Former Austin Chronicle and the Austin American-Statesman film critic Alison Macor’s Making the Best Years of Our Lives details the groundbreaking 1946 film that revealed the grim postwar realities for many veterans and shifted the war discourse in the United States, especially about PTSD. Journalist Esther Bonilla Read shares in After the Blessing the too rarely told stories of Mexican American veterans of World War II as they combatted unfriendlies both abroad and at home. Join Macor and Bonilla Read as they discuss the veterans of the Second World War—remembering those whose stories weren’t told enough, and recognizing with much greater understanding the traumatic effects of war that last long after soldiers leave the battlefield.

Moderator: Jim Estrada, award-winning author (ABCs and Ñ of America’s Cultural Evolution) and producer (Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards)Alison Macor, Esther Bonilla Read, Making The Best Years of Our Lives: The Hollywood Classic That Inspired a Nation, After the Blessing: Mexican American Veterans of WWII Tell Their Own Stories