Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton

María Amparo Ruiz came of age in a prominent family in Baja California at the end of the Mexican American War. She married one of her town’s conquerors, Captain Henry Burton, who helped her family move north and become U.S. citizens. She became the first Mexican American to write a novel in English with publication of Who Would Have Thought It. It is both a story of a Mexican American girl’s life and a critique of Anglo culture. Her second novel, The Squatter and the Don, tells the story of a Mexican American whose land is seized. It echoed her struggles and those of many Mexican Americans trying to keep their land after the U.S. takeover.