One of the most recent books Southwest Humanities has indexed is Rebecca Janzen’s compelling new work, Unlawful Violence: Mexican Law and Cultural Production, which will be published later this year as part of Vanderbilt University Press’s Critical Mexican Studies series. Janzen’s book examines two related but distinct responses to increasing violence in Mexico over the past twenty years: legal texts and literature (novels and short stories). In its comparative analysis of these genres, “Unlawful Violence measures fictional accounts of human rights against new laws that include constitutional amendments to reform legal proceedings, laws that protect children, laws that condemn violence against women, and laws that protect migrants and Indigenous peoples.” Some of the texts Janzen’s book considers are Jorge Volpi’s Una novela criminal and Nadia Villafuerte’s short story collection Barcos en Houston, as well as a number of reforms to the Mexican Constitution, including the General Law for Women to Access a Life Free of Violence, the General Law on Girls’, Boys’, and Adolescents’ Rights, and the Migration Law. Please visit the publisher’s website here for more information about this title, which is scheduled to be published in May 2022.