In an interview on Texas

The books you chose bring out the diversity you describe. Let’s begin with a book about Texas before it struck oil, J California Cooper’s The Wake of the Wind. Please tell us about it.

To my mind, J California Cooper is one of the most under-read American authors alive. Wake of the Wind is a story about living in the wake of the Civil War and emancipation, a picture of a nation and a state in transition. It’s a beautiful sweeping story about a black family trying to navigate a new landscape – a new cultural, political and physical landscape. And about how a recently emancipated people struggled for their version of the American dream. There’s so much literature about what it was to be enslaved and not nearly enough literature about what it was for people to learn to be free, become landowners, reunite with relatives, and put a life together.

It’s a point of pride for me that Juneteenth, a commemoration of emancipation celebrated among blacks, started in the state of Texas. It takes place on June 19, the day – 200-plus years ago – that the Emancipation Proclamation finally was enforced in Texas, more than two and a half years after President Lincoln signed it. Now people celebrate Juneteenth all over the country, it’s an official holiday in 39 states. It became a day in which people celebrate their freedom.

How does this book fit into the outlaw theme you’ve identified?

It turns the concept on its head. In The Wake of the Wind it’s people in power, people behind the badge, the whites who fear their way of life is “gone with the wind” – they’re the ones who operate outside the law in this story and throughout reconstruction.