The Squatter and the Donald: Trump's Back-to-School Reading Assignment

Donald Trump apparently doesn't read books, other than perhaps his own ghost-written ones. But it's back to school time, and that means everybody has to do some homework to help prepare them for the year to come. In the Donald's case, this American Studies professor has come up with a perfect book to kick off his school year: María Amparo Ruiz de Burton's historical novel of California in the decades after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, The Squatter and the Don (1885).

María Amparo Ruiz was born in 1832 in Baja California, the Mexican region of which her grandfather Jose Manuel Ruiz had previously served as governor. The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican American War divided California between the two nations, and Burton and her family moved north to Alta California, settling in Monterey and becoming U.S. citizens (an opportunity the Treaty had granted all Mexicans in the region). Less than a year later, the 17 year old María married prominent U.S. General Henry S. Burton and settled with him in San Diego.

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