Category: Media

July 1, 2024

Miranda Melcher of New Books Network podcast interviewed Ricardo Quintana-Vallejo, author of Growing Up in the Gutter: Diaspora and Comics. In the interview, Quintana-Vallejo offers many examples of what happens in the gutter, the margins between the story panels in graphic novels and comics. For example, he explains a specific subtext in one author’s illustration style. In The Best We Could Do, author Thi Bui chose a particular color to convey their message:

“In using orange in order to represent that wound, that trauma, that she has to carry as a child into adulthood, the author and illustrator is kind of leveraging something that we might think is decorative in order to convey so much meaning.”

Ricardo Quintana-Vallejo, in Comics and Graphic Novels on New Books Network

Listen the full podcast here.

Quintana-Vallejo is an assistant professor at Rhode Island College. He is the author of Children of Globalization: Diasporic Coming-of-age Novels in Germany, England, and the United States. He studies migration and diasporas in narratives about youth development in the context of globalized and de facto multicultural societies. His essays have appeared in Literary Geographies, Norteamérica, the North Meridian Review, and Chasqui, and in several edited volumes. He grew up in Mexico City.

About Growing Up in the Gutter:

Growing Up in the Gutter offers new understandings of contemporary graphic coming-of-age narratives by looking at the genre’s growth in stories by and for young BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and diasporic readers. Through a careful examination of the genre, Quintana-Vallejo analyzes the complex identity formation of first- and subsequent-generation migrant protagonists in globalized rural and urban environments and dissects the implications that these diasporic formative processes have for a growing and popular genre.

June 24, 2024

Diné geographer Andrew Curley, author of Carbon Sovereignty: Coal, Development, and Energy Transition in the Navajo Nation, discusses “The Colorado River and the Colonial Blindspot” as part of the “Natural History for a World in Crisis” series. This panel discussion, moderated by Beka Economopoulos, is the first in the year-long series produced by the The Natural History Museum. Curley is joined by Teresa Montoya (Diné), Traci Brynne Voyles, and Erika M. Bsumek, to explore the impact of colonial intrusions and challenge the audience into seeing “colonial blindspots” in the water crisis.

“We tend to focus on this issue of climate change, when really there’s never been enough water for settler designs. And each time there’s a new infrastructure built onto the river’s tributaries, it’s satisfying a temporary problem that is quickly overwhelmed by more and more settlers. It’s the nature of settler colonialism in the region.”

Andrew Curley, in The Colorado River and the Colonial Blindspot

Watch or read the transcript of the full video here. This link also includes an additional video: “Rethinking the Water Paradigm with Andrew Curley.”

Curley is a member of the Navajo Nation and an assistant professor in the School of Geography, Development & Environment at the University of Arizona. He has studied the social, cultural, and political implications of coal mining in the Navajo Nation, and his latest research is on the environmental history of water diversions on the Colorado River and the impact of colonial infrastructures on tribal nations.

About Carbon Sovereignty:

This comprehensive new work offers a deep dive into the complex inner workings of energy shift in the Navajo Nation. Geographer Andrew Curley, a member of the Navajo Nation, examines the history of coal development within the Navajo Nation, including why some Diné supported coal and the consequences of doing so. He explains the Navajo Nation’s strategic choices to use the coal industry to support its sovereignty as a path forward in the face of ongoing colonialism. Carbon Sovereignty demonstrates the mechanism of capitalism through colonialism and the construction of resource sovereignty, in both the Navajo Nation’s embrace and its rejection of a coal economy.

May 29, 2024

Mark Brodie of KJZZ public radio in Phoenix interviewed Stephen J. Pyne, author of Pyrocene Park: A Journey Into the Fire History of Yosemite National Park. Pyne says that the Yosemite fire story is a story of good fire that was lost, but has now been partly restored. He believes that the restoration of good fire should inform fire management on other federal lands.

“It’s not just the ecological deterioration that results when fire is removed. I mean, fire is a broad spectrum ecological catalyst. It does a lot of things. We’re still learning about all the things that it does. But it’s also a case of if you don’t burn it, stuff keeps building up, combustibles accumulate and the fires that you do get will be uncontrollable. So it, you’re removing your choice, your ability to choose what fires you want and what you don’t.”

Listen or read the full interview here.
Stephen Pyne, KJZZ interview

Pyne is a fire historian, urban farmer, and emeritus professor at Arizona State University. He spent fifteen seasons with the North Rim Longshots, a fire crew at Grand Canyon National Park. Out of those seasons emerged a scholarly interest in the history and management of fire and he has written over thirty books. His most recent book is Five Suns: A Fire History of Mexico (2024).

About Pyrocene Park:

Its monumental rocks, etched by glaciers during the last Ice Age, have made Yosemite National Park a crown jewel of the national park system and a world-celebrated destination. Yet, more and more, fire rather than ice is shaping this storied landscape. Renowned fire historian Pyne argues that the relationship between fire and humans has become a defining feature of our epoch, and he reveals how Yosemite offers a cameo of how we have replaced an ice age with a fire age: the Pyrocene.

Stephen Pyne Warns about the Pyrocene in Scientific American

Posted on May 6, 2024May 30, 2024 by maryreynolds

May 6, 2024

Stephen J. Pyne explains our present and future in “We Are Living in the Pyrocene—At Our Peril,” in the May 2024 issue of Scientific American.

Pyne reviews three cycles of fire on the Earth. “First fire” is nature’s fire, where for millions of years, lightning was the overwhelming source of ignition. By the 1880s in the United States, humans were responsible for the vast majority of burning. Indigenous people used fire for hunting, foraging, and general land maintenance. As Pyne explains, “Newcomers, too, had a fire heritage that they hauled across the Atlantic, one embedded in agriculture and pastoralism.” These human-handled fires are the “second fire,” used to make a landscape more inhabitable for people. By the end of the 19th century, the industrial revolution and the transition to combustion fire to power machinery marked “third fire.” Third fire burns fossil fuel and dominates Earth today. At the same time, humans tried to control “first fire,” wildland fires caused by lightning strikes. But, Pyne argues, “We have too little good fire. Restoring fire is tricky.”

Pyne writes in Scientific American:

Today we live in a fire age in which ancient prophecies of worlds destroyed and renewed by fire have become contemporary realities, even for people living in modern cities. In the summer of 2023 millions of residents of New York City and other metropolises saw dark-orange daytime skies thick with smoke palls from Canadian wildfires— and breathed in the effluent. Mythology has morphed into ecology.

Read the complete article here.

Pyne is a fire historian, urban farmer, and emeritus professor at Arizona State University. He spent fifteen seasons with the North Rim Longshots, a fire crew at Grand Canyon National Park. Out of those seasons emerged a scholarly interest in the history and management of fire and he has written over thirty books. His two most recent books are Five Suns: A Fire History of Mexico (2024) and Pyrocene Park (2023).

About Five Suns: A Fire History of Mexico:

A climate defined by wet and dry seasons, a mostly mountainous terrain, a biota prone to disturbances, a human geography characterized by a diversity of peoples all of whom rely on burning in one form or another: Mexico has ideal circumstances for fire, and those fires provide a unique perspective on its complex history. Narrating Mexico’s evolution of fire through five eras, Pyne describes the pre-human, pre-Hispanic, colonial, industrializing (1880–1980), and contemporary (1980–2015) fire biography of this diverse and dynamic country.

About Pyrocene Park:

Writing Westward Podcast Interviews Andrew Curley

Posted on April 25, 2024April 15, 2024 by Anissa Suazo

April 25, 2024

Writing Westward podcast host, Brenden W. Rensink, interviewed Andrew Curley, author of Carbon Sovereignty: Coal, Development, and Energy Transition in the Navajo Nation. Curley is a member of the Navajo Nation and an assistant professor in the School of Geography, Development & Environment at the University of Arizona.

During the interview, Curley said:

If we think about coal as not just an existential environmental question, but as a commodity that’s produced, what do we find through that analytical entry point? That’s where we find the consumers of this, the utilities and their constituents–ratepayers or state corporate commissions–all those entities and people who structure and limit what is possible, even in terms of energy production for tribes.

Listen to the full interview here.

About the book:

For almost fifty years, coal dominated the Navajo economy. But in 2019 one of the Navajo Nation’s largest coal plants closed.

Pyrocene Park Makes List from Yale Climate Connections

Posted on August 1, 2023July 31, 2023 by Abby Mogollon

August 1, 2023

With many North American cities enveloped by wildfire smoke this summer, Yale Climate Connections has published a round-up of must-read new fire books. Stephen J. Pyne’s newest work, Pyrocene Park, made their list, which features new works that help us better understand the dynamics of fire and our changing climate.

Yale Climate Connections Book Review Editor Michael Svoboda, writes, “Publishers and nongovernmental organizations seem already to have noticed the uptick in the number, intensity, and duration of wildfires in the past several years.”

In Pyrocene Park, Pyne focuses on one of America’s most beloved and iconic national parks, Yosemite. Pyne deftly tells the park’s history through a look at its fire story.

Yale Climate Connections is a nonpartisan, multimedia service providing daily broadcast radio programming and original web-based reporting, commentary, and analysis on the issue of climate change, one of the greatest challenges and stories confronting modern society.

About the Book
The Earth is fast transitioning from a planet shaped by ice to one shaped by fire in all its manifestations. Yosemite National Park offers a microcosm for understanding our current world. Stephen J. Pyne tells the story of how fire got removed from the landscape and the ways, both deliberate and feral, it is returning.

About the Author
Stephen J. Pyne is a fire historian, urban farmer, and emeritus professor at Arizona State University. He spent fifteen seasons with the North Rim Longshots, a fire crew at Grand Canyon National Park. Out of those seasons emerged a scholarly interest in the history and management of fire, with major surveys for America, Australia, Canada, Europe (including Russia), and the Earth, some thirty-three books both large and small. From that career, Pyne has developed the notion of a Pyrocene, a human-driven fire age.

LitHub Recommends ‘Āina Hānau / Birth Land

Posted on June 7, 2023June 6, 2023 by maryreynolds

June 7, 2023

LitHub recommends ‘Āina Hānau / Birth Land by Brandy Nālani McDougall as one of “7 New Poetry Collections to Read in June.” Reviewer Rebecca Morgan Frank introduces the collections: “Small presses dominate this early summer list, reminding us that American poetry thrives year-round. Head out to your June gardens, real or imagined, and start reading.” She says of ‘Āina Hānau / Birth Land: “This is a book of resistance as well as love.”

‘Āina Hānau / Birth Land is a powerful collection of new poems by Kanaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiian) poet Brandy Nālani McDougall. ‘Āina hānau—or the land of one’s birth—signifies identity through intimate and familial connections to place and creates a profound bond between the people in a community. McDougall’s poems flow seamlessly between ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i and English, forming rhythms and patterns that impress on the reader a deep understanding of the land. Tracing flows from the mountains to the ocean, from the sky to the earth, and from ancestor to mother to child, these poems are rooted in the rich ancestral and contemporary literature of Hawaiʻi —moʻolelo, moʻokūʻauhau, and mele —honoring Hawaiian ʻāina, culture, language, histories, aesthetics, and futures.

Novels to Find the Real America

Posted on May 31, 2023May 31, 2023 by maryreynolds

May 31, 2023

“A map of 1,001 novels to show us where to find the real America” includes two books from the UA Press. Find your America by reading the story written by Susan Straight in the Los Angeles Times, or go directly to the Storymap here. UA Press books featured are a collection of short stories and a novel. To discover El Paso and beyond, read The Last Tortilla and Other Stories by Sergio Troncoso. To discover a real Los Angeles neighborhood, read The Book of Want by Daniel A. Olivas.

About The Last Tortilla and Other Stories:

Troncoso’s El Paso is a normal town where common people who happen to be Mexican eat, sleep, fall in love, and undergo epiphanies just like everyone else. His tales are coming-of-age stories from the Mexican-American border, stories of the working class, stories of those coping with the trials of growing old in a rapidly changing society. He also explores New York with vignettes of life in the big city, capturing its loneliness and danger. Troncoso sets aside the polemics about social discomfort sometimes found in contemporary Chicano writing and focuses instead on the moral and intellectual lives of his characters. The twelve stories gathered here form a richly textured tapestry that adds to our understanding of what it is to be human.

About The Book of Want:

When Moses descended Mount Sinai carrying the Ten Commandments, he never could have foreseen how one family in Los Angeles in the early twenty-first century would struggle to live by them. Conchita, a voluptuous, headstrong single woman of a certain age, sees nothing wrong with enjoying the company of handsome—and usually much younger—men . . . that is, until she encounters a widower with unusual gifts and begins to think about what she really wants out of life. A delightful family tapestry woven with the threads of all those whose lives are touched by Conchita, The Book of Want is an enchanting blend of social and magical realism that tells a charming story about what it means to be fully human.

David Lazaroff Is Picturing Sabino on TV

Posted on May 23, 2023 by maryreynolds

May 23, 2023

Picturing Sabino: A Photographic History of a Southwestern Canyon and author David Lazaroff were featured on KGUN-9’s “Absolutely Arizona.” Pat Parris interviewed Lazaroff about the human history of the canyon and showed several historic photos from the book. Lazaroff explained how people traveled to the canyon on horses or in carriages in the 19th century. He also debunked the myth of how Sabino Canyon got it’s name: it’s not from the name of a rancher’s daughter nor the Spanish name for a reddish horse. What is the true story of the canyon’s name? Watch the video here. To see 195 historic photos, and learn more about the myths and legends of Sabino Canyon, read the book!

Sabino Canyon, a desert canyon in the American Southwest near Tucson, Arizona, is enjoyed yearly by thousands of city residents as well as visitors from around the world. Picturing Sabino tells the story of the canyon’s transformation from a barely known oasis, miles from a small nineteenth-century town, into an immensely popular recreation area on the edge of a modern metropolis. Covering a century of change, from 1885 to 1985, this work rejoices in the canyon’s natural beauty and also relates the ups and downs of its protection and enjoyment.

Lotería Featured in ‘La Treintena’ 2023

Posted on May 9, 2023May 9, 2023 by maryreynolds

May 9, 2023

Urayoán Noel includes Lotería: Nocturnal Sweepstakes, by Elizabeth Torres in his top 30 poetry books for 2023.

In ‘La Trientena’ 2023, 30 (Something) Books of Latinx Poetry, Noel writes, “Latina/o/x poets remain frustratingly marginal to the critical conversation even in the realm of literary studies, to say nothing of our broader field or beyond it. This time around, I was excited to come across a wide range of powerful new work from Central and South American poets, further challenging and complicating the entrenched canons of Latinidad.” The article is part of The Latinx Project at New York University.

Lotería: Nocturnal Sweepstakes is a collection of deeply evocative coming-of-age poems that take the reader on a voyage through the intimate experiences of displacement. Conjuring dreamlike visions of extravagant fruits and rivers animated by the power of divination, these poems follow the speaker from the lash of war’s arrival through an urgent escape and reinvention in a land that saves with maternal instinct but also smothers its children.

Congratulations Elizabeth Torres for making this list!

The University of Arizona Press