Date: Monday, September 18, 2023
Time: 7:00 – 8:30 p.m.
Where: ENR2 Building Room 107, University of Arizona, 1064 E Lowell St, Tucson and via Zoom
Shelby Tisdale will present her book, No Place for a Lady, at the Environmental and Natural Resources Building on the UA campus. Her presentation “Contributions of Marjorie F. Lambert to Southwest Archaeology” is free and open to the public. Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society is sponsoring the event. The hybrid event is also 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 not only stayed and left their imprint on the study of southwestern archaeology and anthropology but flourished. Tisdale will 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.
Shelby Tisale is the Retired Director, Center of Southwest Studies, Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, and Former Director, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture/Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe. She received her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Arizona.
About the book:
In No Place for a Lady, we gain insight into a time when there were few women establishing full-time careers in anthropology, archaeology, or museums. 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.
When: Thursday, July 20, 2023, 5:00 p.m.
Where: Navajo Nation Library, Highway 264 & Postal Loop Road, Window Rock, Arizona
Wendy Greyeyes will discuss her book A History of Navajo Nation Education: Disentangling Our Sovereign Body at the Navajo Nation Library. Greyeyes is a Diné author and assistant professor at the University of New Mexico. Books will be available for purchase and refreshments will be served.
About the book:
On the heels of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Department of Diné Education, this important education history explains how the current Navajo educational system is a complex terrain of power relationships, competing agendas, and jurisdictional battles influenced by colonial pressures and tribal resistance. An iron grip of colonial domination over Navajo education remains, thus inhibiting a unified path toward educational sovereignty. In providing the historical roots to today’s challenges, Wendy Greyeyes clears the path and provides a go-to reference to move discussions forward.
When: Thursday, June 8, 2023, 6 p.m.
Where: LibroMobile, 1150 S. Bristol St. #A3, Santa Ana, California
Cynthia Guardado will speak with Ignacio Carvajal at “Poets in Conversation” in Santa Ana on June 8. Guardado will talk about Cenizas as well as her current work.
Cenizas offers an arresting portrait of a Salvadoran family whose lives have been shaped by the upheavals of global politics. The speaker of these poems—the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants—questions the meaning of homeland as she navigates life in the United States while remaining tethered to El Salvador by the long shadows cast by personal and public history. Cynthia Guardado’s poems give voice to the grief of family trauma, while capturing moments of beauty and tenderness. Maternal figures preside over the verses, guiding the speaker as she searches the ashes of history to tell her family’s story.
When: May 21, 2023, 1 – 3 p.m.
Where: Colliope, 2706 North Silverbell Rd., #3140, Tucson
Seth Schindler will read from and sign his book, Sowing the Seeds of Change: The Story of the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, on Saturday, May 21. The event is sponsored by Blessings from the Heart, and attendees are requested to bring cans of food to donate to the Community Food Bank.
About the book:
The Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona (CFB) is one of the oldest and most respected food banks in America. It is a widely recognized leader not simply in providing hunger relief but in attacking the root causes of hunger and poverty through community development, education, and advocacy. In 2018, Feeding America—the national organization of food banks—named it “Food Bank of the Year.” The CFB serves as a model for all nonprofits to follow, no matter their mission.
This profusely illustrated book chronicles the CFB’s amazing success and evolution from a tiny grassroots hunger-relief organization to one with more than six thousand workers and an annual budget exceeding $100 million.
When: Saturday, May 13, 12:30 p.m.
Where: Asia Society of Texas, 1370 Southmore Blvd., Houston
Come see and hear Reyes Ramirez at the BIPOC Book Fest: A Lit Vibe in Houston, Texas. He will be part of a panel “Crafting Home: Readings from Texas Writers.” Ramirez says he will be “selling books, giving away zines, and reading poems.”
The Festival is from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tickets are $5.00 for the entire day, and are available here.
About The Book of Wanderers:
What do a family of luchadores, a teen on the run, a rideshare driver, a lucid dreamer, a migrant worker in space, a mecha soldier, and a zombie-and-neo-Nazi fighter have in common?
Reyes Ramirez’s dynamic short story collection follows new lineages of Mexican and Salvadoran diasporas traversing life in Houston, across borders, and even on Mars. Themes of wandering weave throughout each story, bringing feelings of unease and liberation as characters navigate cultural, physical, and psychological separation and loss from one generation to the next in a tumultuous nation.
The Book of Wanderers deeply explores Houston, a Gulf Coast metropolis that incorporates Southern, Western, and Southwestern identities near the borderlands with a connection to the cosmos.
When: Thursday, May 25, 2023, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Libélula Books & Co, 950 S 26th St, San Diego, CA
Cynthia Guardado and Casandra López will read from past and current work in San Diego on May 25. Guardado will read from Cenizas and López will read from Brother Bullet.
Cenizas offers an arresting portrait of a Salvadoran family whose lives have been shaped by the upheavals of global politics. The speaker of these poems—the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants—questions the meaning of homeland as she navigates life in the United States while remaining tethered to El Salvador by the long shadows cast by personal and public history. Cynthia Guardado’s poems give voice to the grief of family trauma, while capturing moments of beauty and tenderness. Maternal figures preside over the verses, guiding the speaker as she searches the ashes of history to tell her family’s story.
Speaking to both a personal and collective loss, in Brother Bullet Casandra López confronts her relationships with violence, grief, guilt, and ultimately, endurance. Revisiting the memory and lasting consequences of her brother’s murder, López traces the course of the bullet—its trajectory, impact, wreckage—in lyrical narrative poems that are haunting and raw with emotion, yet tender and alive in revelations of light.
When: Sunday, April 30, 2023, 1 p.m.
Where: Albuquerque Museum, 2000 Mountain Rd NW, Albuquerque, NM
Valerie Martínez will read from her book-length poem, COUNT, with musical accompaniment from the world premiere of “As the Waters Began to Rise,” a vocal work composed by University of New Mexico’s Peter Gilbert. The event will take place at the Albuquerque Museum in partnership with the Museum Store.
The event is free and open to the public, sponsored by The City of Albuquerque Department of Arts & Culture. The first ten attendees who arrive after 12:30 p.m. will receive a free, signed edition of COUNT.
COUNT is a book-length, eco-poem that confronts the tragic reality of climate change. The book contains 43 sections of myth-gathering, accounts of climate devastation, personal narratives, descriptions of flora and fauna, references to works of eco-art, and evocations of children, so as to shed light on climate change. Martínez uses earth wisdom and culture to help guide readers through the crises.
The title comes from the book’s central metaphor—the process of counting: counting down to extinction, counting the wonders of the world, and counting our way back to the balance we need to save the world from climate destruction. Filled with a sense of grief and sorrow, COUNT also offers the hope that future generations will be able to live on a healthy planet.
The book will be for sale at the museum bookstore on April 30, and Martínez will sign books after the reading.
When: Friday, May 5, 7 p.m.
Where: Cwrw, 32 King Street, Carmarthen, Wales, United Kingdom
Write 4word presents a night of poetry in West Wales, UK. Poets in performance including Welsh Iraqi poet Hanan Issa, Irish poet Stephen James Smith and Colombian American poet Elizabeth Torres. Torres will read from her poetry collection Lotería: Nocturnal Sweepstakes.
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.
In this bilingual collection, poet Elizabeth Torres threads together the stories of family dynamics and the realities of migration with the archetypes of tarot and the traditional Lotería game, used for centuries as an object of divination and entertainment.
Torres is an award-winning poet, multimedia artist and translator, author of over 20 books of poetry published in various languages.
When: Monday, April 24, 2023, 4:30 p.m.
Where: Pere Marquette Gallery, Saint Louis University, 221 N. Grand Blvd., St. Louis, MO
Anthony Macías will speak on Ex Uno Plura (out of One, Many). In this free public talk, Macías analyzes the concept of cultural pluralism vis-a-vis the defacto United States motto, E Pluribus Unum and its reverse, using Chicano-Chicana cultural production as evidence to demonstrate how popular culture plays a crucial role in imagining Americana. There will be a reception after the talk, and his book Chicano-Chicana Americana will be available for purchase.
Chicano-Chicana Americana, explores American national character by showing how ethnic Mexicans attained social and cultural status through fair, open competition without a radical realignment of political or economic structures. Their creative achievements demanded dignity and earned respect. Anthony Macías argues that these performances demonstrated a pop culture pluralism that subtly changed mainstream America, transforming it from the mythological past of the Wild West to the speculative future of science fiction.
Anthony Macías is an associate professor in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of the book Mexican American Mojo: Popular Music, Dance, and Urban Culture in Los Angeles, 1935–1968. He has also published on bebop, hip hop, punk rock, Latin music, bandleader Gerald Wilson, Jewish Americans, U.S. historiography, Hollywood westerns, gay rights and Dog Day Afternoon, and the pan-American hemispheric imaginary.
When: Sunday, March 19, 2:00 p.m.
Where: Four 8 Wine Works, 816 N. Main St, Cottonwood, AZ
Tom Zoellner shares stories from his book, Rim to River: Looking into the Heart of Arizona. He interweaves his hike along the Arizona Trail from Utah to Sonora with stories about the history and culture of the state. Will he find the Arizonac ranch for which the state is named? What does he learn about the Grand Canyon? Zoellner is a fifth generation Arizonan and author of eight nonfiction books including The Heartless Stone, Uranium, Train, A Safeway in Arizona and Island on Fire, which won the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award.
Book excerpt:
Here it was at last. I would be hiking across the Kaibab Plateau, down and out of the Grand Canyon, past the cinder cone of Humphreys Peak, across Anderson Mesa, down the Mogollon Rim, through the Mazatzals and the Superstitions, across the Black Hills of Pinal County, and then up and over four major ranges in succession: the Catalinas, the Rincons, the Santa Ritas, and the Huachucas to the Mexican border and then—hopefully—the spot in the valley that poured forth silver for about a week and from which the state had taken its beguiling name.
The University of Arizona Press
