María Amparo Ruiz de Burton — Who Would Have Thought It? with Quite Literally Books
The first Mexican-American woman novelist to be published in English, María Amparo Ruiz de Burton chose a surprising subject matter—East Coast high society—for her first novel, Who Would Have Thought It? She was uniquely qualified to skewer the hypocrisy of Northern abolitionists, lampoon corrupt politicians and even mock Abraham Lincoln as a figure she deems more “party-boy” than presidential. Bremond Berry MacDougal and Lisa Endo Cooper, founders of Quite Literally Books, join us to discuss their new reissue of this 1872 book and why it still resonates so loudly in the era of Donald Trump.
Discussed in this episode:
Who Would Have Thought It? By María Amparo Ruiz de Burton
Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 246 on Jessie Redmon Fauset
Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 79 on Frances Harper’s Iola LeRoy
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
Abraham Lincoln
James Baldwin
1863 Habeas Corpus Suspension Act
The Squatter and the Don by María Amparo Ruiz de Burton on Project Gutenberg