Why ‘Lonesome Dove’ Gives Me the Creeps
A nightmarish scene in Larry McMurtry’s epic novel triggered my unshakable—and completely illogical—fear of snakes.
Writer-at-large Oscar Cásares is the author of the story collection Brownsville and the novels Amigoland and Where We Come From, which have earned him fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Copernicus Society of America, the Texas Institute of Letters, and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2003, the American Library Association selected Brownsville as a Notable Book of the Year. In 2009, the Mayor’s Book Club of Austin chose Amigoland for its Austin City-Wide Read. And in 2020, the Texas Institute of Letters awarded Where We Come From the Jesse H. Jones Award for the best book of fiction. Cásares’s writing focuses on the U.S.-Mexico border, where he grew up and where his family began to settle in the mid-1800s. Aside from his writing for Texas Monthly, he has published personal essays in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. Since 2004, he has taught creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin.
A nightmarish scene in Larry McMurtry’s epic novel triggered my unshakable—and completely illogical—fear of snakes.
As a child, I experienced the boundary between Texas and Mexico as its own distinct place. Now I know why.
A wedding, a broken taillight, and a missed exit: a family outing from Brownsville heads north and then goes south.
The ofrenda we build to honor loved ones will include not only our distant past but also the very sorrow that we’re living through now.
Frustrated by the perception of the border as a lawless land, two native sons embarked on a 1,200-mile journey to capture, through a series of images and letters, the region’s untold stories.
In Texas Monthly writer-at-large Oscar Cásares’s forthcoming novel, a retired high school teacher in Brownsville is reluctantly pulled into the world of human trafficking.
When I needed a new home office, I thought I’d save money by hiring a draftsman. I got what I paid for—and more.
Growing up at Charro Days.
And the story of how I started spelling it that way (with the accent) begins with a kidnapping.
The grand opening of a new H-E-B in McAllen drew crowds—including several who showed up to hear a native son read from his collection of locally set short stories.
A jogging path along the Rio Grande was a treasured, secret place—until it became part of the front lines in a war I still don’t understand.
The border fence cuts through a Valley farmer's property, upending his family's life.
Brownsville’s first federal judge was a legendary figure in my house. So legendary that I never believed my father when he said he knew the man.
They say you can’t go home again—especially when pretty much your entire family has moved away.
An exclusive excerpt from writer-at-large Oscar Casares's forthcoming first novel, Amigoland
Was January 20 really the dawn of a new and more inclusive age?
My father was passionate about lawn care. Me? Not so much.
I was a server at Pappasito’s for a week. It felt like a lifetime.
Race and racism at the state soccer championship.
My dog, Flaco, sleeps on a bed from Pottery Barn, gets three walks a day, and very nearly had his teeth cleaned for the princely sum of $208. What would my father say?
My father, who had grown up on a farm, used to talk about his family’s killing a pig for the tamales, but this was back in the twenties.
My father’s not-so-brief, happy career on horseback.
But not without some difficulty—even though I’m a third-generation Mexican American.
I still remember the moment I discovered that a world existed outside Brownsville. I’ve been trying to explore it ever since.