of shared with you about what works for me.

And I tell them, you know, it doesn't always it might not work for you.

And I also say, and there's, there's times when some of this advice has worked for me, and other other times when it hasn't.

I can't always wake up early to write, but I've tried to be flexible.

And I tell them, you know, be flexible, be be forgiving.

And I, I guess that's another thing.

Another lesson about writing is that.

I think nowadays I'm more forgiving with with myself, about, you know, if I didn't get, you know, uh, 10 pages done this week, or whatever, I tell myself, that's okay, whereas early on, I was a lot more critical, and I would say, you know, why didn't you do it?

And I felt I would feel bad about myself.

And now it's just like, oh, you know, partly because I keep that log.

I say, Well, I didn't do write 10 pages, but I got some more research done, or I got some outlining done or whatever, right?

So I I try to see the positive more more.

And so I tell them to do the same thing.

Kate Carpenter: Are there people who you turn to regularly for feedback on your work?

Omar Valerio-Jiménez: Yes.

So actually, since you know.

So when I was in graduate school, I had a, you know, had a writing group, and then I also had my advisors, right?

Nowadays, so I didn't do that for, for when I was finishing my my first book, I relied on conference presentations and sometimes presentations at my own university, you know, like faculty forums or whatever, right?

But nowadays, I started relying on a writing group again, and I think I find that really, really helpful.

And I've tried to, I help create a help start a writing group on a topic that, you know, I'm working on now, and that has really helped, because it's a new topic for me.

And so I tried to find people who were already working on that.

And so sort of a bit selfish, I was like, Well, I'm gonna try find people that already know more about this than I do.

And luckily, they agreed to join and so, and their feedback has been tremendous.

So that's what I do.

The other thing though, is that I've learned from someone who is an amazing scholar and in my field, and a MacArthur winner.

She once was on a panel at the Western historical quarterly, Western, sorry, Western Historical Association Conference.

And that panel was about, I don't remember what it was called, but one of them was about sort of failure.

One of the sort of the topic, it was, you know, had various topics, but, but it was these scholars at different at different levels, right?

But I think they were all like, either, at least associate professors, and maybe some were full.

But this, this person, and her name is Kelly Lytle Hernandez, and I'm gonna, I might, I might not do justice to what she said, but it's, this is how I remember it, right?

She by then, by then, had won all sorts of awards and was very well published, right?

Very widely published.

And she said something that shocked me, and she said that all her publications had been rejected at least once.

And I thought, Oh, my God, you know.

And then she said, and in fact, I send out these drafts to journals or to publishers before I know they're ready.

And that was sort of really revealing to me.

And I thought, this is incredible, because this isn't some like, you know, scholar, who, who, you know, who's not publishing, she's publishing, and she does this and, and I thought this is, this was sort of like, like, really changed my perspective in many ways.

It was one of those panels, like, I don't go to the many panels that completely change your perspective, right on things, but that one did.

And since that, since hearing her say that, I I've started sort of doing the same thing.

I'm like, Okay, this article is not perfect, but I'm going to send it out and see what what happens right?

And, you know, I haven't, I don't necessarily think they've gotten rejected, but they've definitely I've gotten feedback where that's probably harsher than if I worked on a little bit more, but I've learned that sometimes, you know what, what I think is really important in an article that I have to really make sure I do and and work on, and I sent submit it, and then I get feedback from, you know, two editors or three reviewers, I mean, and it's completely different than what I imagined they were going to be, You know, that's going to be the problematic part of the article.

So I think there's some, there's sort of a there's sort of the truth to sort of sending it out before you think you're completely before you think it's completely ready, because you never know whether the things that worry you are going to worry other reviewers.

Kate Carpenter: Fantastic.

That's great advice.

You've mentioned Kelly Lytle Hernandez.

Are there other writers or books that you look to for inspiration in your own writing?

Omar Valerio-Jiménez: So another person in my own field is Lorena Oropeza.

She's a professor now at UC Berkeley, and she wrote her most recent book is The King of Adobe, and it's a book about the this Chicano movement leader whose name was Reies Lopez Tijerina was very controversial.

It's about his controversial life.

But Lorena is, is a friend, and she's, I know that she used to be a journalist, and I think that's what makes her writing so so vivid and so sort of engaging to me.

But Kelly Lytle Hernandez is also, you know.

Her writing is just excellent.

While I was writing my book, I read several books and articles by Viet Than Nguyen, who's the Pulitzer Prize winning writer.

But in particular, you know, he won the Pulitzer for something else.

But I read a book of his.

I'm gonna have to remember the name of it.

Nothing Ever Dies, sorry, and it's about the history and memory of the US Vietnam War.

And because what he was saying was so relevant, because I was studying, you know, my book is about the history and memory of the US Mexican War, and because there's these similarities between both wars, also, I just completely enjoyed what he what he had to say.

And I've just been a big fan of his writing, his articles, his fiction.

So if that's also, I think, something that I've that I like to read, but another person that I read in graduate school, I read an early version of of chapters that became her book.

What is Susan Lee Johnson, who's a historian of the American West.

And I read early, early chapters of Roaring Camp, who that was also an award winning book.

And the one of the chapters that I read was on history and memory of the so-called social bandit and the gold mines and the California gold mines.

And I just, that's when I started sort of thinking about, Oh, I can write about the history and memory of some event.

And so that got me thinking about, you know, sort of history and memory.

And I kept reading about it, even though my first book wasn't about that.

But her writing is just wonderful.

And I I like how, you know, I like these writers, academic writers, who sometimes throw in a little, sort of little humor, uh, sometimes it's not even, it might not be, like, it's not laugh out loud funny, but it's, you know, it's something that makes you good.

Think, oh yeah, that's sort of funny.

And I like that.

And she, she does that.

So I enjoy that those, those kind of writers.

Kate Carpenter: Susan Lee Johnson is a big reason I'm a historian.

So I love that.

Omar Valerio-Jiménez: Yes.

And I'll say one other one that that I'm sure other people have mentioned to you, but that was, that's Anne Lamott, early on in my in my writing, you know, and just been when I was dissertating, right?

I read Bird by Bird, her book about writing, and I just love that book.

And so I've kept reading her other books, you know, about life experiences.

And I just, I love the way sort of her honesty.

I think I would say the way she sort of writes.

In her writing, you can see that she's sort of describing her vulnerabilities.

I really enjoy that because I it makes someone more human to me.

Kate Carpenter: Well, before I let you go, you have hinted a couple times in this conversation that you're working on something new that's different for you.

Are you up for talking about it at all?

Omar Valerio-Jiménez: Of course, yes.

So one of the things I'm working on is I'm editing an anthology on racial justice, tentatively titled Racial Justice and Policing in Texas, that came out of a conference that was held here at the University where I work, the University of Texas at San Antonio, and so I'm doing that.

But the other thing the monograph that I'm working on my my third monograph, is tentatively called Challenging Exclusion: Textbook Reform and Archive Preservation Among Mexican Americans.

And it's a it's a comparative study of four activists slash scholars in Texas and four activist slash scholars in New Mexico in the late 19th and early 20th century.

And this came out of, as a lot of projects do, out of a previous project, right out of my second book, where I wrote about the four scholars that were that I'm looking at it in Texas, and one scholar in New Mexico, and I found that that they were, they were really interested in textbook reform.

And to me, that was surprising, because I didn't know that, that, you know, I've heard, you know, in recent years, like the last, I don't know, 10, 15 years, this, you know, attempt at reforming textbooks, right?

Whether it's in Arizona or censoring textbooks, I would say.

And then activists are trying to not only keep, you know, book bans from happening, but also saying we need to reform the way textbooks are written, right?

So when I discovered that this was going on in the late 19th and early 20th century, it was news to me.

I didn't understand, I didn't know that, right?

And you might say, well, this is sort of pessimistic, like they were working on it this long, and we're still working on it, right?

But to me, it was also, it was sort of a an optimistic thing, because I thought, Oh, this proves that this has been going on for a while, and this is important to Mexican American activists, and has been important for a while, and and it proves, you know, that there's some perception among some people that that Mexican Americans are interested in education, right?

And, you know, it's obviously a falsehood, but it's one of those things where you.

So you see this, and other scholars education, scholars and historians of education have proven this false.

But it's just another way of, sort of illustrating this, this problem.

So I'm not sure how, how I'll be able to sort of grapple with, you know, dealing with eight figures, a different activists and scholars, but we'll see.

I've written a few chapters already, but I'm excited, because it's a It was sort of a new challenge, and I know that it's other people have done it, have done these sort of comparisons.

So it's something I like.

I want to do at this point in my career.

Kate Carpenter: Fantastic.

It sounds, sounds great.

I'm I'm sorry, it continues to be so relevant, but I think it'll be a great, yeah, book for us to get to read.

Omar Valerio-Jiménez: Well, and that's that's another reason to write it, right?

You know, like, because it's relevant, right?

Kate Carpenter: Absolutely.

Dr Omar Valerio-Jimenez, I always enjoy talking with you.

Omar Valerio-Jiménez: Well, thank you for inviting me.

Kate Carpenter: Thanks again to Omar for joining me and to you for listening.

Check out draftingthepast.com for show notes, links to books and more.

Also, for the next few months, I thought I might try out a little experiment and share a bit about the progress on my own dissertation at the end of some Thank you so much for joining me on drafting the past and talking episodes and in the show's email newsletter.

I'm taking a page here out of writer and artist Austin Kleon's book Show Your Work to share a little bit about what it's like to be in the home stretch of writing and revising a dissertation.

And selfishly, I'm hoping it'll give me a little accountability after a bit of an unintended writing break.

Right now, I'm digging back into writing the fourth of five chapters and facing down revisions in the first three.

If that's interesting to you at about your writing process.

all, stay tuned and sign up for the show newsletter.

It'll probably go into more detail there, and of course, I'll be reminding myself of my own tagline, friends don't let friends write boring history.