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Two Paths for the Whitexican Novel - Jeffrey Lawrence

jefflawcdm.substack.com · 6,121 words · saved by 1 readers

[I wrote this piece in early February 2025 and pitched it to several outlets. None wished to publish in its current form. I decided to leave the content untouched, rather than update it, since I see it in part as a document of my own thinking in the first weeks of Trump 2.0. Hopefully it will provide some context for my next piece on Substack, which will be a diagnosis of American liberal cultural in the age of Trump. Stay tuned] In late December, Jacobin published a bombshell review of the writer and journalist Nicolás Medina Mora’s debut novel América del Norte. The author of the review, Levi Vonk, accused the Mexican-born Medina Mora of using his novel to whitewash the crimes of his father, Eduardo Medina Mora, one of the main architects of the disastrous “drug war” initiated by former Mexican president Felipe Calderón in 2005. Vonk went on to insinuate that Medina Mora and his family are so powerful that even Latinos in the United States are afraid to criticize him in public. The r

[I wrote this piece in early February 2025 and pitched it to several outlets. None wished to publish in its current form. I decided to leave the content untouched, rather than update it, since I see it in part as a document of my own thinking in the first weeks of Trump 2.0. Hopefully it will provide some context for my next piece on Substack, which will be a diagnosis of American liberal cultural in the age of Trump. Stay tuned.] [Edit 8.14.25: The piece I refer to here took longer than anticipated and ended up being called “The Democrat Intellectual Complex.” I started it when I assumed…

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