The University of Arizona Press

December 23, 2020

Here’s a preview of our upcoming Spring 2021 season with the best the University of Arizona Press has to offer, from Latinx poetry, to Indigenous literature and studies, as well as a variety of the unique global scholarship the Press has committed to bring to readers worldwide. Tuck in.

In The Great Ages of Discovery: How Western Civilization Learned About a Wider World, historian and MacArthur Fellow Stephen J. Pyne identifies three great ages of discovery in his fascinating new book.

“Stephen Pyne charts a new course through the history of exploration, navigating deftly among ruminations, reflections, themes, and concepts. He sees exploration as an intellectual adventure. Readers who accompany him will have a lucid, engaging, and magisterial guide. They can undertake odysseys without leaving their armchairs.”—Felipe Fernández-Armesto, author of Out of Our Minds: What We Think and How We Came to Think It.

The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature is a ground-breaking anthology of Navajo Literature that showcases the breadth, depth, and diversity of Diné creative artists and their poetry, fiction, and nonfiction prose. The collected works display a rich variety of and creativity in themes: home and history; contemporary concerns about identity, historical trauma, and loss of language; and economic and environmental inequalities.

“The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature is extraordinary. It is the beauty of Diné bizaad from Creation’s horizon—K’é breath, heart, continuance—beyond measure. I advise it be read with and for Humility, Courage, Sustenance, Gratitude—always for the people, community, and land that is the source of Existence.”—Simon J. Ortiz

The Hatak Witches continues the storyline of Choctaw cosmology and cultural survival that are prominent in Devon A. Mihesuah’s award-winning novel, The Roads of My Relations.

In Hatak Witches, Detective Monique Blue Hawk and her partner Chris Pierson arrive to the Children’s Museum of Science and History in Norman, Oklahoma after a security guard is found dead and another wounded. They find no fingerprints, no footprints, and no obvious means to enter the locked building, but stolen is the portion of an ancient and deformed skeleton from the neglected museum archives.

“If you are looking for a journey into modern-day Choctaw spirituality, The Hatak Witches is a trip waiting to be taken.”—Geary Hobson, author of The Last of Ofos

Urayoán Noel‘s new collection, Tranversal, featuring Noel’s bilingual playfulness, intellect, and irreverent political imagination with personal reflections on love, desire, and loss filtered through a queer approach to form, expanding upon Noel’s experiments with self-translation in his celebrated collection Buzzing Hemisphere/Rumor Hemisférico. 

“Urayoán understands the importance of his poetry being accessible. He understands that art is for everyone, and so he communicates with everyone. For him, all the dimensions of words are indispensable and therefore phonetics become visible in his stanzas. He respects words not in a professorial way but rather in the same way one respects the standing of an old-school bichote who’s still alive. Language is not a barrier but an imaginary border that serves as a tool to fatten up the arguments of his words. In life one has to move, one has to walk even when there’s a more comfortable way to get somewhere else, to other paths, and if I were to cross over one day, I would do so with this book. The transversal is as necessary as growth.”—Residente, recording artist and filmmaker.

Winner of the Ambroggio Prize from the Academy of American Poets, Danzirly is a striking bilingual poetry collection by Gloria Muñoz, that fiercely examines the nuances of the American Dream for Latinx people in the United States, and powerfully dismantles Latinx stereotypes in poetic form, juxtaposing the promised wonders of a life in America with the harsh realities that immigrants face as they build their lives and raise their families here.

“In this utterly unique bilingual collection, Muñoz brilliantly negotiates two languages and the spaces between them, exploring the ever transient emblem of the American Dream through themes of lineage and loss, cultural and spiritual inheritance, assimilation, and racial and gender inequality.”—Richard Blanco, 2013 Presidential Inaugural Poet, author of How to Love a Country

How did a young boy from Tututepec, Oaxaca, become a famous Indigenous jewelry artist and philanthropist in Los Angeles? In Federico: One Man’s Remarkable Journey from Tututepec to L.A., Federico Jiménez Caballero tells his remarkable story of willpower, curiosity, hard work, and passion that changed his life forever. Edited by Shelby Tisdale.

“A remarkable narrative telling of Indigenous origins, transformation in the city, and eventual migration to the United States, Federico by Federico Jiménez Caballero brings life to a unique story beginning in rural Oaxaca and ending in Los Angeles.”—Anna M. Nogar, author of Quill and Cross in the Borderlands: Sor María de Ágreda and the Lady in Blue, 1628 to the Present

In UNDOCUMENTS, John-Michael Rivera remixes the forms and styles of the first encyclopedia of the New World, the Florentine Codex, in order to tell a modern story of Greater Mexico in our current technology-heavy age, wherein modern lawmakers and powerful global figures desire to classify, deport, and erase immigrants and their experiences.

“A tour de force, UNDOCUMENTS breaks rules and creates new ones. Through deft handling of texts, both theoretical and historical, Rivera offers us a compendium of diverse people and items such as documents, poems, the Florentine Codex, Anzaldúa, Bataille, [and] philosophy, along with objects like el molcajete. Using a true mestizaje of genre and approaches, he cooks up a rich poetic stew that is stimulating, intriguing, and nourishing.”—Norma Elia Cantú, author of Cabañuelas: A Novel

Edited by Mario T. García and Ellen McCracken, Rewriting the Chicano Movement: New Histories of Mexican American Activism in the Civil Rights Era is a collection of powerful new essays on the Chicano Movement that expand and revise our understanding of the movement. These essays capture the commitment, courage, and perseverance of movement activists, both men and women, and their struggles to achieve the promises of American democracy.

“Conversation about the Chicano Movement is far from over—in fact, it is continuing and getting reenergized all the time. Here, veteran and rising scholars across a variety of disciplines give us fascinating, multi-sited snapshots of this political moment in American history.”—Lori A. Flores, author of Grounds for Dreaming: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the California Farmworker Movement

In Empowered!: Latinos Transforming Arizona Politics, Lisa Magaña and César S. Silva argue that the state of Arizona is more inclusive and progressive then it has ever been. Following in the footsteps of grassroots organizers in California and the southeastern states, Latinos in Arizona have struggled and succeeded to alter the anti-immigrant and racist policies that have been affecting Latinos in the state for many years. Draconian immigration policies have plagued Arizona’s political history. Empowered! shows innovative ways that Latinos have fought these policies.

“This study offers a compelling account of how Latinos in Arizona organized and increased their electoral clout to change the landscape of state politics. Through grassroots networks and dogged determination, Latinos successfully pushed back on anti-immigrant and anti-Latino policies and politicians.”—Christine Marie Sierra, co-author of Contested Transformation: Race, Gender, and Political Leadership in 21st Century America

David H. DeJong‘s Diverting the Gila: The Pima Indians and the Florence-Casa Grande Project, 1916–1928, explores the complex web of tension, distrust, and political maneuvering to divide and divert the scarce waters of the Gila River. Residents of Florence, Casa Grande, and the Pima Reservation fought for vital access to water rights. As was often the case in the West, well-heeled, nontribal political interests manipulated the laws at the expense of the Indigenous community.

“The author provides a detailed study of good intentions, betrayal, and compromise to resolve the use of the Gila River by the Pima and white farmers in central Arizona. It also is the story of greed with an underlying foundation of racism on the part of white landowners against the Pima. In Arizona and the West, water is power—economic, social, and political. Its use is not neutral, and the Pima did not have it.”—R. Douglas Hurt, author of The Green Revolution in the Global South: Science, Politics, and Unintended Consequences

Carrying the Burden of Peace: Reimagining Indigenous Masculinities weaves together stories of Indigenous life, love, eroticism, pain, and joy to map the contours of diverse, empowered, and non-dominant Indigenous masculinities. Author Sam McKegney explores Indigenous literary art for understandings of masculinity that exceed the impoverished inheritance of colonialism.

“I came away from the manuscript convinced of the need for this work, as I find it exemplary of the kind of careful, ethically attentive, and deeply generous scholarship we need more of.”—Daniel Heath Justice, author of Why Indigenous Literatures Matter

Decolonizing “Prehistory”: Deep Time and Indigenous Knowledges in North America combines a critical investigation of the documentation of the American deep past with perspectives from Indigenous traditional knowledges and attention to ongoing systems of intellectual colonialism. Edited by Gesa Mackenthun and Christen Mucher, Decolonizing “Prehistory” brings together experts from American studies, archaeology, anthropology, legal studies, history, and literary studies, this interdisciplinary volume offers essential information about the complexity and ambivalence of colonial encounters with Indigenous peoples in North America, and their impact on American scientific discourse.

“Decolonizing “Prehistory” carries readers to the rugged landscapes of the Pacific Northwest to hear how they are known by communities with millennial depth as residents. The book adds breadth with chapters on the Penobscot River People, Maya communities living at tourist destinations Coba and Tulum, and Mammoth Cave. Philip Deloria concludes the book with a reading of his father’s no-holds-barred assertion of flaws in Western science, a position that time has brought closer to anthropologists’ own critiques seen in this volume.”—Alice Beck Kehoe, author of Traveling Prehistoric Seas: Critical Thinking on Ancient Transoceanic Voyages

Authors Duane Champagne and Carole Goldberg are leading experts in Native sovereignty policies and histories. In A Coalition of Lineages: The Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians, they worked in collaboration with members of the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians to illustrate how the community formed and persisted. A Coalition of Lineages is not only the story of a Native Southern California community, it is also a model for multicultural tribal development for recognized and nonrecognized Indian nations in the United States and elsewhere.

“Written to dispel the idea that these lineages ever ceased to exist under colonial power, this book offers a conceptual framework around the lineage that can be useful to historians and scholars.”—Lisbeth Haas, author of Saints and Citizens: Indigenous Histories of Colonial Missions and Mexican California

Strong Hearts and Healing Hands: Southern California Indians and Field Nurses, 1920–1950, tells the story of a bold program in public health that began in 1924 in the United States. The Indian Service of the United States hired its first nurses to work among Indians living on reservations. This corps of white women were dedicated to improving Indian health. In 1928, the first field nurses arrived in the Mission Indian Agency of Southern California. These nurses visited homes and schools, providing public health and sanitation information regarding disease causation and prevention. Over time, field nurses and Native people formed a positive working relationship that resulted in the decline of mortality from infectious diseases.

“Clifford Trafzer brings his many years of experience and unique set of knowledge to uncover the understudied role of field nurses from the Progressive Era to the 1950s as they collaborated closely with a multitude of Native Americans in Southern California to promote public health and counter the onslaught of tuberculosis and other Western diseases that afflicted them as a result of being confined to reservations.”—Andrae M. Marak, co-author of At the Border of Empires

In 1911, a group of Native American intellectuals and activists joined together to establish the Society of American Indians (SAI), an organization by Indians for Indians. It was the first such nationwide organization dedicated to reform. In We Are Not a Vanishing People: The Society of American Indians, 1911–1923, Thomas Constantine Maroukis show how this new organization used a strategy of protest and activism that carried into the rest of the twentieth century. Some of the most prominent members included Charles A. Eastman (Dakota), Arthur Parker (Seneca), Carlos Montezuma (Yavapai), Zitkala-Ša (Yankton Sioux), and Sherman Coolidge (Peoria).

“This is an essential book for everyone who is interested in modern American Indian History. Thomas Maroukis examines how American Indian leaders organized, used their education (sometimes disagreed with each other) and addressed critical issues in Indian Country in the early 20th century. He convincingly argues that these new activists pushed back against the government and voiced a clear message that Indians had not vanished!”—Donald L. Fixico, author of Indian Resilience and Rebuilding: Indigenous Nations in the Modern American West

Indigenous Women and Violence: Feminist Activist Research in Heightened States of Injustice offers an intimate view of how settler colonialism and other structural forms of power and inequality created accumulated violences in the lives of Indigenous women. Edited by Lynn Stephen and Shannon Speed, this volume uncovers how these Indigenous women resist violence in Mexico, Central America, and the United States, centering on the topics of femicide, immigration, human rights violations, the criminal justice system, and Indigenous justice.

“Bringing together leading Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, this volume explores the connections between structural, extreme, and everyday violence against Indigenous women across time and borders. It makes important contributions to current debates about gender violence and research methods.”—Rachel Sieder, editor of Demanding Justice and Security: Indigenous Women and Legal Pluralities in Latin America

Tourism Geopolitics: Assemblages of Infrastructure, Affect, and Imagination, edited by Mary Mostafanezhad, Matilde Córdoba Azcárate, and Roger Norum homes in on tourism and its geopolitical entanglements by examining its contemporary affects, imaginaries, and infrastructures. It develops the concept of tourism geopolitics to reveal the growing centrality of tourism in geopolitical life, as well as the geopolitical nature of the tourism encounter.

This volume is a vital read for critical geographers, anthropologists, and political scientists, as well as scholars of tourism and cultural studies.

In Famine Foods: Plants We Eat to Survive, Paul E. Minnis focuses on the myriad plants that have sustained human populations throughout the course of history, unveiling those that people have consumed, and often still consume, to avoid starvation. For the first time, this book offers a fascinating overview of famine foods—how they are used, who uses them, and, perhaps most importantly, why they may be critical to sustain human life in the future.

“This book represents decades of detailed research by one of North America’s top ethnobiologists. Minnis draws on multiple sources to create this unique compendium of plants that humans have turned to during times of food scarcity. Critically important to peoples of the past, this knowledge may be just as important to future populations.”—Nancy J. Turner, author of Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge: Ethnobotany and Ecological Wisdom of Indigenous Peoples of Northwestern North America

Moveable Gardens: Itineraries and Sanctuaries of Memory, edited by Virginia D. Nazarea and Terese Gagnon, highlights itineraries and sanctuaries in an era of massive dislocation, addressing concerns about finding comforting and familiar refuges in the Anthropocene. The worlds of marginalized individuals who live in impoverished rural communities, many Indigenous peoples, and refugees are constantly under threat of fracturing. Yet, in every case, there is resilience and regeneration as these individuals re-create their worlds through the foods, traditions, and plants they carry with them into their new realities.

“This carefully edited volume, well curated and well integrated, addresses a set of interrelated complexities critical to our current planetary era. United by two thematic threads, itineraries and sanctuaries, the chapters successfully illuminate and detail specific contexts while revealing commonalities across geographies.”—Ann Grodzins Gold, author of Shiptown: Between Rural and Urban North India

Becoming Hopi: A History is a comprehensive look at the history of the people of the Hopi Mesas as it has never been told before. The Hopi Tribe is one of the most intensively studied Indigenous groups in the world. Most popular accounts of Hopi history romanticize Hopi society as “timeless.” The archaeological record and accounts from Hopi people paint a much more dynamic picture, full of migrations, gatherings, and dispersals of people; a search for the center place; and the struggle to reconcile different cultural and religious traditions. Edited by Wesley Bernardini, Stewart B. Koyiyumptewa, Gregson Schachner, and Leigh J. Kuwanwisiwma, Becoming Hopi weaves together evidence from archaeology, oral tradition, historical records, and ethnography to reconstruct the full story of the Hopi Mesas, rejecting the colonial divide between “prehistory” and “history.”

“Becoming Hopi brilliantly combines Hopi and non-Hopi voices in helping to rewrite Hopi history and the process of becoming Hopi. The coverage is extensive—both for Hopi as well as for wide swaths of the northern Southwest—and each chapter has something new to offer in terms of innovative data collection and interpretation. The combination and use of traditional, archaeological, and documentary histories unfolds a rare perspective on what it means to be Hopi.”—Barbara Mills, co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Southwest Archaeology

The recognition of Flower Worlds is one of the most significant breakthroughs in the study of Indigenous spirituality in the Americas. These worlds are solar and floral spiritual domains that are widely shared among both pre-Hispanic and contemporary Native cultures in Mesoamerica and the American Southwest. Flower Worlds: Religion, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Mesoamerica and the American Southwest is the first volume, edited by Michael Mathiowetz and Andrew Turner, to bring together a diverse range of scholars to create a truly multidisciplinary understanding of Flower Worlds.

“… the authors are coming at Flower World concepts from different directions and perspectives, and these different ideas and perspectives speak together in a way that helps further the conversation. This volume is not about concluding ideas but about continuing the conversation. I was impressed by the multitude of strong voices—both past and present—representing elements of the Flower World. This volume will be of lasting importance in the cross-cultural study of Flower Worlds.”—John G. Douglass, co-editor ofThe Global Spanish Empire: Five Hundred Years of Place Making and Pluralism

Alluvium and Empire: The Archaeology of Colonial Resettlement and Indigenous Persistence on Peru’s North Coast uncovers the stories of Indigenous people who were subject to one of the largest waves of forced resettlement in human history, the Reducción General. In 1569, Spanish administrators attempted to move at least 1.4 million Indigenous people into a series of planned towns called reducciones, with the goal of reshaping their households, communities, and religious practices. However, in northern Peru’s Zaña Valley, this process failed to go as the Spanish had planned. In Alluvium and Empire, author Parker VanValkenburgh explores both the short-term processes and long-term legacies of Indigenous resettlement in this region, drawing particular attention to the formation of complex relationships between Indigenous communities, imperial institutions, and the dynamic environments of Peru’s north coast.

“This book represents a much-welcome approach to the archaeology of empire. It combines a sophisticated theoretical framework with rigorous archival and archaeological methods to shed valuable new light on the history of Spanish empire building in Peru.”—Craig Cipolla, author of Foreign Objects: Rethinking Indigenous Consumption in American Archaeology

The Pluto System After New Horizons, edited by S. Alan Stern, Richard P. Binzel, William M. Grundy, Jeffrey M. Moore, and Leslie A. Young, seeks to become the benchmark for synthesizing our understanding of the Pluto system. The volume’s lead editor is S. Alan Stern, who also serves as NASA’s New Horizons Principal Investigator; co-editors Richard P. Binzel, William M. Grundy, Jeffrey M. Moore, and Leslie A. Young are all co-investigators on New Horizons. Leading researchers from around the globe have spent the last five years assimilating Pluto system flyby data returned from New Horizons. The chapters in this volume form an enduring foundation for ongoing study and understanding of the Pluto system.