Timely...the culmination of years of research on representations of Latino Americans in Texas.
~American Journalism
[A] captivating study…They Came to Toil painstakingly demonstrates the role of the press in creating depictions of communities and thus shaping public memory.
~Southwestern Historical Quarterly
[Garza's] book is accessible, devoid of jargon, expertly organized, and amply sourced. The photographs are a powerful visual representation of repatriation.
~Journal of American History
A well-researched microstudy that has as much to offer to students of history as it does to students of linguistics and journalism.
~Journal of Arizona History
Garza unpacks the particularities of news framings, successfully connecting historical events with contemporary borderlands politics.
~Western Historical Quarterly
An illuminating study of how media shapes American identity.
~Pacific Historical Review
Garza's insightful and detailed analysis deconstructs and reveals several important angles of newspaper media representations of people of color and marginalized communities…They Came to Toil is an important contribution to Mexican-American Studies, Latin American Studies, and Media and Journalism Studies disciplines.
~Communication Booknotes Quarterly
A timely study...They Came to Toil is an impressive piece of scholarship that will benefit both historians and media scholars...Through her study, Garza reveals parallels between the Depression era and the past ten years of recordbreaking deportation numbers and increasingly visible nativism and white supremacy. While the book went to press only months after the election of Donald Trump, readers will now be better equipped to consider how media representations of border crossings, asylum seekers, and federal policy shape public discourse around people of Latinx descent and US policy.
~Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies
[They Came to Toil's] detailed news coverage from different points of view, gives a clear picture of attitudes toward immigrants in the midst of an economic collapse, a picture that is repeated to some degree during every U.S. economic recession...The detail of this book is certainly of value for anyone studying the Great Depression, whether from historical, economic, sociological or political viewpoint.
~Journal of Borderlands Studies
A wonderful book. While this is not the first study of La Prensa’s regional and national significance, Garza offers a beautiful portrait of how, more than any other newspaper at the time, it documented the experiences of peoples of Mexican descent in the United States. I found this book quite readable and compelling.
~Laura Hernández-Ehrisman, St. Edwards University, author of Inventing the Fiesta City: Heritage and Carnival in San Antonio