High school student Zoe Golden was named the Rising Poet Laureate. Starting January 1, 2024, the Poets Laureate will provide a constant presence of poetry at community events. A poetry column in Durango’s newspaper, The Telegraph, and poetry installations on city buses will contribute to that presence, to “bring the magic of poetry to everyday life,” according to a press release from the Durango Poet Laureate Program.
Durango Public Library Supervisor Daisy Grice said, “We are so excited to see the poets in action starting next year. We think there will be an aura of more poetry around Durango, hopefully fostering a sense of creativity and beauty.”
Alma García was featured on the Texas Standard News Show and spoke about her debut novel, All That Rises. In the interview, she spoke about her inspiration for the book, her personal ties to El Paso and Albuquerque, key themes in her book, and how she makes the story come alive.
The inspiration from the story came from a character that she wrote about in short story 20 years ago, a Mexican-American working class gardener.
“And once I wrote the story and it was published and it had received some attention, I felt like ‘oh, I can’t quite let go of this character. I am interested in spinning a world around him.’ And I already understood that El Paso was sort of the background of where he was in his world. But as I began to spin a world around him, I began to understand that there was something bigger happening here,” she said.
One of the key themes in her book is “that history repeats itself no matter how many times we think humanity has surely learned its lesson,” said García.
Another key theme she would like readers to take away is “the idea of what borders mean in a larger sense. I mean, a border is a place that both divides and joins in. It’s a geopolitical gesture.”
If you would like to listen or read the full interview click here.
About the book:
In the border city of El Paso, Texas, two guardedly neighboring families have plunged headlong into a harrowing week. Rose Marie DuPre, wife and mother, has abandoned her family. On the doorstep of the Gonzales home, long-lost rebel Inez appears. As Rose Marie’s husband, Huck (manager of a maquiladora), and Inez’s brother, Jerry (a college professor), struggle separately with the new shape of their worlds, Lourdes, the Mexican maid who works in both homes, finds herself entangled in the lives of her employers, even as she grapples with a teenage daughter who only has eyes for el otro lado—life, American style.
Elizabeth Henson, author of Agrarian Revolt in the Sierra of Chihuahua, 1959–1965, writes about the Sojourner Truth Organization in The Brooklyn Rail. In her essay titled “When We Win, We Lose: The Story of a Run-Away Shop,” Henson details a critical event during her years as an activist and member of the Sojourner Truth Organization from the early 1970s to 1983. Similar to her book about the history of revolt and activism in Chihuahua, Mexico, the essay reveals her personal history of activism in the labor movement in Chicago.
She writes:
In the spring of 1976, Val Klink and I formed a legal collective downtown with Kingsley Clarke from the Sojourner Truth Organization (STO), the revolutionary communist group that we were close to. . . . South Chicago was grimy, with blocks of bungalows, menudo on weekends, and a thrift store opposite the bank. It was an espresso-free zone, but the train connected it to Hyde Park and downtown. In segregated Chicago, South Chicago was the one working-class district where Black, Mexican, and white folks lived more or less together. Our clients had real estate problems, contract disputes, and custody battles, a litany of tedious and intractable difficulties, exacerbated by the massive layoffs of the mid-1970s. Many had been employed by local steel mills.
About Agrarian Revolt in the Sierra of Chihuahua, 1959–1965:
The early 1960s are remembered for the emergence of new radical movements influenced by the Cuban Revolution. One such protest movement rose in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. With large timber companies moving in on the forested sierra highlands, campesinos and rancheros did not sit by as their lands and livelihoods were threatened. Continuing a long history of agrarian movements and local traditions of armed self-defense, they organized and demanded agrarian rights.
Thousands of students joined the campesino protests in long-distance marches, land invasions, and direct actions that transcended political parties and marked the participants’ emergence as political subjects.
Alma García, celebrated her debut novel All That Rises at two Seattle bookstores. Although originally from Texas and New Mexico, García now makes her home in the Pacific Northwest. She launched her novel at Secret Garden Books where she used to work as a bookseller. Her “OG” booksellers surprised her at the celebration. Everyone enjoyed music by Jenny&Birch and Los Flacos. Next up, Kristen Millares interviewed García at Elliott Bay Book Company. Seattle is a great town for authors and readers!
If you live in Texas or New Mexico, Alma García is coming your way:
Readers with the book and Alma García reading at Secret Garden Books. Los Flacos and Jenny&Birch brought the book launch rhythm.
At Elliot Bay Book Company, readers celebrated the debut novelist. Kristen Millares (on the right in red) interviewed Alma García, then the author read from All That Rises.
About the book:
In the border city of El Paso, Texas, two guardedly neighboring families have plunged headlong into a harrowing week. Rose Marie DuPre, wife and mother, has abandoned her family. On the doorstep of the Gonzales home, long-lost rebel Inez appears. As Rose Marie’s husband, Huck (manager of a maquiladora), and Inez’s brother, Jerry (a college professor), struggle separately with the new shape of their worlds, Lourdes, the Mexican maid who works in both homes, finds herself entangled in the lives of her employers, even as she grapples with a teenage daughter who only has eyes for el otro lado—life, American style.
When Language Broke Open collects the creative offerings of forty-five queer and trans Black writers of Latin American descent who use poetry, prose, and visual art to illustrate Blackness as a geopolitical experience that is always changing. Telling stories of Black Latinidades, this anthology centers the multifaceted realities of the LGBTQ community.
Alan Pelaez Lopez is an Afro-Indigenous poet and installation and adornment artist from Oaxaca, Mexico. Their work attends to the realities of undocumented migrants in the United States, the Black condition in Latin America, and the transgender imagination. Their poetry collection, Intergalactic Travels: poems from a fugitive alien, was a finalist for the 2020 International Latino Book Award. They are an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis.
Brandy Nālani McDougall will speak at the The Schools of the Future Conference (SOTF Conference) on November 16, 1 -2 p.m., in Honolulu. In her keynote presentation, she will share her poems and poems by other Hawaiʻi poets, as well as reflections on her experience as both a haumana (student) and as a kumu (teacher) within Hawaiʻi school systems.
McDougall, the author of Aina Hanau/Birth Land and Finding Meaning, (Kanaka ‘Ōiwi) is a poet, scholar, mother, and aloha ‘āina from Aʻapueo, Maui, and now living with her ʻohana in Kalaepōhaku, Oʻahu. She is director of the Mānoa Center for the Humanities and Civic Engagement and an associate professor of Indigenous studies in the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s American Studies Department.
The SOTF Conference explores a wide-range of topics and ideas related to best and emerging practices in education. The annual conference is the largest event of its nature in Hawai’i and serves as an opportunity for teachers and administrators, across Hawaii’s public, private and charter schools, to reflect upon how to better serve children. The conference is produced annually in partnership with the Hawai’i State Department of Education, the Hawai’i Association of Independent Schools, the Hawai’i Community Foundation and the Hawai’i Society for Technology in Education.
On October 14, author Dante Lauretta hosted an “Orbits and Elixirs Celebration” for contributors and supporters of the NASA OSIRIS-REx Mission, at the Don Martini Bar on top of the Rialto Theater in downtown Tucson. Lauretta and Mayor Regina Romero spoke; they talked about the sample return mission, the work of the mirror lab for the Giant Magellan Telescope, and the opening of the Center for Astrobiology. UA Press Director Kathryn Conrad and Editor Allyson Carter joined in the celebration, along with UA Lunar Planetary Laboratory Director Mark Marley. Below are photos from the event.
About the book: Bennu 3-D, Anatomy of an Asteroid, is the world’s first complete (and stereoscopic) atlas of an asteroid, is the result of a unique collaboration between OSIRIS-REx mission leader Dante Lauretta and Brian May’s London Stereoscopic Company. Lauretta’s colleagues include Carina Bennett, Kenneth Coles, and Cat Wolner, as well as Brian May and Claudia Manzoni, who became part of the ultimately successful effort to find a safe landing site for sampling. The text details the data collected by the mission so far, and the stereo images have been meticulously created by Manzoni and May from original images collected by the OSIRIS-REx cameras.
Dante Lauretta speaks about the mission to Bennu and back.
Allyson Carter, Dante Lauretta, and Kathryn Conrad
Slide show celebrating all University of Arizona space and astronomy accomplishments.
Tucson Mayor Regina Romero congratulates the OSIRIS-REx team on a successful mission.
October 12, 2023
In Bringing Home the Wild, A Riparian Garden in a Southwest City, author Julie Stromberg demonstrates how ecologically guided gardening develops a sense of place, restores connections to nature, and brings joy and meaning to our lives. When living in a large sprawling city, one may feel disconnected and adrift. Finding ways to belong and have positive effects is challenging.Today, Stromberg has provided us with field notes and insights into her work.
For three decades of my life, I was a professor at Arizona State University. During that time, I made many field trips to rivers of the American Southwest and published many research papers about the ecological relationships of riparian plants. These studies increased our understanding of the ways in which human activities alter riparian plant communities and informed the efforts of those who were working to restore them.
A riparian ecosystem in the mountains of Arizona
Author relaxing in a ratama (Parkinsonia aculeata)
Once I retired, my engagement with riparian biota became more personal. My attention turned to the forests and shrublands my partner and I were tending on a patch of abandoned farmland we had purchased near the Salt River. Revitalizing our own patch of green has been deeply satisfying. I love engaging with trees not just as study organisms, but as partners and even as friends. Ecosystem restoration has been called, somewhat dismissively, glorified gardening. I am proud to be a gardener. I firmly believe that urban gardeners, collectively, can do much to help tackle the pressing issues of our time. Our ecosystem garden is a multitasker. For one, we have a working food forest of velvet mesquite, a tree which once covered much of the area that is now Phoenix. Agroecosystems such as these are a sustainable alternative to industrialized agriculture.
Freshly harvested pods from a velvet mesquite (Prosopis velutina) Velvet mesquite (Prosopis velutina)
Second, by tending a bioproductive climate garden, we help mitigate the rising air temperatures in the city and offset a share of our own carbon emissions. Connecting with the plants who sequester the carbon is an important first step in undertaking climate action.
Third, our patch of green provides habitat for birds, mammals, and other wildlife whose numbers are in decline. Pollinators, herbivores, predators, and decomposers all thrive in our ecosystem garden: all have roles to play. The diversity of life in our garden has astounded me.
Dainty sulphur butterfly (Nathalis iole) nectaring at a camphorweed (Heterotheca subaxillaris) flowerAsh-throated flycatcher perching on a limb of velvet mesquite
Finally, our garden provides ecotherapy. Anxiety is high among many urban dwellers, but the colors, sounds, smells, and patterns of the flora and fauna keep us calm and hopeful. Ecotherapy is a powerful force, especially when the greenery embraces you right as you step outside the door.
The night-blooming blossoms of sacred datura (Datura wrightii) produce a heady aroma.The view from the front porch. Over the years, the front lawn has morphed into a colorful woodland meadow
I wrote this book to inspire and guide others. I hope that our joyful experiences in urban ecosystem gardening will tempt others to deepen their connection to the natural world and nurture life-filled bounty in their own backyards. I hope more urban dwellers will unplug from the digital world, for a bit, and put on their gardening gloves. When we connect strongly to a place and feel as if we are part of the local ecosystem, we are more likely to take actions that benefit us all.
***
Julie Stromberg is a professor emeritus at Arizona State University and a plant ecologist who specializes in wetland and riparian ecosystems of the American Southwest. For the past thirty years, she has studied plant population and community dynamics and vegetation-hydrology interactions. The author of more than a hundred peer-reviewed publications, Stromberg continues to write about plants while also tending a riparian forest garden in the city.
Myrriah Gómez, author of Nuclear Nuevo México, was a guest speaker at the Science and Mathematics Colloquium series presented by the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts at Arizona State University.
“In her book and through her public outreach, she is bringing to light the long-term impacts of the nuclear industrial complex, emphasizing what she sees as the five tenets of nuclear colonialism: intergenerational trauma; disease and death; contamination; secrecy and obscurity; and environmental racism. Gómez argued that a combination of these injustices continue to plague Nuevomexicano communities,” Sona Patel Srinarayana wrote in an ASU News article about the series.
About Nuclear Nuevo México:
Contrary to previous works that suppress Nuevomexicana/o presence throughout U.S. nuclear history, Nuclear Nuevo México focuses on recovering the voices and stories that have been lost or ignored in the telling of this history. By recuperating these narratives, Myrriah Gómez tells a new story of New Mexico, one in which the nuclear history is not separate from the collective colonial history of Nuevo México but instead demonstrates how earlier eras of settler colonialism laid the foundation for nuclear colonialism in New Mexico.
Gómez examines the experiences of Nuevomexicanas/os who have been impacted by the nuclear industrial complex, both the weapons industry and the commercial industry. Gómez argues that Los Alamos was created as a racist project that targeted poor and working-class Nuevomexicana/o farming families, along with their Pueblo neighbors, to create a nuclear empire. The resulting imperialism has left a legacy of disease and distress throughout New Mexico that continues today.
Shelby Tisdale gave a talk on her recent book, No Place for a Lady, on September 18th, 2023 at the University of Arizona’s ENR2 building. We were delighted to attend this event, which was hosted by the Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society. Thanks for including us!
Held in the beautiful ENR2 building on the University of Arizona campus, we were happy to display Shelby Tisdale’s recent No Place for a Lady (2023) and Federico (2021), which she edited.
Shelby Tisdale gave a wonderful presentation on the life and work of Marjorie F. Lambert, the subject of No Place for a Lady.
Thanks to everyone for coming and attending on Zoom!
In the first half of the twentieth century, the canyons and mesas of the Southwest beckoned and the burgeoning field of archaeology thrived. Among those who heeded the call, Marjorie Ferguson Lambert became one of only a handful of women who left their imprint on the study of southwestern archaeology and anthropology.
In this delightful biography, we gain insight into a time when there were few women establishing full-time careers in anthropology, archaeology, or museums. Shelby Tisdale successfully combines Lambert’s voice from extensive interviews with her own to take us on a thought-provoking journey into how Lambert created a successful and satisfying professional career and personal life in a place she loved (the American Southwest) while doing what she loved.
Through Lambert’s life story we gain new insight into the intricacies and politics involved in the development of archaeology and museums in New Mexico and the greater Southwest. We also learn about the obstacles that young women had to maneuver around in the early years of the development of southwestern archaeology as a profession. Tisdale brings into focus one of the long-neglected voices of women in the intellectual history of anthropology and archaeology and highlights how gender roles played out in the past in determining the career paths of young women. She also highlights what has changed and what has not in the twenty-first century.
Women’s voices have long been absent throughout history, and Marjorie Lambert’s story adds to the growing literature on feminist archaeology.
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