Sánchez is a professor of American Studies and Ethnicity and History at the University of Southern California and director of the USC Center for Diversity and Democracy. Becoming Mexican American is the book version of his doctoral dissertation, which he began to get to know his parents, who emigrated from Mexico in the 1950s. Though Sánchez was born in the United States, he came to recognize as an adult the personal challenges and difficult decisions his parents had faced in pursuing a richer life for their children. Sánchez does not insert himself as a character in the text, but his use of personal memorabilia and interviews with children of those immigrants who founded the Mexican communities in East Los Angeles impart a sense of personalism to his writing.