In this episode, host Will Rose sits down with journalist and author Jessica Goudeau to discuss her ambitious and deeply personal new book, We Were Illegal. After writing about refugee families rebuilding their lives in Texas, Goudeau began asking a question she had never considered about herself: how did her own family get here?
What followed was a years-long investigation into her ancestry — and into the foundations of Texas history itself. Through archival research, family records, and hard conversations, Goudeau uncovered stories of land speculation, slavery, vigilante violence, erased Indigenous communities, and long-buried family secrets. Her book challenges the triumphalist myths many Texans learn in school and offers a fuller, more complicated picture of how the state was built.
In this conversation, Goudeau discusses the writing process behind such an ambitious work of narrative nonfiction, the emotional weight of discovering uncomfortable truths about your own ancestors, the politics of history and textbook narratives, and why telling the whole story — even when it implicates your own family — is an act of responsibility rather than shame.
This is a powerful conversation about memory, myth, erasure, and the courage it takes to confront the past.
Additional information
- For more information about Jessica Goudeau you can visit: https://jessicagoudeau.com/about
Originally aired on February 15, 2025
