Category: Press News

Six Books on Immigration

Posted on June 18, 2025June 18, 2025 by Cameron Quan

Located in Tucson, the University of Arizona Press has a long tradition of publishing diverse perspectives regarding the border and immigration. This week, alongside other members of the Association of University Presses (AUPresses), we’re sharing a roundup of recent works whose authors provide valuable context on current events.

Illegalized: Undocumented Youth Movements in the United States

Illegalized takes readers on a journey through the history of the rise of undocumented youth social movements in the United States in the twenty-first century. The book follows the documentation trail of undocumented youth activists spanning over two decades of organizing. Each chapter carefully analyzes key organizing strategies used by undocumented youth to produce direct forms of activism that expose and critique repressive forms of state control and violence. This inquiry is particularly generative in relation to how immigrant bodies are erased, contained, and imagined as “aliens” or “illegal.”

Rafael A Martínez, an undocu-scholar, intricately weaves his lived experience into this deeply insightful exploration. Martínez’s interdisciplinary approach will engage scholars and readers alike, resonating with disciplines such as history, American studies, Chicana and Chicano studies, and borderlands studies.
Illegalized shows that undocumented youth and their activism represent a disruption to the social imaginary of the U.S. nation-state and its figurative and physical borders. It invites readers to explore how undocumented youth activists changed the way immigrant rights are discussed in the United States today.

Resistance and Abolition in the Borderlands: Confronting Trump’s Reign of Terror

While there is a long history of state violence toward immigrants in the United States, the essayists in this interdisciplinary collection tackle head-on the impacts of the Trump administration.

This volume provides a well-argued look at Trump’s first term (2017-2021). Insightful contributions delve into the impact of Donald Trump’s rhetoric and policies on migrants detained and returned, immigrant children separated from their parents and placed in detention centers, and migrant women subjected to sexual and reproductive abuses, among other timely topics. The contributors document a long list in what the book calls “Trump’s Reign of Terror.”

Las Horas Imposibles / The Impossible Hours

In Las Horas Imposibles / The Impossible Hours, Octavio Quintanilla takes us on a profound journey to witness what it means to erase those boundaries devised by genre and politics intent on stifling memory, imagination, and creativity.

Presented in Spanish with English translations, this poetry collection comprises lyric and concrete poems—or frontextos—that explore intimacy and different shades of violence as a means to reconcile the speaker’s sense of belonging in the world. From the opening poem to the last in the first section, Quintanilla captures the perilous journeys that migrants undertake crossing borders as well as the paths that lovers forge to meet their endless longing. These themes are skillfully woven by Quintanilla, guiding us back and forth across the Rio Grande to encounter the apparitions of the disappeared and to witness the willingness of many to risk life and limb for a better life.

Kids in Cages: Surviving and Resisting Child Migrant Detention

In recent years, the plight of immigrant children has been in the national spotlight. A primary issue of concern is the experience of child migrants in detention by the U.S. government.

The authors in this volume approach the topic of child migrant detention from a range of perspectives. Some authors, particularly those who provide a legal perspective, chronicle the harms of detention, arguing that despite governmental assurances of child protection, detention is fundamentally a state-sanctioned form of violence. The social scientists in the volume have worked closely with detained youth themselves; in these chapters, authors highlight the ways in which youth survive detention, often through everyday acts of resistance and through the formation of temporary relationships. Practitioners including psychologists, activists, and faith leaders look at forms of resistance to detention. From retheorizing psychological interventions for detained youth to forming hospitality homes that act as alternatives to detention, these practitioners highlight ways forward for advocates of youth. At the heart of these narratives lies a crucial debate: the tension between harm-reduction strategies and abolition.

Walled: Barriers, Migration, and Resistance in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

In 1993, then-U.S. President Bill Clinton oversaw the construction of the first stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border walls. Since that pivotal moment, every subsequent U.S. president has allowed for the construction of additional miles of walls or fences. Despite his initial pledge to halt the expansion of border walls, in July 2022, President Joe Biden authorized the construction of new sections in four locations within Arizona. This decision underscores the enduring complexity and contentious nature of the U.S.-Mexico border infrastructure.

From the bustling San Diego–Tijuana region to the borderlands of Brownsville-Matamoros, the U.S.-Mexico border is marked by extensive stretches of walls. Over the past thirty years, these walls have evolved from purely physical barriers into multifaceted systems encompassing administrative, legal, legislative, and biometric components. Walled invites readers to reflect on the transformations of the border since the construction of the initial fourteen miles of wall, and the subsequent addition of 1,940 miles. It provides a comprehensive exploration of the border’s evolution, and its profound and lasting impacts.

Accompaniment with Im/migrant Communities: Engaged Ethnography

This collection brings together the experiences and voices of anthropologists whose engaged work with im/migrant communities pushes the boundaries of ethnography toward a feminist, care-based, decolonial mode of ethnographic engagement called “accompaniment.”

Accompaniment as anthropological research and praxis troubles the boundaries of researcher-participant, scholar-activist, and academic-community to explicitly address issues of power, inequality, and the broader social purpose of the work. More than two dozen contributors show how accompaniment is not merely a mode of knowledge production but an ethical commitment that calls researchers to action in solidarity with those whose lives we seek to understand. The volume stands as a collective conversation about possibilities for caring and decolonial forms of ethnographic engagement with im/migrant communities.

Browsing the Backlist: A Summer Book Roundup

Posted on June 17, 2025June 16, 2025 by Cameron Quan

With the arrival of the summer months, we welcome a slower pace in Tucson: shorter lines at your favorite restaurant, fewer emails in your inbox, and perhaps some extra time to dig into a good book while cicadas buzz outside.

At the University of Arizona Press, we find that this annual summer slowdown is the perfect moment to revisit some of the incredible titles in our backlist (i.e., books from our previous seasons, sometimes going back many, many years), in particular those that are now available in paperback.

And while we’re excited about the books we’re going to publish soon, we think it’s always worth taking the time to revisit a few remarkable books from our backlist. After all, as those old song lyrics go, “Make new friends, but keep the old!” Check out the roundup of books now in paperback below.

Postcards from the Sonora Border: Visualizing Place Through a Popular Lens, 1900s–1950s

Young men ride horses on a dusty main road through town. Cars and gas stations gradually intrude on the land, and, years later, curiosity shops and cantinas change the face of Mexican border towns south of Arizona. Between 1900 and the late 1950s, Mexican border towns came of age both as centers of commerce and as tourist destinations. Postcards from the Sonora Border reveals how images—in this case the iconic postcard—shape the way we experience and think about place.

Making use of his personal collection of historic images, Daniel D. Arreola captures the evolution of Sonoran border towns, creating a sense of visual “time travel” for the reader. Supported by maps and visual imagery, the author shares the geographical and historical story of five unique border towns—Agua Prieta, Naco, Nogales, Sonoyta, and San Luis Río Colorado.

Postcards from the Sonora Border introduces us to these important towns and provides individual stories about each, using the postcards as markers. No one postcard view tells the complete story—rather, the sense of place emerges image by image as the author pulls readers through the collection as an assembled view. Arreola reveals how often the same locations and landmarks of a town were photographed as postcard images generation after generation, giving a long and dynamic view of the inhabitants through time. Arranged chronologically, Arreola’s postcards allow us to discover the changing perceptions of place in the borderlands of Sonora, Mexico.

Gerard P. Kuiper an d the Rise of Modern Planetary Science

Astronomer Gerard P. Kuiper ignored the traditional boundaries of his subject. Using telescopes and the laboratory, he made the solar system a familiar, intriguing place. “It is not astronomy,” complained his colleagues, and they were right. Kuiper had created a new discipline we now call planetary science.

Kuiper was an acclaimed astronomer of binary stars and white dwarfs when he accidentally discovered that Titan, the massive moon of Saturn, had an atmosphere. This turned our understanding of planetary atmospheres on its head, and it set Kuiper on a path of staggering discoveries: Pluto was not a planet, planets around other stars were common, some asteroids were primary while some were just fragments of bigger asteroids, some moons were primary and some were captured asteroids or comets, the atmosphere of Mars was carbon dioxide, and there were two new moons in the sky, one orbiting Uranus and one orbiting Neptune.

He produced a monumental photographic atlas of the Moon at a time when men were landing on our nearest neighbor, and he played an important part in that effort. He also created some of the world’s major observatories in Hawai‘i and Chile. However, most remarkable was that the keys to his success sprang from his wartime activities, which led him to new techniques. This would change everything.

Derek W. G. Sears shows a brilliant but at times unpopular man who attracted as much dislike as acclaim. This in-depth history includes some of the twentieth century’s most intriguing scientists, from Harold Urey to Carl Sagan, who worked with—and sometimes against—the father of modern planetary science. Now, as NASA and other space agencies explore the solar system, they take with them many of the ideas and concepts first described by Gerard P. Kuiper.

Gardening at the Margins: Convivial Labor, Community, and Resistance

Gardening at the Margins tells the remarkable story of a diverse group of neighbors working together to grow food and community in the Santa Clara Valley in California. Based on four years of deeply engaged ethnographic field research via a Participatory Action Research project with the people and ecosystems of La Mesa Verde home garden program, Gabriel R. Valle develops a theory of convivial labor to describe how the acts of care among the diverse gardeners—through growing, preparing, and eating food in one of the most income unequal places in the country—are powerful, complex acts of resistance.

Participants in La Mesa Verde home garden program engage in the practices of growing and sharing food to envision and continuously work to enact alternative food systems that connect people to their food and communities. They are building on ancestral knowledge, as well as learning new forms of farming, gardening, and healing through convivial acts of sharing.

The individuals featured in the book are imagining and building alternative worlds and futures amid the very real challenges they embody and endure. Climate change, for example, is forcing thousands of migrants to urban areas, which means recent immigrants’ traditional environmental, nutritional, and healing knowledge will continue to be threatened by the pervasiveness of modernity and the homogenization of global capitalism. Moreover, once rural people migrate to urban areas, their ability to retain traditional foodways will remain difficult without spaces of autonomy. The stories in this book reveal how people create the physical space to grow food and the political space to enact autonomy to revive and restore agroecological knowledge needed for an uncertain future.

Celluloid Pueblo: Western Ways Films and the Invention of the Postwar Southwest

The five Cs of Arizona—copper, cattle, cotton, citrus, and climate—formed the basis of the state’s livelihood and a readymade roster of subjects for films. With an eye on the developing national appetite for all things western, Charles and Lucile Herbert founded Western Ways Features in 1936 to document the landscape, regional development, and diverse cultures of Arizona, the U.S. Southwest, and northern Mexico.

Celluloid Pueblo tells the story of Western Ways Features and its role in the invention of the Southwest of the imagination. Active during a thirty-year period of profound growth and transformation, the Herberts created a dynamic visual record of the region, and their archival films now serve as a time capsule of the Sunbelt in the mid-twentieth century. Drawing upon a ten-year career with Fox, Western Ways owner-operator Charles Herbert brought a newshound’s sensibility and acute skill at in-camera editing to his southwestern subjects. The Western Ways films provided counternarratives to Hollywood representations of the West and established the regional identity of Tucson and the borderlands.

Jennifer L. Jenkins’s broad-sweeping book examines the Herberts’ work on some of the first sound films in the Arizona borderlands and their ongoing promotion of the Southwest. The book covers the filmic representation of Native and Mexican lifeways, Anglo ranching and leisure, Mexican missions and tourism, and postwar borderlands prosperity and progressivism. The story of Western Ways closely follows the boom-and-bust arc of the midcentury Southwest and the constantly evolving representations of an exotic—but safe and domesticated—frontier.

Translation and Epistemicide: Racialization of Languages in the Americas

Translation has facilitated colonialism from the fifteenth century to the present day. Epistemicide, which involves destroying, marginalizing, or banishing Indigenous, subaltern, and counter-hegemonic knowledges, is one result. In the Americas, it is a racializing process. But in the hands of subaltern translators and interpreters, translation has also been used as a decolonial method.

Author Joshua Martin Price gives an account of translation-as-epistemicide in the Americas, drawing on a range of examples from the early colonial period to the War on Terror. The first chapters demonstrate four distinct operations of epistemicide: the commensuration of worlds, the epistemic marginalization of subaltern translators and the knowledge they produce, the criminalization of translators and interpreters, and translation as piracy or extractivism. The second part of the book outlines decolonial translation strategies, including an epistemic posture the author calls “bewilderment.”

Translation and Epistemicide tracks how through the centuries translation practices have enabled colonialism and resulted in epistemicide, or the destruction of Indigenous and subaltern knowledge.

2025 SAA Conference: Featured Books & Discounts

Posted on April 21, 2025April 21, 2025 by Anissa Suazo

April 21, 2025

The University of Arizona Press will be at the 2025 Society for American Archaeology Conference and bookfair! From April 23 to 27, find us at booth 311/313 to browse our books and meet our staff.

Take a peek below at this year’s incredible new work: a sweeping edited volume on warfare, a gorgeous glimpse into Hohokam art and iconography, an immersive Cold War era tale of the anthropologist Isabel T. Kelly, and much more.

The 35% conference discount code is good for all books on our website through May 21, 2025! Just enter AZSAA25 when you checkout.

New & Featured Titles

Editor Brian R. Billman’s Warfare and the Dynamics of Political Control draws on a wealth of interdisciplinary perspectives to explore how conflict shapes the establishment and maintenance of political institutions, from small-scale societies to expansive empires. The book examines the material and ideological factors that drive warfare, the organization of combatants, the ways leaders use violence to consolidate power, and how groups resist political domination in times of conflict. By posing critical questions about the efficacy of strategies and the varied outcomes of conflict-driven power struggles, this volume offers profound insights into the dynamics of political control throughout history.

Authors Linda M. Gregonis and Victoria R. Evans discuss how artists drew inspiration from their Sonoran Desert homeland and were also influenced by the cultures of western Mexico, the hunter-gatherers of the western desert, the Mogollon to the east, and the Pueblo cultures of the northern Southwest. Unlike traditional archaeological texts, The Hohokam and Their World takes a holistic approach by examining a diverse range of artistic expressions used by the Hohokam. From intricately crafted pottery to mesmerizing carvings in rock, each medium offers a unique glimpse into the Hohokam’s relationship with their environment and the wider world.

Landscapes of Movement and Predation is a global study of times and places where people were subject to brutality, displacement, and loss of life, liberty, livelihood, and possessions. With contributions from archaeologists and a historian, editors Brenda J. Bowser and Catherine M. Cameron provide a startling new perspective on an aspect of the past that is often overlooked: the role of violence in shaping where, how, and with whom people lived. Using ethnohistoric, ethnographic, historic, and archaeological data, the authors explore the actions of both predators and their targets and uncover the myriad responses people took to protect themselves.

In a remote desert corner of Sonora, Mexico, the site of El Fin del Mundo offers the first recorded evidence of Paleoindian interactions with gomphotheres, an extinct species related to elephants. The Clovis occupation of North America is the oldest generally accepted and well-documented archaeological assemblage on the continent. This site in Sonora, Mexico, is the northernmost dated late Pleistocene gomphothere and the youngest in North America. Editors Vance T. Holliday, Guadalupe Sánchez, and Ismael Sánchez-Morales present and synthesize the archaeological, geological, paleontological, and paleoenvironmental records of an important Clovis site in their book El Fin del Mundo.

Plants for Desperate Times is an introduction to the diversity of plant foods that have saved millions of lives during lethal food shortages. While not a field guide, it addresses questions about what famine foods are and why they are important. Beyond a study of famine foods, the authors Paul E. Minnis and Robert L. Freedman, share why keeping an inventory of plant foods of last resort is so important. They help to build an understanding of little-known and underappreciated foods that may have a greater role in provisioning humanity in the future.

As an archaeologist, anthropologist, scholar, educator, and program evaluator for the U.S. State Department during the early Cold War era, Dr. Isabel T. Kelly’s (1906–1983) career presents a distinctive vantage point on the evolving landscape of U.S. foreign policy, Mexican rural welfare initiatives, and the discipline of anthropology. Organized chronologically, each chapter of Stephanie Baker Opperman’s Cold War Anthropologist delves into distinct facets of Kelly’s international journey, with a particular emphasis on her involvement in cooperative programs aimed at fostering diplomatic relations with Mexico. Through this narrative framework, readers are immersed in a compelling exploration of Kelly’s enduring impact on both the field of anthropology and the realm of international diplomacy.

Featured Series

The Anthropological Papers of the University of Arizona is a peer-reviewed monograph series sponsored by the School of Anthropology. Established in 1959, the series publishes archaeological and ethnographic papers that use contemporary method and theory to investigate problems of anthropological importance in the southwestern United States, Mexico, and related areas. Selected volumes in the series are now open-access titles available through the University of Arizona Campus Repository.

The Archaeology of Indigenous-Colonial Interactions in the Americas is a series that highlights leading current research and scholarship focused on Indigenous-colonial processes and engagement throughout all regions of the Americas. The series builds on the success of its predecessor, The Archaeology of Colonialism in Native North America.

Amerind Studies in Anthropology is a series that publishes the results of the Amerind Seminars, annual professional symposia hosted by the Amerind Foundation in Dragoon, Arizona, and cosponsored by the Society for American Archaeology (SAA). Series titles that emerge from these symposia focus on timely topics like the analysis of regional archaeological sites, current issues in methodology and theory, and sweeping discussions of world phenomena such as warfare and cultural settlement patterns.

Native Peoples of the Americas is an ambitious series whose scope ranges from North to South America and includes Middle America and the Caribbean. Each volume takes unique methodological approaches—archaeological, ethnographic, ecological, and/or ethno-historical—to frame cultural regions. Volumes cover select theoretical approaches that link regions, such as Native responses to conquest and the imposition of authority, environmental degradation, loss of Native lands, and the appropriation of Native knowledge and cosmologies. These books illuminate the strategies that Native Peoples have employed to maintain both their autonomies and identities. The series encourages the participation of Native, well-established, and emerging scholars as authors, contributors, and editors for the books.

For questions or to submit a proposal to any of these series, please contact Senior Editor Allyson Carter at acarter@uapress.arizona.edu.

April 14, 2025

We had a wonderful time at this year’s annual meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology! Thank you to everyone who spent time with us in Portland.

Did we miss an amazing photo of you? Tag @azpress so that we can share.

And don’t forget that the conference discount code is good until April 22, 2025! Use code AZSFA25 on our website for 35% off all books.

Check out some photos of the meeting below:

We had a beautiful book display in the Downtown Portland Hilton. Pictured on the front table:*Embodying Biodiversity*, *Heritage in the Body*, *Cookstove Chronicles*, *Walled*, and others.

Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez, author of *The Rise of Necro/Narco Citizenship*, with Senior Editor Allyson Carter

Nicole D. Peterson, author of *Net Values*

Brian Haley, author of *Hopis and the Counterculture*

Kristin Elizabeth Yarris, co-editor of *Accompaniment with Im/migrant Communities*

See you next year in Albuquerque!

April 4, 2025

This year’s Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference and bookfair was truly special! We are so grateful to every one of the authors, editors, contributors, and new friends who visited our booth in Downtown Los Angeles.

Did we miss an amazing photo of you? Tag @azpress on all the social medias so that we can share!

And don’t forget that our conference discount code is good until April 23, 2025. Enter AZAWP25 at checkout on our website for 35% off all books.

Enjoy strolling (scrolling?) through memory lane below:

Walking into the Downtown Los Angeles Convention Center

Amber McCrary signing copies of *Blue Corn Tongue*

Denise Low with her book, *House of Grace, House of Blood*

Presenting at a panel, one of the editors of a forthcoming book (Fall 2026) about Janice Gould.

Danielle P. Williams (watch for her book in Spring 2026!) with Assistant Editor Elizabeth Wilder

Diego Báez and Cynthia Guardado swap books

Goodbye for now, and see you next year in Baltimore!

Mil gracias to everyone who came by to say hello, browse books, and talk with our staff. If you’re an author and you have questions about working with us, please reach out to Assistant Editor Elizabeth Wilder at EWilder@uapress.arizona.edu.

See you all next year in Baltimore for AWP 2026!

November 26, 2024

Thank you to all of the authors, faculty, students, and new friends who made time to visit our booth in Tampa this year! We are still feeling the excitement around all the rich discussion of foodways, migration, labor, Indigeneity, environment, language, extractive industries, and multispecies relationships.

If you weren’t able to visit our booth, there’s still time to order the books we had on display. Get 35% off with discount code AZAAA24 at checkout until 12/18/24.

Below, enjoy the roundup of photos from the event! Did we miss a great photo of you at the conference? Tag @AZPress on social media so we can share it!

We had lots of goodies to give away at our booth this year, including new bookmarks featuring Leigh McDonald’s gorgeous cover design for Amber McCrary’s forthcoming Blue Corn Tongue.

Congratulations to Kristina Baines on her book, Heritage in the Body, which was just published this month!

Another new book for November! Terese Gagnon holds a copy of Embodying Biodiversity.

Thanks to Mike Anastario, co-author of Kneeling Before Corn, for visiting our booth!

University of Arizona Press Senior Editor, Allyson Carter, standing beside Randall H. McGuire co-editor of The Border and Its Bodies.

Thanks to everyone who came by to say hello, browse books, and talk with our staff. See you next year in New Orleans!

“StepUP” with the Association of University Presses, Nov. 11-15

Posted on November 12, 2024November 12, 2024 by maryreynolds

November 12, 2024

The Association of University Presses’s theme for this year’s University Press Week, November 11-15, is ”Step UP.” See the complete list of Step UP books here. The Step UP list of 123 publications represent the many areas in which university presses and their authors #StepUP. According to the Association, “These publications and projects, selected by AUPresses members, give context to current issues and events, offer solutions to global challenges, and present diverse voices in a broad range of disciplines.” Forging a Sustainable Southwest: The Power of Collaborative Conservation by Stephen H. Storm is featured in the Science & Environment section of the Step UP list. Forging a Sustainable Southwest introduces readers to four conservation efforts that provide insight into how diverse groups of citizens have worked collaboratively to develop visions for land use that harmonized sometimes conflicting ecological, economic, cultural, and community needs. See photos below from this book.

Book, Jacket, and Journal Show for University Press Week, Nov. 11 – 15

Posted on November 6, 2024November 5, 2024 by maryreynolds

November 6, 2023

The University of Arizona Press hosts the Association of University Presses’s Book, Jacket, and Journal Show for the month of November. We’re thrilled that University of Arizona designer Leigh McDonald’s jacket design and Porter McDonald’s interior drawings for Rim to River by Tom Zoellner received an award. The show honors exemplary works created by the university press community in 2023. It is all part of our celebration of University Press Week, Nov. 11 – 15. The award-winning books are on display at the Press offices on the 5th Floor of the University of Arizona Main Library. The winners are also on virtual display here.

Check out a few of the winning designs below, and a photo of the display at the Press offices.

October 30, 2024

Thanks to all the authors, editors, and new friends who visited our booth at the Western History Association Conference in Kansas City last weekend! Below, check out a few highlights from the conference:

Above, BorderVisions editors Yvette J. Saavedra and Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez stand beside Rafael A Martínez, celebrating the recent publication of his book, Illegalized.

Jerome Jeffery Clark (left) and Elise Boxer (right), editors of From the Skin, share their work with conference attendees.

Myrriah Gómez (left), author of Nuclear Nuevo México, and Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez (right) connect at our booth.

And finally, a throwback to last year’s conference in Los Angeles! Can you spot University of Arizona Press Publicity Manager, Mary Reynolds, in the photos above?

We look forward to seeing you next year at the 2025 Western History Association meeting, October 15-18, in Albuquerque, New Mexico!

Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with These New Books

Posted on September 18, 2024August 27, 2024 by Anissa Suazo

September 18, 2024

Celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month with new books from the University of Arizona Press! Celebrated annually from September 15 to October 15, the month aims to recognize “the histories, cultures and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America” (learn more at the National Hispanic Heritage Month website). The theme for 2024 is “Pioneers of Change: Shaping the Future Together.”

Each of the books below takes the reader on a journey of personal and shared history, highlighting our authors’ diverse experiences and recognizing the impact of Hispanic culture on our country.

A haunting, an obsession, a calling: Tim Z. Hernandez has been searching for people his whole life. Now, in this highly anticipated memoir, he takes us along on an investigative odyssey through personal and collective history to uncover the surprising conjunctions that bind our stories together. In They Call You Back, Hernandez continues his search for the 1948 Los Gatos Canyon plane crash victims while also turning the lens on himself and his ancestral past, revealing the tumultuous and deeply intimate experiences that have fueled his investigations—a lifelong journey haunted by memory, addiction, generational trauma, and the spirit world. They Call You Back is the true chronicle of one man’s obsession to restore dignity to an undignified chapter in America’s past, while at the same time making a case for why we must heal our personal wounds if we are ever to heal our political ones.

Set in one of Tucson’s first tamal and tortilla factories, The Molino is a hybrid memoir that reckons with one family’s loss of home, food, and faith. Weaving together history, culture, and Mexican food traditions, Melani Martinez shares the story of her family’s life and work in the heart of their downtown eatery, El Rapido. Opened by Martinez’s great-grandfather, Aurelio Perez, in 1933, El Rapido served tamales and burritos to residents and visitors to Tucson’s historic Barrio Presidio for nearly seventy years. For the family, the factory that bound them together was known for the giant corn grinder churning behind the scenes—the molino. With clear eyes and warm humor, Martinez documents the work required to prepare food for others, and explores the heartbreaking aftermath of gentrification that forces the multigenerational family business to close its doors.

The first English-language collection of Latina/x caregiving testimonios, this volume gives voice to diverse Chicana/x and Latina/x caregiving experiences. Bringing together thirteen first-person accounts, these testimonios speak to the tragic flaws in our health-care system and the woefully undervalued labor of providing care to family and community. Testimonios of Care gives voice to those who often are voiceless in histories of caregiving and is guided by Chicana and Latina feminist principles, which include solidarity between women of color, empathy, willingness to challenge the patriarchal medical health-care systems, questioning traditional gender roles and idealization of familia, and caring for self while caring for loved ones and community. The book is edited by Natalia Deeb-Sossa, Yvette G. Flores, and Angie Chabram

The topic of mothers and mothering transcends all spaces, from popular culture to intellectual thought and critique. This collection of essays, edited by Cynthia Bejarano and Maria Cristina Morales, bridges both methodological and theoretical frameworks to explore forms of mothering that challenge hegemonic understandings of parenting and traditional notions of Latinx womxnhood. It articulates the collective experiences of Latinx, Black, and Indigenous mothering from both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. In Frontera Madre(hood), thirty contributors discuss their lived experiences, research, or community work challenging multiple layers of oppression, including militarization of the border, border security propaganda, feminicides, drug war and colonial violence, grieving and loss of a child, challenges and forms of resistance by Indigenous mothers, working mothers in maquiladoras, queer mothering, academia and motherhood, and institutional barriers by government systems to access affordable health care and environmental justice.

Working in community is critical to several fields. Working en comunidad, edited by Elena Foulis, Stacey Alex, and Glenn A. Martínez, focuses on service-learning and Latina/o/e communities within a variety of institutional contexts. It provides a practical framework grounded in theoretical approaches that center Latina/o/e experiences as foundational to understanding how to prepare students to work in the community and en comunidad. The volume tackles three major themes: ethical approaches to working with Latina/o/e communities within language courses and beyond; preparing Latina/o/e students for working with their own communities in different environments; and ensuring equitable practices and building relationships that are mutually beneficial for students and community members.

Illegalized: Undocumented Youth Movements in the United States takes readers on a journey through the history of the rise of undocumented youth social movements in the United States in the twenty-first century. Author Rafael A Martínez follows the documentation trail of undocumented youth activists spanning over two decades of organizing. Each chapter carefully analyzes key organizing strategies used by undocumented youth to produce direct forms of activism that expose and critique repressive forms of state control and violence. This inquiry is particularly generative in relation to how immigrant bodies are erased, contained, and imagined as “aliens” or “illegal.”

“Pioneers of Change” photo credit in lead image: Mariana I. Purcell Rivera, Puerto Rican artist and architecture student at the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico

The University of Arizona Press