I DNF'd this book because it wasn't capturing my attention and wasn't really what I thought it was about. The subject matter just didn't feel interesting to me.

In WE WERE ILLEGAL, Jessica Goudeau, an award-winning author, is busy "Uncovering a Texas Family's Mythmaking and Migration" by exploring regional history and her own ancestors' lives. She looks at six time periods, beginning on the East Coast during the Revolutionary War era. Her account includes events involving family members who were employed as a plantation overseer, a land grant agent, and in law enforcement. The tales are often violent and disheartening. Goudeau does not shrink from writing about the impact on enslaved peoples and their descendants, and about the patterns she sees, particularly with respect to issues society grapples with today. The amount of detail was amazing, but as a result the text was rather dense and fact filled, making for a difficult read. Extensive notes represent approximately twenty percent of the text. Listed as one of New York Times' "19 non-fiction books to read this summer," WE WERE ILLEGAL also received a starred review from Kirkus ("Throughout, she [Goudeau] skillfully connects past to present.").

Two other texts looking at Texas history: Big Wonderful Thing and God Save Texas.