Field Notes: Excavations of Paquimé’s Site 204

October 22, 2020

By Paul Minnis and Michael Whalen

Our research in northwestern Chihuahua focused on the area around the famous and important site of Paquimé (or Casas Grandes), which was most influential during the Medio Period, AD 1200–1450 (give or take a few decades either way). Over the past two decades, we directed multiple field projects in the region. At first, we conducted surveys, systematically walking over an area to record whatever archaeological remains were observable. Then we transitioned to the excavation of a range of sites in an attempt to understand how the Paquimé-dominated society was organized and when it dated to, among other questions.

One of the most important sites we studied—Site 204—is located west of Paquimé in a tributary drainage. We selected this site because it was one of the two largest Medio Period sites near Paquimé, so we could compare it with the small villages we studied at one end of a continuum of size and the premier and largest site, Paquimé, at the other extreme.

1a. before excavation

Image 1a: Site 204 is located in a small valley that also has a large number of Medio Period villages. The atalaya is a feature on a hilltop that probably was a shrine and communication point visible from Cerro Moctezuma, which is just west of Paquimé. Cerro Moctezuma was probably one of the major shrines in the local area.

1b. before excavation

Image 1b: Site 204 has three “mounds” that are the remains of adobe room blocks that have decayed over the centuries into piles of dirt. There are three mounds for a total of about two hundred rooms. In addition, this site has two large ritual roasting pits and a ball court. Like nearly all Medio Period sites, the room blocks have been severely looted.

2 first day

Image 2: The first day of excavation is always exciting and, in a way, terrifying. Questions go through your mind: What is below the ground, what will you find, or did you start in the best place to excavate?

3a. excavated rooms
3b. excavated rooms

Image 3a & 3b: Excavating using a precise grid system, you slowly find walls and outline rooms. Then you remove the fill in the room in layers, carefully screening the dirt so as not to miss small artifacts. Unfortunately, much of each room has been looted, which mixes the artifacts. Finally, there’s the reward: the excavation of the floor and its features such as hearths and pits. You are not actually done after excavating, mapping, and photographing the rooms: the area below the room is excavated to look for evidence of earlier occupation.

3c. ball court trench

Image 3c: Ball courts were important locations of community events. Site 204 has one ball court that had been dug into the ground forming an I-shape. We also excavated a trench across the ball court.

3d. hillside fields

Image 3d: Not all archaeological features are visually interesting or obvious. The faint lines of rocks are rock walls (trincheras) that form small farming plots. The hillside above Site 204 is filled with these features, as are many hillslopes in the Casas Grandes region. While most were farmed by small families, a few seem to have been cacique or chief fields, controlled by leaders and worked by the populous.

4a. stairs

Image 4a: Although not common, we excavated several stairs at the six sites we studied.

4b. closed T-door

Image 4b: T-shaped doorways are common and likely had important ritual significance. This example is of a T-shaped doorway that was filled to block it off as part of the room’s renovation.

4c. ritual room

Image 4c: Most rooms at sites in the Casas Grandes region appear to have been used as domestic space where people lived their daily lives. We did excavate some that appear to have had ritual use. This room originally had two columns, and some are artifacts. As you can see, the open space between the columns were closed with a later wall. Also present is a T-shaped door at the far end of the room. The many asymmetrical holes in the floor are the bottom of looters’ holes, an ever-present factor in studying Medio Period sites.

4d corn cobs

Image 4d: The value of archaeological remains are not determined by their aesthetic appeal or rarity. These charred corn cobs are not especially beautiful, but they help tell us about how the people lived. There is evidence that important community events that drew people from throughout the Casas Grandes area required massive amount of food for feasts.

4e. stone face

Image 4e: Figures and effigies are common from the Casas Grandes region. While this artifact obviously is a human head, we don’t know what it meant to the ancient peoples of the region.

4f. parrot burial

Image 4f: One of the most remarkable activities was the raising of macaws. This is the only macaw skeleton we found in our excavations. It was in a subfloor pit, probably an offering dedicating the room.

4g. pendant
4h. turquoise

Image 4 G: This pendant may be of a macaw, a parrot, or another bird.

Image 4h: Turquoise is quite rare in Casas Grandes sites, compared to other sites in the U.S. Southwest and northwestern Mexico.

4i. plain ware vessel

Image 4i: This is a reconstructed pot. Although most attention is on the beautiful and iconic Ramos Polychrome ceramic, most clay vessels were plain like this one.

5 lab work

Image 5: Survey and excavation are the best known parts of archaeological research, but at least an equal amount of time is spent in the laboratory analyzing the materials removed during fieldwork.

6 crew friendships

Image 6: One wonderful outcome of being on an archaeological project is that you often develop friendships that last a lifetime . . . literally. This is especially delightful among crews from different countries or regions within a country. Here, one of our crews with members from Mexico, the Unites States, and Canada enjoy a day off visiting the famous cliff dwelling site, Cueva de la Olla, with it enormous granary located in the mountains west of Paquimé.

The Prehispanic Ethnobotany of Paquimé and Its Neighbors is the first large-scale investigation of the prehispanic ethnobotany of this important ancient site and its neighbors. Paul Minnis and Michael Whalen examine ethnobotanical relationships during Medio Period, AD 1200–1450, when Paquimé was at its most influential. Based on two decades of archaeological research, this book examines uses of plants for food, farming strategies, wood use, and anthropogenic ecology. The authors show that the relationships between plants and people are complex, interdependent, and reciprocal. This volume documents ethnobotanical relationships and shows their importance to the development of the Paquimé polity.

Paul E. Minnis is a professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author or editor of twelve books and numerous articles. He has been president of the Society of Ethnobiology and treasurer and press editor for the Society for American Archaeology, and he is co-founder of the Southwest Symposium.

Michael E. Whalen is a professor emeritus in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tulsa. He has published a series of books, monographs, chapters, and journal articles on Oaxaca, western Texas, and northwestern Chihuahua. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society.


All images in the post are copyright the authors.

University Press Week: Read. Think. Act.

October 7, 2019

According to Publisher’s Weekly, this year’s theme for University Press Week is, Read. Think. Act.

From Sunday, November 3 through Saturday, November 9, the Association of University Presses encourages readers to dive into publications about the issues that affect our present and future.

The theme, the AUPresses said in its statement, is timely in that “many citizens around the globe continue to engage in important debates that will influence vital decision-making in the months ahead; in fact, this year’s UP Week will begin exactly one year to the day before the 2020 Election Day in the U.S.” The organization added: “AUPresses members worldwide seek to encourage people to read the latest peer-reviewed publications about issues that affect our present and future—from politics to economics to climate change to race relations and more—and to better understand academic presses’ important contribution to these vital areas of concern.”

UA Press Director Kathryn Conrad, who currently serves as president of the Association of University Presses, said this in the same statement:

“Many of us choose to work for university presses because we believe in the UP mission of bringing the latest research and ideas to diverse audiences of readers, [and] the success of recent university press books such as White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo (Beacon Press) and Cyberwar by Kathleen Hall Jamieson (Oxford University Press) make it clear that there is a hunger for these books,” Kathryn Conrad, AUPresses president and director of the University of Arizona Press, said in a statement “In the last few years many people have found it difficult to have effective conversations about the most serious and important issues facing our communities, nations, and world. We hope that by encouraging readers to explore university press works on topics that affect everyone—and to reflect on their reading—our publications might help stimulate positive conversations and actions.”

To kick off your celebration, AUPresses put together a reading list from all of its membership that you can download and share. Recommended from the UA Press is a new book edited by Thomas E. Sheridan and Randal H. McGuire, The Border and Its Bodies.

The Border and Its Bodies examines the impact of migration from Central America and México to the United States on the most basic social unit possible: the human body. It explores the terrible toll migration takes on the bodies of migrants—those who cross the border and those who die along the way—and discusses the treatment of those bodies after their remains are discovered in the desert.

Read. Think. Act.

Kathryn Conrad Begins Term as President of AUPresses

June 26, 2019

Kathryn Conrad, director of the University of Arizona Press, assumed the presidency of the Association of University Presses (AUPresses) on June 12, 2019, during the Association’s Annual Meeting. Conrad was preceded by Jennifer Crewe, associate provost and director of Columbia University Press.

In her inaugural address, Conrad commended university presses for working “to advance scholarship, to preserve cultural heritage, and to build the scholarly record.” Read Conrad’s full remarks.

Conrad began her publishing career as an editorial assistant for both Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill and Houghton-Mifflin’s Best American Short Stories, an editor for River Styx—a literary magazine based in St. Louis—and a typesetter. She joined the marketing department of the University of Missouri Press in 1989, where she worked as advertising manager, promotion manager, and finally assistant marketing manager. She moved to Tucson in 1995 as the marketing and sales manager of the University of Arizona Press and served as its interim director, while continuing in her marketing and sales duties, for four years before her appointment as director in 2012.

The leader of a university press that reports to its university’s library—as do 20 percent of the Association’s member presses—Conrad speaks and writes frequently on the synergies that academic libraries and scholarly presses share. In addition, she earned a master’s degree in information and library sciences (MALIS) from the University of Arizona last year.

Conrad has advanced the work of the AUPresses community in many volunteer capacities. She served on the Association’s Board of Directors from 2002-2005 and also for three, multi-year terms on the Marketing Committee, including a stint as its chair. She has been a member and chair of the Library Relations Committee and has served on the Nominating and Program Committees and the University Press Week Task Force.

As a longtime leader within the Association, President Conrad offered her special thanks at the Detroit conference to all volunteers who will lead and serve AUPresses committees this year, including a new Equity, Justice, and Inclusion Committee.

She also welcomed all newcomers to the conference and profession. “The university press of the future may not look like the university press of today, but it will keep quality and expertise at its core,” she concluded. “I have a lot left to learn about publishing, and I expect to learn it from you. You are the future of AUPresses.”

About the 2019-2020 AUPresses Board of Directors

Other AUPresses leadership changes for 2019-2020 include:

  • Treasurer Jean Kim, Stanford University, took office, as Robbie Dircks, University of North Carolina Press, wrapped up his 2018-2019 term.
  • Niko Pfund, president of Oxford University Press USA, was chosen as President-Elect.
  • Alice Ennis, chief financial officer of University of Illinois Press, was named Treasurer-Elect.
  • New board members began three-year terms: Mary C. Francis, editorial director of the University of Michigan Press/Michigan Publishing, and Lara Mainville, director of the University of Ottawa Press.
  • Past president Nicole Mitchell, director of the University of Washington Press; past treasurer Nadine Buckland, finance manager of University of West Indies Press; John Donatich, director of Yale University Press; and Donna Shear, director of the University of Nebraska Press concluded their terms on the board as the Association thanked them for their dedicated service.

About the Association

The Association of University Presses is an organization of 150+ international nonprofit scholarly publishers. Since 1937, the Association of University Presses has advanced the essential role of a global community of publishers whose mission is to ensure academic excellence and cultivate knowledge. The Association holds integrity, diversity, stewardship, and intellectual freedom as core values. AUPresses members are active across many scholarly disciplines, including the humanities, arts, and sciences, publish significant regional and literary work, and are innovators in the world of digital publishing.

“Discovering Mars” Author on History Channel Podcast

December 10, 2024

William Sheehan, co-author with Jim Bell of Discovering Mars: A History of Observation and Exploration of the Red Planet, was interviewed on the History Channel podcast. Ben Dickstein of the History Channel interviewed Sheehan from within the dome of the Clark Refractor at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff. Kevin Schindler, historian of the Lowell Observatory, was also interviewed.

They spoke about Mariner 9, an American space probe, that has been orbiting Mars for the last year. But now, it’s running out of fuel and will be deactivated, having met all of its mission objectives. Mariner 9 gave us our closest look ever at the Red Planet, solving mysteries that have been debated for centuries.

Listen to “Breaking the Mars Curse” here on Apple or here on Spotify.

About the book:

Historian William Sheehan and astronomer and planetary scientist Jim Bell combine their talents to tell a unique story of what we’ve learned by studying Mars through evolving technologies. What the eye sees as a mysterious red dot wandering through the sky becomes a blurry mirage of apparent seas, continents, and canals as viewed through Earth-based telescopes. Beginning with the Mariner and Viking missions of the 1960s and 1970s, space-based instruments and monitoring systems have flooded scientists with data on Mars’s meteorology and geology, and have even sought evidence of possible existence of life-forms on or beneath the surface. This knowledge has transformed our perception of the Red Planet and has provided clues for better understanding our own blue world.

Kimberly Blaeser Wins Poets & Writers Award

December 9, 2024

Poets & Writers announced today that Kimberly Blaeser, Angie Cruz, and Kiese Laymon will receive the 2025 Writers for Writers AwardKimberly Blaeser is author of Ancient Light, a collection that uses lyric, narrative, and concrete poems to give voice to some of the most pressing ecological and social issues of our time.

Blaeser is being recognized for nurturing and mentoring Indigenous poets through Indigenous Nations Poets (In-Na-Po), an organization she founded in 2020. She is the author of six poetry collections and served as Wisconsin Poet Laureate from 2015–16. An Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist, Blaeser is an enrolled member of White Earth Nation, an MFA faculty member for Institute of American Indian Arts, and professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

Award recipients are selected by a committee composed of current and past members of the Poets & Writers Board of Directors, chaired by literary agent Eric Simonoff. Of the 2025 honorees, Simonoff said: “These are extraordinary literary citizens who have each made tremendous contributions to the writing and publishing communities. They exemplify Poets & Writers’ core values of service and excellence, and we are delighted to recognize each one of them.”

The awards will be presented at Poets & Writers’ gala on March 24, 2025, in New York City.

Congratulations, Kimberly!

Excerpt from “Heritage in the Body”

December 5, 2024

Through storytelling, ethnography, and interviews, Heritage in the Body: Sensory Ecologies of Health Practice in Times of Change, by Kristina Baines, examines the links between health and heritage in times of change. Using a series of case studies, anthropologist Baines tells the intimate stories of how Indigenous Maya and Garifuna Belizeans—both in Belize and in the United States—navigate macro-level processes such as economic development, climate change, political shifts, and global health crises in the context of changes in their own lives.

Employing an embodied ecological heritage (EEH) framework, Baines explores the links between health and heritage as a fluid series of ecological practices. Health and wellness are holistically defined and approached from a phenomenological perspective. Baines focuses on how sensory experiences change the body through practice and provides insights into community-driven alternatives as a means to maintain and support happy, healthy lives. Read an excerpt from the book’s first chapter below.

“CHANGE IS GONNA COME”

Accepting the inevitability of change can be seen as equal parts ambivalence and pragmatism. Whether people like it or not, change happens, and they must prepare for the inevitable and roll with the punches. People negotiate changes in subtle ways, both preempting and responding to the changing conditions of their lives. It is this perspective that guided the decision-making of many of the Maya community members I have worked with, exemplified by the quote in the opening vignette about how the road was both good and bad and the next part of the assessment from the person who said it, a former alcalde: “Well, it’s coming.” There is an element of inevitability or personal powerlessness when it comes to individual experience of large-scale changes. That said, however, Belizean communities have been unusually successful in many ways when it comes to accepting seemingly inevitable development changes: notable examples include the public burning of genetically modified corn seed to avoid its introduction into the country and the failure of international fast-food chains to open successful branches in Belize.

In the popular narrative, the effects of change on Indigenous communities can be oversimplified to evoke pictures of a cultural and physical genocide. There are certain truths to reckon with in this assessment; however, while the negative effects of climate change and global development processes on Indigenous and other marginalized groups are well-documented, so too are examples of resilience and adaptive practices among the communities impacted by these changes. It is my hope that this book will go some distance in illuminating this resilience without minimizing the real challenges these communities face, both in their histories and in their everyday lives. Change need not necessarily be embraced or feared; it simply is a part of life, with moments of increased dimensions and intensities. Perhaps this moment, the “Anthropocene,” as it has been termed in recent years, is one of these times of intensification.

EMBODIED ECOLOGICAL HERITAGE

The effect of changes on individuals, of course, is more than a series of clichés, whatever truth they may contain. As I asked people about their health, I noted that answers increasingly included how changes across multiple dimensions—spatial, temporal, ecological—had manifested in individual bodies. People had moved for work, gone to college, changed their farming practices, and stopped drinking herbal medicines—for example—and they felt the impact of these changes in their bodies. With my ongoing ethnographic work guided by the embodied ecological heritage (EEH) framework, I have sought to capture how Indigenous Belizeans have navigated these ever-present environmental and economic changes throughout their lived experience. Embodied ecological heritage kept my focus on the role of heritage, traditional ecological practices, and, more specifically, on how the individuals and communities I studied maintained healthy lives. People spoke about the maintenance and loss of “traditions” and of what it meant to be Maya or to be Garifuna in the context of changing practices. While heritage should not be conceptualized as a static concept, it brings with it a sense of continuity, in which the past informs individual and group identity, which was helpful to community members in the context of change.

I developed the EEH framework in 2011 during my first long research period, living in Santa Cruz, a small, primarily Mopan Maya village in southern Belize. The way that community members spoke about and conceptualized their health was intimately connected to how they spoke about “being Maya” or about participating in traditional ecological practices. The relationship between health and what the Maya community members defined as heritage practices existed on many levels and incorporated ideas about food, work, and education. The connections were simultaneously physical, mental, and social, with the healthy body described as that which could work and grow and prepare food in the traditional way. Their lived experience could be understood as EEH. This lens is useful describing health, particularly in communities that are not fully steeped in the legacy of Cartesian dualism. It is complementary to more politicized, critical health perspectives, which highlight structural forces and impacts on health. Embodied ecological heritage is an important intervention in this perspective in that it allows individual sensory experience to be understood in the context of both the physical and the social, which is an aspect of health understanding that receives little attention. Bodies change through everyday practices, and these changes matter for health. Embodied ecological heritage guides the understanding and explanation of these changes, illuminating the role of heritage practices in the maintenance of health.

Embodied ecological heritage brings together seemingly disparate theories about the ways in which anthropologists have historically understood bodies and bodily practice. Phenomenology seeks to capture “being in the world”—the lived and embodied experience, felt through action or practice. This perspective has been set in contrast with more cognitive theoretical orientations, which aim to capture the internal structures of the mind and how they classify external factors they encounter. In my work, and through the development of EEH, I argue that these orientations need not be in opposition. Through a focus on how sensory experiences change the body (including the brain), EEH reveals how phenomenological and cognitive perspectives can coexist. Cognitive phenomenology as a theoretical orientation shows heritage is not static, not a list of traditional plants or foods, not simply knowledge stored in the brain; rather, it is something that is carried in the body. Embodied ecological heritage is a grounded theory: people speak about their heritage in terms of practice, or what they do with their bodies, and how those practices relate to how they feel. The language of sensory experiences—the smells, tastes, sounds, and feelings of doing and being in the world—is rich with connections to tradition, to heritage identity, to health. Documenting and understanding how these connections happen and how they form a critical way of not only being well in, but also in thinking about, the world is vital.

2024 Booklist Editors Choice: They Call You Back

December 4, 2024

They Call You Back: A Lost History, A Search, A Memoir, by Tim Z. Hernandez has been selected by Booklist as a 2024 Editors Choice Title! Booklist is the book review journal of the American Library Association. In the Booklist starred review of the book, Lillian Liao wrote, “Hernandez courageously embraces the fragility of stories and generously shares their underlying worldviews, allowing readers to touch the invisible. Anchored by grief, this is a must-read to understand a solemn part of America’s modern history that is still very present.”

They Call You Back is a memoir about the investigations that have shaped the greater part of the author’s life. Hernandez takes us along on an investigative odyssey through personal and collective history to uncover the surprising conjunctions that bind our stories together. Hernandez continues his search for families of the twenty-eight Mexicans who were killed in the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos Canyon, 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.

Hernandez is an award-winning author, research scholar, and performer. His books include fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and he is the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Book Award. His work has been featured in international media, and in 2018 he was recognized by the California Senate for his work locating the victims of the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos, which is chronicled in his book, All They Will Call You.

Congratulations Tim!

Excerpt from Embodying Biodiversity

November 27, 2024

Embodying Biodiversity: Sensory Conservation as Refuge and Sovereignty, by Terese Gagnon, harnesses a myriad of methodologies and research spanning multiple continents. This volume delves into the power of everyday forms of biodiversity conservation, motivated by sensory and embodied engagement with plants. Through an array of interdisciplinary contributions, the authors argue that the vast majority of biodiversity conservation worldwide is carried out not by large-scale, hierarchical initiatives but by ordinary people who cultivate sensory-motivated, place-based bonds with plants.

Acknowledging the monumental role of everyday champions in tending biodiversity, the contributors write that this caretaking is crucial to countering ecological harm and global injustice stemming from colonial violence and racial capitalism. Read an excerpt from the book’s first chapter below.

I recently had a flashback of refugia. The memory was intimate, painful, and brimming with agrobiodiversity. The vivid image was triggered when I heard an ophthalmologist say the word “scarring.” She was gazing into my eyeball, and her assistant diligently wrote down my maladies. As a participant observer, I had, five years earlier, written my own field note after hacking into the soil with a sickle: “As I chopped at the dirt, some dirt flew in my eye. And it made me think almost immediately about what was in the dirt—were there any chemicals in it that I should be worried about?”

I remained silent as this memory passed through my mind, and my silence yielded the unintended consequence of no further investigation by the ophthalmologist despite the everyday hypothesis that was now spinning in my head: Those agrichemicals did something to me. Agrichemicals do a lot of things to a lot of bodies of people who rarely complain but frequently wonder about them. Agrichemicals contaminate soils that plants nonetheless find ways to grow in. From 2015 to 2020, I conducted fieldwork in and around Chalatenango, a rural northern region of El Salvador, where agrobiodiversity is found in small subsistence farms, and where farmers narrate and remember stories of agrichemicals entering the region. My flashback of refugia is not traumatic, because it is overpowered by the intimacy of cultivating maíz capulin (capulin corn) and maíz blanco (white corn) from soil that was and will continue to be contaminated with agrichemicals. It was one fleeting reassembly of refugia, memory, and embodiment.

This chapter is concerned with epistemic entanglements amid the everyday farming practices of subsistence corn farmers who live in, emigrate from, and send parcels to and from rural El Salvador. I first provide some context regarding the transnational and affective processes implicated in this agrarian assemblage, and then describe a minor intervention that slices, pokes, and pulls at imbricated knowledges therein. Findings from this small and nongeneralizable process concern soil chemistry in relation to local farming techniques, calling attention to epistemic entanglements in the material world of subsistence farmers, as well as the methods that social scientists rely on to examine them.

Corn and a Rural Salvadoran Diaspora

In the creation narrative of the Popol Vuh, grandmother Xmucane grinds white corn and yellow corn to make the flesh of the first humans. Corn is also the plant that Xmucane’s grandchildren (Hunahpu and Xbalanque) use to provide a sign to their grandmother of their death and life before they embark on their journey to Xibalba (Tedlock 1996). While this narrative is almost never discussed among the subsistence farmers with whom I farmed corn in Chalatenango, its absence did not preclude our kneeling before every planted seed and manipulating the terrain to aid its growth in the twenty-first century.

In the second decade of this twenty-first century, the harvested corn will be brought to a Chalateca grandmother, who will compile maíz blanco seeds into a woven sack, which she will send to her migrant kin living in Colorado. She will send them by means of a courier, who will examine them for narcotics before packing them into a polypropylene-lined carboard box, which is one of multiple layers of protection for what will soon become airborne corn seeds. Eventually, the corn seeds will be stripped back down as an isolated parcel presented to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent in Houston who wants to know what this is. The corn seeds will be used to make atoll or nixtamalized tortillas in a place far away from the location in which the corn was grown. If I turn on a tape recorder and ask the parcel’s recipient questions about why she requested the seeds, she might start by making comparisons between nation-states, people, sounds, and spaces. She might also perform nostalgia for my audio recorder. If in Chalatenango I ask her father to show me how he cultivates maíz blanco, he may choose to show me only parts of the process. He might secretly set fire to the weeds, producing an ash residue on the topsoil, after I leave because he knows that gringos do not like it when campesinos use fire to farm their food. He will smother his testimony simply because I am present, watching and observing (McKinnon 2016). The farmer and I might later talk until we are lost in wonder about what is really happening in the soil beneath our feet from which the maíz blanco grows. We might again kneel down on the soil before each seed in the coming rainy season, an act that clears the weeds but nonetheless causes us to genuflect before these signs of life and death.

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!

Excerpt from Savages and Citizens

November 25, 2024

Savages and Citizens: How Indigeneity Shapes the State, by Andrew Canessa and Manuela Lavinas Picq, delves into European political philosophy, comparative politics, and contemporary international law, showing how the concept of indigeneity has shaped the development of the modern state. The exclusion of Indigenous people was not a collateral byproduct; it was a political project in its own right. The book argues that indigeneity is a political identity relational to modern nation-states and that Indigenous politics, although marking the boundary of the state, are co-constitutive of colonial processes of state-making. In showing how indigeneity is central to how the international system of states operates, the book forefronts Indigenous peoples as political actors to reject essentializing views that reduce them to cultural “survivors” rooted in the past.

With insights drawn from diverse global contexts and empirical research from Bolivia and Ecuador, this work advocates for the relevance of Indigenous studies within political science and argues for an ethnography of sovereignty in anthropology. Savages and Citizens makes a compelling case for the centrality of Indigenous perspectives to understand the modern state from political theory to international studies. Read an excerpt from the book’s Introduction below.

The role of anthropology in exoticizing and “othering” Indigenous people has long been noted. For Franz Boas (1848–1942), widely considered to be the founder of modern U.S. cultural anthropology, anthropology was primarily concerned with Indigenous peoples of North America who had just been crushed militarily and dispossessed of their lands. His was an urgent task to collect material culture and record memory of a way of life before it was gone forever. This “salvage anthropology,” as Kahnawà:ke Mohawk anthropologist Simpson (2014) calls it, maintained a dualistic binary that kept a particular political order intact. Simpson (2018) refers to it as the grammar of Indigenous dispossession when analyzing why white people love Franz Boas. The politics of the U.S. then (as now) has little room for contemporary Indigenous peoples, and it is not without coincidence that Boasian anthropology is so much rooted in understanding an Indigenous past. The Indigenous of the past are no threat and are available to be romanticized.

British social anthropology as developed by Bronisław Malinowski (1884–1942) emerged in the context of a British Empire, which still sought to engage with living communities under the imperial yoke. Unsurprisingly, Malinowski functionalism looked to explain how contemporary societies continued to function explicitly not as vestiges of history. It is no coincidence that British social anthropology was concerned with the continued functioning of Indigenous peoples that it sought to absorb into an imperial state. This is not to say that both anthropologists were simply products of their time, for each was also unfashionably and explicitly antiracist as they and their students insisted on Indigenous peoples being understood in their own terms. But it would be naive to ignore the state formations in which their anthropology was produced and how it served—even when unwittingly– those state formations.

The severest critique is that anthropology was colonialism’s handmaiden (Asad 1973) and that anthropology itself produced an Indigenous subordinate alterity. However, this Indigenous alterity long predates even the earliest versions of Western anthropology. Michel-Rolph Trouillot (2003) sees anthropology as drawing on preexisting notions of the savage and, to be sure, developing them. For him, this “savage slot” is precisely what made the West conceivable and that, indeed, is a central thesis of this book: the existence of Indigenous peoples is precisely what makes the politically modern West imaginable, whether or not this is explicitly recognized by political actors. In turn, “anthropology belongs to a discursive field that is an inherent part of the West’s geography of imagination.”

There is a long tradition of anthropologists being concerned with the ways in which the state represents itself to its subjects (Bouchard 2011), what Thomas Hansen and Finn Stepputat (2001) call the “languages of stateness.” Anthropological studies analyze how the state is perceived through specific cultural lenses—how state practices are made manifest, performed, and given meaning (cf. Gupta and Sharma 2006, 277). The discipline is increasingly shifting its focus “toward state images and representations in research and theorizing” (Thelen, Vetters, and Benda-Beckmann 2017). Some examples of this are Fernando Coronil’s (1997), Alec Leonhardt’s (2006), and Michal Taussig’s (1997) work on the “magic” of the state; Clifford Geertz’s (1980) state as “theatre”; Begoña Aretxaga’s 2000 “ghostly” state; Akil Gupta’s (1995) “imagined” state; and Bruce Kapferer’s (1988) work on “myths” of state. These approaches are summarized by Aradhana Sharma and Akil Gupta (2006) when they write, “the anthropological project attempts to understand the conditions in which the state successfully represents itself as coherent and singular.”

A quite different anthropological approach moves beyond how the state is represented to people in an imagined or abstract form to look at the ways in which it is made manifest: Serena Tennekoon (1988) looks at how the state manifests through “rituals of development,” and Anya Bernstein and Elizabeth Mertz (2011) edited a special volume of PoLAR on bureaucracies (see also Ranta 2022). Hastings Donnan and Thomas Wilson (1999) look at the ways in which state presence is felt on borders, Townsend Middleton (2011) offers an ethnography of state surveys, and Brett Gustafson (2009a) looks at cartography. There has, however, been insufficient theorizing of stateness from Indigenous perspectives. Some anthropologists, such as Nancy Postero (2017) and Alpah Shah (2010), have looked at the rare examples of Indigenous states in Bolivia (2005–19) and Jharkhand, India, but to date there has been little work in anthropology that considers not only what the state looks like from an Indigenous perspective but how the state creates those spaces where Indigenous cultures exist, that is, where state formation produces indigeneity as a meaningful political category.

Most studies of the state draw explicitly or implicitly on a Weberian idea of a state as a bounded sovereign entity encompassing a clearly defined territory with a monopoly of violence over that territory and governed by a rational bureaucracy (Hansen and Stepputat 2001). Yet few scholars have interrogated the boundary of that (idealized) state or considered, not only what formations it produces beyond the boundary but, most importantly for our considerations, how formations beyond the notional limits of the state in themselves produce the entity we understand as being the state. This is a very different way of approaching the study of the state and departs from much of the anthropological tradition which has largely focused on representation of the state or everyday practices relating to it.

The work of James Scott (e.g., 1998, 2009, 2017) is a notable exception here, and he has shown how cultural forms and identities of people denoted as “Tribal” are themselves cultural forms of communities beyond the state, of people who explicitly reject the state and we draw heavily on his work. To express it at its simplest, our anthropological approach is not so much to see the state as a cultural form but to see how the state produces the spaces for political forms that are recognized as Indigenous. What makes them Indigenous per se is the ways in which they occupy a political space created by a particular state formation and contributed dynamically to that state formation. What we offer here is a model for understanding indigeneity not as sui generis but as cultural formations that occupy a specific political space. This avoids any kind of essentialization of Indigenous politics and sidesteps the tendency to see Indigenous cultures as historical “survivals” of a contact with Western (neo)colonization—sometimes described as living in the past, even in the “stone age”—to locate them in contemporary sovereignty-making. Indigenous peoples are neither atavistic nor static but dynamic actors in the construction of modern world politics.

Field Notes: Inside Birds, Bats, and Blooms

November 22, 2024

In the new book Birds, Bats, and Blooms author Theodore H. Fleming provides an in-depth look at the ecology and evolution of two groups of vertebrate pollinators: New World hummingbirds and nectar-feeding bats and their Old World counterparts. Today, the author gives us a behind-the-scenes look at this book and what inspired him to write it.

By Theodore H. Fleming

This book is meant to be a scientifically rigorous but engaging account of two groups of my favorite animals—nectar-feeding birds and bats—with a special emphasis on hummingbirds and bats that visit flowers in the New World. It reflects my long-term research interests from observing and studying these animals in Brazil, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Mexico, southern Arizona, and Australia. In retirement I have also spent considerable time photographing them in many of these countries.

Mexican long-tongued bat visiting Agave flowers © Theodore H. Fleming

In a sense, this book is a modern version of Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories in which he tells us how various animals acquired their most notable features (e.g., a camel’s hump, a giraffe’s long neck, etc.). Thus, the major sections of this book include “How to Build a Hummingbird,” “How to Build a Nectar Bat,” “How to Build a Vertebrate-pollinated Flower,” and “What About Their Ecological Counterparts in the Old World?” It ends with an overview of the “Conservation Status” of these animals.

Here are examples of some of the species that I discuss in this book:

Nectar-feeding bat hovering over flowers.
Lesser long-nosed bat in southern Arizona © Theodore H. Fleming
Hummingbird in flight
Whit-necked Jacobin in Cost Rica © Theodore H. Fleming
Bat hovering of flowers
Dusky nectar bat in Costa Rica © Theodore H. Fleming

My “How To …” sections review the evolutionary histories of New World nectar-feeding birds and bats as well as many of their notable adaptations to an unusual food source, i.e. sugary water produced by flowers. It compares and contrasts the evolution and adaptations of flower-visiting birds and bats and discusses the botanical consequences of their behavior. Hummingbirds and nectar-bats have been interacting with their food plants for over 20 million years, and as a result, several thousand species of plants in dozens of families currently depend on these high energy and expensive pollinators for their reproductive success. A similar situation exists in the Old World where at least four families of birds (e.g., sunbirds, honeyeaters, flower-peckers, and lorikeets) and a few nectar-bats pollinate a wide variety of flowers. I discuss evolutionary convergences and differences between these Old World nectar-feeders and their New World counterparts.

Photographer set up for photography bats
Setup for photographing nectar bats in southern Arizona © Theodore H. Fleming

Finally, I review the conservation status of these animals. Most of them are not threatened currently with extinction, but habitat loss caused by human activities is always a major concern. Hunting and the pet trade threaten lorikeets in Australasia. In addition, in the New World human fear of vampire bats is a constant threat to its cave-dwelling nectar bats.

Photographer set up for hummingbird photography
Setup for photographing hummingbirds in Panama © Theodore H. Fleming

In the end, though, hummingbirds, sunbirds, lorikeets, and nectar-bats are among the most interesting vertebrates to have evolved on Earth. We must cherish and protect them for future generations to enjoy.

***

Theodore H. Fleming is a professor emeritus of biology at the University of Miami. He spent thirty-nine years in academia at the University of Missouri–St. Louis and the University of Miami, teaching ecology courses and conducting research on tropical rodent populations and plant-visiting bats and their food plants in Panama, Costa Rica, Australia, Mexico, and Arizona. He lives in Tucson.

They Call You Back Makes Kirkus Best Nonfiction of 2024 List

November 19, 2024

They Call You Back, by Tim Z. Hernandez has been selected by Kirkus as one of the best nonfiction books for 2024! In the starred review of the book, Kirkus wrote, “With an unapologetic humility, commitment to restoring lost dignity, and deep understanding of human connectedness, Hernandez is a model storyteller. Entrancing, reverential, and beautiful.”

They Call You Back is a memoir about the investigations that have shaped the greater part of the author’s life. Hernandez takes us along on an investigative odyssey through personal and collective history to uncover the surprising conjunctions that bind our stories together. Hernandez continues his search for families of the twenty-eight Mexicans who were killed in the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos Canyon, 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.

Hernandez is an award-winning author, research scholar, and performer. His books include fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and he is the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Book Award. His work has been featured in international media, and in 2018 he was recognized by the California Senate for his work locating the victims of the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos, which is chronicled in his book, All They Will Call You.

Congratulations Tim!

American Anthropological Association 2024: Discounts, New Books, and More

November 18, 2024

The University of Arizona Press will be at the American Anthropological Association meeting this week in Tampa! We hope you’ll stop by booth #308 where we’ll have our new anthropology titles on display, and as a bonus, you can meet Senior Editor, Allyson Carter!

We’re also sharing the conference discount with everyone: use code AZAAA24 for 35% off all titles on our website.

Finally, if you’re an author or editor and you have a project that might be a good fit for The University of Arizona Press, learn more about publishing with us here.


New & Featured Titles

Through storytelling, ethnography, and interviews, Heritage in the Body examines the links between health and heritage in times of change. Using a series of case studies, anthropologist Kristina Baines tells the intimate stories of how Indigenous Maya and Garifuna Belizeans—both in Belize and in the United States—navigate macro-level processes such as economic development, climate change, political shifts, and global health crises in the context of changes in their own lives.


Harnessing a myriad of methodologies and research spanning multiple continents, Embodying Biodiversity delves into the power of everyday forms of biodiversity conservation, motivated by sensory and embodied engagement with plants. Through an array of interdisciplinary contributions, the authors argue that the vast majority of biodiversity conservation worldwide is carried out not by large-scale, hierarchical initiatives but by ordinary people who cultivate sensory-motivated, place-based bonds with plants. Acknowledging the monumental role of everyday champions in tending biodiversity, Terese Gagnon and the contributors argue that this caretaking is crucial to countering ecological harm and global injustice stemming from colonial violence and racial capitalism.


Delving into European political philosophy, comparative politics, and contemporary international law, Savages and Citizens shows how the concept of indigeneity has shaped the development of the modern state. The exclusion of Indigenous people was not a collateral byproduct; it was a political project in its own right. Andrew Canessa and Manuela Lavinas Picq argue that indigeneity is a political identity relational to modern nation-states and that Indigenous politics, although marking the boundary of the state, are co-constitutive of colonial processes of state-making. In showing how indigeneity is central to how the international system of states operates, the book forefronts Indigenous peoples as political actors to reject essentializing views that reduce them to cultural “survivors” rooted in the past.


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. Her trajectory illuminates a shift toward pragmatic, culturally sensitive approaches in technical assistance programs for Mexico’s rural areas, departing from traditional U.S.-centric developmental paradigms. In Cold War Anthropologist, Stephanie Baker Opperman skillfully brings to light the previously untold narratives of Isabel Kelly, unveiling her influence on mid-twentieth-century Mexico.


Hopis and the Counterculture addresses how the Hopi became icons of the followers of alternative spiritualities and reveals one of the major pathways for the explosive appropriation of Indigenous identities in the 1960s. Author Brian Haley reveals a largely unknown network of Native, non-Indian, and neo-Indian actors who spread misrepresentations of the Hopi that they created through interactions with the Hopi Traditionalist faction of the 1940s through 1980s. Significantly, many non-Hopis involved adopted Indian identities during this time, becoming “neo-Indians.”


Forthcoming Spring 2025

Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez forthcoming work, The Rise of Necro/Narco Citizenship investigates the intricate and often harrowing dynamics that define the borderlands between the United States, Mexico, and beyond. This groundbreaking book provides a comprehensive cultural, economic, social, and political-ecological analysis, illustrating how various forms of violence and militarization have reshaped the daily lives and identities of the region’s inhabitants. Through meticulous ethnographic fieldwork, extensive archival research, and rigorous statistical data, Vélez-Ibáñez exposes the deeply entrenched networks of exploitation and conflict that have emerged in response to global capitalism’s pressures.


Featured Series

Critical Issues in Indigenous Studies anchors intellectual work within an Indigenous framework that reflects Native-centered concerns and objectives. Series titles expand and deepen discussions about Indigenous people beyond nation-state boundaries, and complicate existing notions of Indigenous identity. The series editors are especially interested in works that analyze colonization, land dispossession, and oppression while foregrounding Indigenous peoples’ resistance to these processes.

Global Change/Global Health is a series for scholarly monographs that treat global change and human health as interconnected phenomena. The goals of the series are to advance scholarship across the social and health sciences, contribute to public debates, and inform public policies about the human dimensions of global change.

Biodiversity in small spaces is a series that provides short, to-the-point books that re-examine the conservation of biodiversity in small places and focus on the interplay of memory, identity, and affect in determining what matters, and thus what stays, thereby shaping the fabric of biodiversity in the present and, ultimately, the future. The authors will cover, in an accessible way, the range of marginalities, subjectivities, and chronologies, from indigenous farmers nurturing, defending, or repatriating their traditional crop varieties to college towns re-embedding food production and consumption into the social fabric of their communities.

Critical Green Engagements is a series that critically engages with the growing global advocacy of the “green economy” model for environmental stewardship and puts forth alternatives to discourses that dominate “green” practices. The series explores how different advocates, bystanders, and opponents engage with the changes envisaged by policy directives and environmental visions. It also examines which forms of social movements emerge from these ideologies and how social movement actors connect. The series showcases the rigorous, high-quality research and writing emerging in response to these transformations and channels the energies and skills of an international collection of leading environmental scholars.

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 Allyson Carter at ACarter@uapress.arizona.edu.

Excerpt from Caracoleando Among Worlds

November 15, 2024

Silvia Soto’s Caracoleando Among Worlds: Reconstructing Maya Worldviews in Chiapas provides an in-depth analysis of poetry, short stories, and one of the first novels written by a Maya Tsotsil writer of Chiapas alongside close readings of the EZLN’s six declarations of the Lacandon Jungle. Themes echoing ancestral connections, informing epistemologies, and sustaining cultural and spiritual practices emerge and weave the texts to each other. The work brings into the conversation literature that has been translated into English for the first time and places Maya writers of Chiapas in discussion with other Native American and Indigenous scholars.

This work shows how literature, culture, and activism intertwine, and offers a compelling narrative that transcends boundaries and fosters a deeper understanding of Maya identities and resilience. Read an excerpt from the book’s first chapter below.

From the moment the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN or Zapatistas) burst into the public eye, it stated its position and vision as an organized guerrilla movement through the release of the First Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle of January 1, 1994, published in its newly established paper, El Despertador Mexicano (Mexican Awakener), and made available online. The media surrounded the Zapatistas as they declared control of the city of San Cristóbal de las Casas and six other cities in the state of Chiapas (captured in the special coverage by Canal 6 de Julio), bombarding them with questions about their uprising, despite their position having already been clearly stated. In the years since this New Year’s uprising, Zapatistas have released six declarations and hundreds of communiqués stating the philosophy of the movement, giving rise to what they call the power of the word, which has allowed them agency in the narrative of their movement. As books, films, music, and art about the EZLN continue to be produced to capture their struggle, their stream of communiqués stating the position and direction of the movement grants them control of their histories.

The contemporary Maya literary movement of Chiapas unfolded alongside the EZLN’s initial steps of underground organizing, with Indigenous intellectuals at the time reframing the ways they related to state projects of Indigenismo. Enrique Pérez López (Tsotsil) (2008), former director of the Centro Estatal de Lenguas, Arte y Literatura Indígenas (State Center for Indigenous Languages, Art, and Literature, CELALI), refers to this period of time as a reawakening of Indigenous peoples of Chiapas. The strides made by this Indigenous intellectual movement coincided, too, with shifts in Mexican policy toward a neoliberal agenda; changes to Article 4 of the Mexican Constitution, recognizing the plurality of the state; and the state’s endorsement of the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Convention 169, which recognizes Indigenous rights in addition to labor and economic rights. In the late 1970s, these Indigenous intellectuals (young men and women who had mostly formally trained as teachers) had begun organizing by engaging in a shared reflection on the current state of their communities. The focus of these intellectuals was on education, the rescue and teaching of histories, reading and writing, and song and art rooted in their Maya belief system. There was no initial systematic application of this vision; instead, they were simply a group of people coming together to reflect and dialogue on new possibilities in their own relationship to their Maya worldviews.

Thus, in the last four decades, these two movements have flourished parallel to each other, crossing paths in different stages along the way. Local languages, Maya and Spanish, are central to this process. Orality and the written word are the guiding forces in the articulation of their positions. Such action connects to the Nahuatl concept of in xochitl in cuicatl or floricanto (flower-and-song), which captures the way that poetry and poetry’s metaphors unlock the mysteries of life and dreams that are central to a Nahuatl worldview (León-Portilla 1990a, 75). The EZLN has strategically and powerfully used this approach to deliver its flowery word through the written, audio, and visual release of communiqués. This approach is captured in its fourth declaration—further developed in chapter 4—which declares that “the flower of the word will not die,” in relation to the war Zapatistas are waging in defense of the rights of Indigenous peoples of Mexico (EZLN 1996a, 1996b).

In this chapter I examine the poetry of three Maya writers. The first section of the chapter centers on four poems and the ways the poets engage with the writing process of the poetry, allowing the written word to take center stage: “Sts’ibujon: Yo escribo” (I write) by Tseltal poet Adriana del Carmen López Sántiz, from her poetry collection Jalbil k’opetik: Palabras tejidas (Woven words, 2005); “A’yej: Discurso” (Speech) by Tsotsil poet Andrés López Díaz, published in the anthology Sbel sjol yo’nton ik’: Memoria del viento (Memory of the wind, López Díaz, Díaz Ruiz, and López Díaz 2006); and both “Slikebal Kuxlejaltik: Creación” (Creation) and “Vu’un Li’oyunkutike: Soy los que Estamos Aquí” (I am the we who are here) by Tsotsil poet Enriqueta Lunez, from her poetry collection Yi’ Beltak ch’ulelaletik: Raíces del alma (Roots of the soul, 2007). The second section of the chapter engages with the oral deliverance of the poetry and the immediacy such an act carries in the production of the poetry by centering on four additional poems by the same poets and from the same publications: “Jun k’ak’al: Un día” (One day) and “Ta’lo xa: Basta” (Enough) by López Díaz, “K’unil lajel: Agonía” (Agony) by López Sántiz, and “Yavu: Lunario” (Lunary) by Lunez. The movement the work of these poets creates—and the reclamation of their role as orators and carriers of knowledge—recenters their presence in the world and sets forward new possibilities and new visions for the future. Such a position connects to the trajectories of the EZLN and its narratives of the insurgency, particularly regarding its vision of “a world where many worlds fit” (further developed in chapter 4), where the recognition of “different” is essential to the continuation of the collective.

I frame my analysis of the poetry in direct dialogue with the work of U.S. Native scholars of the last five decades, such as N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa), Simon J. Ortiz (Acoma), and Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo). This analysis highlights the relationship between the role of language, the written and oral word, the interweaving of their stories to reveal their worldviews, and the reclamation of their place in history. These relations are always rooted to place (land) and time and are in continuous dialogue with one another. My analysis also brings into conversation the work of Indigenous and Indigenous studies scholars, such as Gloria E. Chacón’s (2018) concept of kab’awil or the double gaze, which addresses Indigenous writers’ search within their worldviews to reaffirm their presence as Indigenous peoples;
Paul M. Worley and Rita M. Palacios’s (2019) concept of ts’íib, which decenters the Latin alphabet by placing other methods of recording knowledges alongside it; Elicura Chihuailaf Nahuelpan’s (Mapuche from Chile) (2009) concept of oralitor (oraliture), which underscores the ways textual narratives are informed by millennia-old oral traditions; and Miguel Rocha Vivas’s (2021) concept of “oralitegraphy,” which, in line with the work of Chacón and Chihuailaf, stresses the usage of multimedia in Indigenous scholarship, and the ways that textual, oral, and visual narratives are in constant dialogue in Indigenous knowledge production. The work of these poets also brings out the concept of caracoleando, which speaks of the movement the poetry creates, the production of new ways of being that are drawn from the old ways and in a constant process of change. Through my readings of the poetry, I ask the following questions: What are the central themes articulated by the EZLN and Maya writers of Chiapas? How do orality and writing, as well as the specific languages used, produce these central themes? As these poets move through the practices of orality and writing, I suggest that the central theme the poems address is this notion of presence, revealing new visions of Maya worlds that are not just about claiming a Maya identity but also about claiming a space to perform this Maya identity.


Silvia Soto is an assistant professor in Chicano and Latino Studies at Sonoma State University (SSU). She earned her doctoral degree from the University of California, Davis, in Native American Studies. Her research focuses on the contemporary Maya literary movement of Chiapas, Mexico, more specifically on concepts of identity formation, gender relations, and Maya cosmovisions. Soto has been the recipient of the postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in American Indian Studies.

Excerpt from Cold War Anthropologist

November 13, 2024

Cold War Anthropologist: Isabel Kelly and Rural Development in Mexico, by Stephanie Baker Opperman, 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 Dr. Isabel T. Kelly’s (1906-1983) enduring impact on both the field of anthropology and the realm of international diplomacy.

This book is indispensable for historians, anthropologists, and individuals intrigued by the nuanced complexities of Cold War politics, presenting pioneering research at the intersection of history and anthropology. Opperman skillfully brings to light the previously untold narratives of Isabel Kelly, unveiling her influence on mid-twentieth-century Mexico. Read an excerpt from the book’s Introduction below.

In March 1952, Dr. Isabel Kelly attended the tenth annual meeting of the United States–Mexico Border Public Health Association (USMBPHA) in the northern Mexican state of Monterrey. The Pan American Sanitary Bureau (PASB) helped to establish the association “in order to foster understanding of public health needs and through mutual assistance to promote public and personal health along the United States– Mexico border.” The wartime alliance, however, did not easily transfer into postwar solidarity among health officials in the region. The meeting’s attendees included PASB director Fred Soper and secretary general Miguel Bustamante; USMBPHA president Wilton L. Halverson and secretary J. C. Ellington; U.S. health officers from the states of Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas; Mexican health officers from the states of Coahuila, Chihuahua, Nuevo Leon, Sonora, and Tamaulipas; and “federal representatives of the health services of Mexico and of the United States.” Kelly served as a U.S. delegate to the meeting on behalf of the Smithsonian’s Institute of Social Anthropology (ISA). Beginning in 1943, the ISA established a series of cooperative agreements with the Mexican government to expand social science research in the country.

In summarizing her experience to her supervisors in Washington, D.C., Kelly acknowledged an air of tension that permeated the meetings. She commented, “It was clearly evident that the rapport between the representatives of the two nations was neither very close nor very warm.” Rather than working together to resolve common health problems along the border, she identified a “direct competition” between representatives as each side prioritized their own initiatives while giving less consideration to that of their counterparts. Many of the U.S. delegates could not understand Spanish and therefore, according to Kelly, felt “no obligation to sit through a paper in a foreign tongue.” They also expressed frustration that the Mexican representatives did not adhere to presentation time limits set by the organizing committee. Mexican delegates, in turn, voiced their exasperation with the association for designing the event without seeking their input on topics, formatting, or other cultural considerations. Kelly concluded that “far from fostering cordial relations between the two countries, it seems to have fostered a feeling of rivalry and to have intensified the local national inferiority complex. Under the circumstances, the meeting probably did more harm than good.”

Kelly’s report points to larger tensions within mid-twentieth-century relations between the two countries. After World War II, U.S. foreign policymakers attempted to exert “hegemonic influence through expertise.” State officials offered to educate their international counterparts in public health, industrial development, and modernization practices through development projects that aligned with U.S. culture. Arturo Escobar argues, “Development fostered a way of conceiving of social life as a technical problem.” Consequently, U.S. officials approached foreign relations from a position of authority, believing their technical knowledge to be superior to non-U.S. intellectuals. Rather than establishing reciprocal relationships with foreign diplomats, U.S. officials followed a top-down model of engagement. In contrast, Mexican officials hoped to shift postwar diplomatic dialogues away from U.S. exceptionalism toward a more inclusive approach that valued the technical knowledge and contributions of Mexicans and, more broadly, Latin Americans. As Kelly’s notes exemplify, the contradictions between these two styles of diplomacy resulted in heightened animosity between the representatives and consequently limited opportunities for collaboration.

Whereas other scholars focus on Kelly’s career as an archaeologist or briefly note her role on a particular anthropological project, the depth and breadth of her international work remains largely untouched. Yet her extensive experiences in Mexico in the decades immediately following World War II, as well as brief assignments in Bolivia and Pakistan, offer a distinct perspective on the changing nature of the relationship between anthropologists and technical cooperation programs during the Cold War. They highlight Kelly’s intentional efforts to combat professional gender bias and to amplify women’s voices in community studies. And they demonstrate the significant role that anthropology played in politicizing modernization programs aimed at assimilation. Although anthropologists working in rural areas spoke directly with community members to learn more about their health and economic needs, the data they collected confirmed for politicians a general call for state intervention. Consequently, decisions regarding project programming, funding, and desired outcomes were based almost entirely on the agendas of state, national, and international leaders rather than on the expressed needs of the local citizens.

Isabel Kelly’s international work grew out of her well-established career as an anthropologist and archaeologist in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. She was born in Santa Cruz, California, in 1906 and raised in a nurturing household that encouraged independence and intellectual thought. Both she and her younger sister, Evelyn, attended the University of California, Berkeley. Isabel graduated with a bachelor’s degree in anthropology in 1926 and remained at the school to pursue graduate study. She worked with some of the biggest names in the field, including Alfred L. Kroeber, Robert H. Lowie, Edward W. Gifford, and Carl O. Sauer, while researching her master’s thesis on northwestern California Indian art. After spending a summer conducting fieldwork with archaeologist Alfred V. Kidder in New Mexico’s Pecos Pueblo, she completed her own doctoral research on the Northern Paiute and Coast Miwok Indigenous cultures of Northern California. She earned her PhD in anthropology with a dissertation on the “Fundamentals of Great Basin Culture” in 1932. After graduation, she received funding from the National Research Council to conduct research among the Southern Paiute as a counterpart to her work on the Northern Paiute. While in the field, however, she received word that Kroeber and Sauer nominated her to lead an archaeological project in Sinaloa, Mexico. She moved to Mexico in 1935 to oversee the initial excavation of Sinaloa’s Culiacán and Chametla sites. After returning to the United States to lead Gila Pueblo’s excavations of the Hodges site, a Hohokam village in Tucson, Arizona, she again found her way to Mexico to continue working on excavations in Sinaloa, Jalisco, Colima, and Nayarit. She also expanded her reputation among intellectual circles in this period by publishing several research papers in academic journals and edited volumes.

This impressive list of accomplishments, particularly by a woman in what was still a male-dominated field, emphasizes Kelly’s determination to continuously learn and lead in anthropological and archaeological circles. Her strong nature, however, was not universally enjoyed. Marian E. Cummings, a photographer hired by Kroeber to accompany Kelly on an assignment in Jalisco, left the project early due to Kelly’s “constant complaining and bad disposition.” Kroeber, responding to Cummings’s resignation, wrote, “I am sure you will agree with me when I say that these unreasonable tensions in Isabel are the counterpart of the dynamic energy which causes her to be so grand and successful a scientist. Add the fact that she is over thirty, unmarried, and has never had a permanent job, and I think the psychology is understandable.” This quote is indicative of the prejudice against single, independent professional women during this period. Kelly regularly faced opposition to her strong will and staunch work ethic, even among her female collaborators. Regardless of how she came across to her colleagues, Kelly loved her work and became increasingly attracted to Mexico as a place to combine her passion for archaeological exploration and ethnographic fieldwork. She moved to the country permanently in 1939.

Nancy J. Parezo argues that contrary to the common belief that anthropology has historically been more open to women scholars than other fields, the influence of gender on power relations ensured that women have not always been treated as equals to their male counterparts. While many women “were determined that they be judged on the basis of their talents and merit alone,” they could not ignore the gender dynamics that kept them subservient to male leaders in the field. For her part, Kelly routinely pushed back against this norm, using correspondence, social occasions, and official reports to challenge her treatment as a female professional. She vocalized her dissatisfaction with often being mistaken for a diplomatic wife rather than a professional and advocated for more opportunities to work in the field as well as the classroom. She also encouraged young Mexican women to pursue degrees in anthropology and often hired her best female students to serve as her research assistants. All of these examples point to an intentional effort at capacity building for women who traditionally stayed home to provide domestic care for their families.

Kelly’s gendered experiences are also evident in her personal life. She maintained a close relationship with Bertha Harris, a U.S. librarian and cultural liaison who moved to Mexico City in 1941. Together, the two women worked, traveled, and shared a home that they co-designed on the outskirts of Mexico City. They were invited to events as a couple and hosted several parties of their own. These public expressions of their connectedness undoubtedly influenced how their U.S. and Mexican colleagues treated them, and after Bertha’s unexpected death in 1949, Kelly increasingly withdrew from public functions and social engagements. Instead, she focused all of her attention on work. Her research interests gradually shifted to follow the trajectory of women’s lives, from midwifery, curanderas, and maternal and child health to household dynamics, motherhood, and educational opportunities for working mothers. She recognized that she and her female students gained access to more domestic spaces than their male counterparts and utilized this advantage to learn more about the experiences, needs, and contributions of women in both domestic and community settings. She leveraged her position to document and record ideas related to morality, tradition, progress, and modernity as seen through the eyes of rural families. And her research clarified many discrepancies between official programming and individual interests as she found ways to bring women’s voices to the forefront of social welfare programs.

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

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.

American Studies Association 2024: Discounts, New Books, and More

November 11, 2024

The University of Arizona Press will be at the American Studies Association meeting this week in Baltimore! We hope you’ll stop by booth #204 where we’ll have a selection of new titles available for sale, and as a bonus, you can meet our Editor-in-Chief, Kristen Buckles!

Is holiday shopping on your mind? We’re also extending the conference discount to everyone until December 12, so now is the time to pick up some discounted books! Use code AZASA24 for 35% off all titles on our website.

Finally, if you’re an author or editor and you have a project that might be a good fit for The University of Arizona Press, learn more about publishing with us here.


New & Featured Titles

Rafael A. Martínez 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. Illegalized 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.”


In Indigenous Science and Technology, author Kelly S. McDonough addresses Nahua understanding of plants and animals, medicine and ways of healing, water and water control, alphabetic writing, and cartography. Interludes between the chapters offer short biographical sketches and interviews with contemporary Nahua scientists, artists, historians, and writers, accompanied by their photos. The book also includes more than twenty full-color images from sources including the Florentine Codex, a sixteenth-century collaboration between Indigenous and Spanish scholars considered the most comprehensive extant source on the pre-Hispanic and early colonial Aztec (Mexica) world.


Offering a provocative new perspective, Healing Like Our Ancestors examines sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Nahua healers in central Mexico and how their practices have been misconstrued and misunderstood in colonial records. Edward Anthony Polanco draws from diverse colonial primary sources, largely in Spanish and Nahuatl (the Nahua ancestral language), to explore how Spanish settlers framed titiçih, their knowledge, and their practices within a Western complex. 


The contemporary literary movement of Maya writers of Chiapas and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (or EZLN) insurgency are intricately intertwined. Even as each has forged its own path, they are bound by a shared commitment to rescuing, reclaiming, and recentering Maya worldviews. This shared vision emerges in Silvia Soto’s Caracoleando Among Worldswhich provides an in-depth analysis of poetry, short stories, and one of the first novels written by a Maya Tsotsil writer of Chiapas alongside close readings of the EZLN’s six declarations of the Lacandon Jungle. Themes echoing ancestral connections, informing epistemologies, and sustaining cultural and spiritual practices emerge and weave the texts to each other. The work brings into the conversation literature that has been translated into English for the first time and places Maya writers of Chiapas in discussion with other Native American and Indigenous scholars.


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 Kids in Cages approach the topic of child migrant detention from a range of perspectives but at the heart of these narratives lies a crucial debate: the tension between harm-reduction strategies and abolition. In this interdisciplinary work, editors Emily Ruehs-Navarro, Lina Caswell Muñoz, and Sarah Diaz bring together voices from the legal realm, the academic world, and the on-the-ground experiences of activists and practitioners.


Border Killers delves into how recent Mexican creators have reported, analyzed, distended, and refracted the increasingly violent world of neoliberal Mexico, especially its versions of masculinity. By looking to the insights of artists, writers, and filmmakers, Elizabeth Villalobos offers a path for making sense and critiquing very real border violence in contemporary Mexico. Focusing on both Mexico’s northern and southern borders, Border Killers uses Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics and various theories of masculinity to argue that contemporary Mexico is home to a form of necropolitical masculinity that has flourished in the neoliberal era and made the exercise of death both profitable and necessary for the functioning of Mexico’s state-cartel-corporate governance matrix.


Featured Series

BorderVisions, edited by Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez and Yvette J. Saavedra, engages the U.S.-Mexico borderlands’ dynamic histories and cultures and expands our understanding of the borderlands beyond a site of geopolitical inquiry. We are especially interested in books that address the complexities and richness of borderlands experiences at different historical, cultural, and sociopolitical moments. Watch a recording of the series launch for BorderVisions here.

Critical Issues in Indigenous Studies, edited by Jeffrey P. Shepherd and Myla Vicenti Carpio, anchors intellectual work within an Indigenous framework that reflects Native-centered concerns and objectives. Series titles expand and deepen discussions about Indigenous people beyond nation-state boundaries, and complicate existing notions of Indigenous identity. The series editors are especially interested in works that analyze colonization, land dispossession, and oppression while foregrounding Indigenous peoples’ resistance to these processes.

The Feminist Wire Books presents a cultural bridge between the digital and printing worlds. These timely, critical books will contribute to feminist scholarship, pedagogy, and praxis in the twenty-first century. TFW and The Feminist Wire Books are dedicated to the sociopolitical and cultural critique of anti-feminist, racist, and imperialist politics. The series editors seek books that will analyze U.S. popular culture, media, and politics in order to identify, document, and seek to intervene in social and political phenomena that marginalize people and produce vulnerabilities. Central to the series is a critique of the persistence and functionality of race, racism, transnational anti-blackness, imperialism, and various structural practices of “othering.”

Latinx Pop Culture aims to shed light on all aspects of Latinx cultural production and consumption as well as the Latinx presence globally in popular cultural phenomena in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The books in the series are intended for lay readers, faculty, and students, and they provide crucial orientation and knowledge for further study and engagement.

For questions or to submit a proposal to any of these series, please contact Kristen Buckles, kbuckles@uapress.arizona.edu.

Excerpt from Kids in Cages

November 7, 2024

Kids in Cages: Surviving and Resisting Child Migrant Detention, edited by Emily Ruehs-Navarro, Lina Caswell Muñoz, and Sarah Diaz, reveals 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. Read an excerpt from the book’s Introduction written by Ruehs-Navarro and Caswell Muñoz below.

In the early summer of 2019, installations began popping up across New York City. In front of the American Museum of Natural History, at a Williamsburg subway stop, and near the Google building in Manhattan, small chain-linked cages appeared overnight. Inside of them, mannequins laid supine and in fetal positions, covered by foil blankets, with tennis shoes sticking out of the bottoms. Passersby could hear the wails of children coming from the cages, real audio that had been secretly taken in a Customs and Border Protection  (CBP) facility. On top of the installations was a hashtag reading #NoKidsinCages (Bekiempis 2019).

These installations, promptly removed by city police, were part of an activist campaign, mobilized to decry a range of anti-immigrant policies put in place by the Donald Trump administration, not least of these the practice of holding migrant children in detention facilities and the zero-tolerance immigration enforcement policy, which separated migrant children from their parents. These activists were part of a diverse coalition that had been mobilized from across the country. In fact, in the previous summer, more than seven hundred demonstrations took place across the United States on June 30, 2018, with slogans such as “#EndFamilyDetention” and “Jails Are Not for Children.” From Huntsville, Alabama, to Chicago to Los Angeles, thousands of people took to the streets, admonishing the administration that “Families Belong Together” and decrying the fact that “ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] Cages Children.” It was a life-affirming demonstration, organizer Marj Halperin told a reporter with the Chicago Tribune: “Lives are truly at stake in this case . . . and the outpouring of people today around the country affirms that this nation supports immigrants” (Mahr, Briscoe, and Olumhense 2018).

It was certainly true that the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies prompted a groundswell of support for immigrants, and it was an inspiring reminder that many Americans cared passionately about the government’s treatment of immigrants and the welfare of children. But it was also a deeply ahistorical moment of protest, focused almost entirely on Trump and his administration, with little understanding of the history of child migration,the use of detention as a form of deterrence, and the culpability of various administrations, Republican and Democrat alike, in the inhumane treatment of immigrants. It is telling, in fact, that national backlash against Trump policies has all but disappeared during the Joe Biden administration, although the plight of immigrant children in the United States has not improved in meaningful ways. Indeed, from Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden, the administrations of the past four decades have implemented and cemented a convoluted and utterly dehumanizing system of child migrant detention that has swept up hundreds of thousands of young migrants. And, as is explored in chapter 1 of this volume, it was centuries of dehumanizing and racist policies and ideologies, which “othered” Black, Brown, and Native children, that laid the groundwork for this modern system.

Despite the fact that the public outcry in recent years has decreased significantly, it would be disingenuous to suggest that no one cares about child migrant detention today. In fact, throughout the construction and maintenance of the modern system of detention, there has been a steady push of activists, attorneys, and practitioners who have witnessed the harms done to migrant children and have worked to heal the traumas of detention and push back against the practice altogether. From attorneys who work to close detention centers, to psychologists who attempt to provide mental health care to young people who are detained, to religious leaders who rally their communities to create hospitality homes as alternatives to detention, there is a passionate cohort of people who care and actively engage in finding solutions. However, these individuals do not always agree on a way forward: On the one hand, some argue that the system of detention is so entrenched in larger national policies that, seeing no change in the immediate future, the best way forward is through harm reduction. That is, the goal of these advocates is to make detention child-friendly and trauma-informed. On the other hand, many activists and scholars argue that detention is so fundamentally destructive that there is no way forward in harm reduction. That is, the goal must be to pursue abolition from the system entirely.

It would be easy to engage this conversation on a theoretical level, but the reality is that there are young people today experiencing the humiliations, indignities, and violences of detention. As discussed throughout this volume, it is clear that detention does tremendous harm to these children, and they will bear the scars of their experiences throughout their lives. However, young migrants also find ways to survive. They build relationships with one another, even forging chosen families. They resist indignities, finding spaces and moments in which they might exert power against an overwhelming system. And they find compassion in those around them, surviving off the kindness of strangers. A conversation about the way forward would not be complete without the active centering of their stories and their voices.

In this volume, we present the voices, ideas, and experiences of young migrants and those who have fought with them and for them. Collectively, we agree that the system of child migrant detention is an unjust and dehumanizing institution and we believe in working toward a future in which migrant children are treated with dignity, humanity, and compassion.

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

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.

Five Questions with Brian Haley

November 5, 2024

In the new work Hopis and the Counterculture, Brian Haley addresses how the Hopi became icons of the followers of alternative spiritualities and reveals one of the major pathways for the appropriation of Indigenous identities that exploded in the 1960s. Today, the author answers our questions.

What got you interested in this topic?

The truth is that I stumbled upon it largely by accident. I was searching for what influenced many of California’s Spanish colonial descendants to adopt identities as “traditional” Native Americans after the late 1960s. This led me to discover a social field that not only cast Hopis as spiritual high priests of global significance, but also helped create a major strand of neo-indigenism and the Native American “traditionalism” of that era. I realized that I had connected the dots between these. I knew enough Hopi ethnography and counterculture history to realize that I’d stumbled upon answers to questions of great concern to Hopi people and to those interested in the development of traditionalism, neo-Indianism, and new spiritualities.

The book addresses how the Hopi became icons of the followers of alternative spiritualities and reveals one of the major pathways for the explosive appropriation of Indigenous identities in the 1960s. It delves into the roles played by non-Hopi actors and the timing behind the widespread popularization of Hopi religious practices. As an anthropologist, why is documenting this important?

The level of misunderstanding regarding the Hopi people is substantial. We need to understand why that occurs so we can strive to do better and be better neighbors. It is significant that this widespread misunderstanding ties in with other significant ongoing issues we are struggling to understand, especially how we react to the constant disruptions wrought by global forces beyond local control. For instance, documenting neo-indigenism is vitally important because Native communities are under substantial threat from this phenomenon and our institutions still haven’t acknowledged it. Building an understanding of how and when people seek relief from their sense of powerlessness in identity, traditionalism, and primitivism is, I hope, another one of the payoffs here.

In the acknowledgements, you write that Stewart Koyiyumptewa, Director of the Hopi Cultural Preservation office, took an early interest in your research and invited you to share it with staff and elders who advise them. How did that take shape?

Ordinarily, if you wish to study the Hopi people you first talk with the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office. However, I was in the unusual position of having arrived at a Hopi subject through a non-Hopi one. My research lay primarily outside of the Hopi Tribe yet there were Hopis in my study. When I realized where my research was heading, I knew that the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office would be interested because they had long voiced concerns about the appropriation and misrepresentation I was uncovering. My friend, Wolf Gumerman put me in touch with Stewart. I periodically sent things to Stewart and asked questions. Eventually, he invited me to come share my research with his staff and the council of elders who advise his office. When I arrived, one of the staff thanked me for my work on this. I was very moved, and I hope they also find the book helpful.

You conducted research at archives and special collections across the country, including our own Special Collections, here at the University of Arizona Libraries in Tucson. What surprised you about your work in archives?

There were so many surprises that I originally wanted to call the book, “Unexpected Histories.” I was endlessly surprised by how much documentation was available about a story that had been so overlooked. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been since my subjects were all writers! We are biased to think that if you are interested in things Hopi, that is where you look. But a truism of identity research is that how outsiders perceive your group can have huge impacts, something I had explored previously with immigrants and neo-Indians. So, I looked on the outside where others hadn’t, in the works of a Christian pacifist anarchist, two spiritual seekers, and the Firesign Theatre. The voices preserved in the archives led me to one surprising discovery after another, gradually revealing the shape and character of an expansive and influential social field that others had missed.

What do you hope readers and researchers take away from this work?

I hope that readers grasp how easy it is for our desires to color our understanding of the world around us, and how beliefs we think are respectful and protective of others may be anything but.

About the Author
Brian D. Haley is a professor of anthropology at the State University of New York at Oneonta and a leading scholar of the appropriation of Indigenous identities by people with non-Native histories. He is the author of Reimagining the Immigrant: The Accommodation of Mexican Immigrants in Rural America and the co-editor of Imagining Globalization: Language, Identities, and Boundaries.

Excerpt from “Plants for Desperate Times”

October 31, 2024

Plants for Desperate Times: The Diversity of Life-Saving Famine Foods, by Paul E. Minnis and Robert L. Freedman, 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. The work highlights one hundred plants. Each entry includes the common and scientific names, botanical family, distribution, use as a famine food and other uses, and nutritional information. The species come from across the botanical kingdom, demonstrating the diversity of life-saving plants and the human ingenuity of making what might seem to be inedible plants edible. Unexpectedly, important famine foods include alternative uses of important crops as well as native plants.

Beyond a study of famine foods, the authors 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 much as we may hope that severe food scarcity will never occur again, history suggests otherwise, and Plants for Desperate Times provides invaluable documentation of these vital foods. Read an excerpt from the book’s first chapter below.

Severe food shortages have been one of the ever-present Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. We know of no part of the world where lethal food shortages have been absent. And famines have been all too frequent: thousands have been noted in historical records. Now, consider yourself and your ancestors. Had only one of your many direct lineal ancestors going back multiple generations not survived a severe food shortage before reproducing, you would not exist. Fortunately, one of the many ways to survive starvation has been the consumption of famine foods, many of which are plants. In short, nearly all of us likely owe our very existence to these unappreciated plants.

The value of famine foods extends far beyond our individual existence. The sum total of deaths due to severe food shortages throughout history surely is in the hundreds of millions. One study estimated that seventy-five million died during famines in the twentieth century alone. Millions can perish in a single episode due to mass starvation and associated diseases. The most famous famine, the An Gorta Mór or Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s, led to around one million deaths as well as massive emigration. Parts of the Soviet Union in the mid-1930s witnessed horrendous starvation and suffering. It has been estimated that the Ukrainian famine (Holodomor) resulted in more than four million deaths, while the toll of starvation deaths in the North Caucuses and Upper Volga regions was two to three million, and Kazakhstan suffered 1.5 to 2.3 million deaths all at about the same time. The Chinese famine during the Great Leap Forward in the mid-twentieth century resulted in fifteen to thirty-three million or more deaths, probably the most lethal famine on record.

The effects of severe food shortages are far more than immediate starvation and death. There are often long-term, multigenerational health effects from starvation. Famines have psychological, social, demographic, and even genetic consequences. Irish society was altered for decades after the potato famine because of the scale of death and emigration. The Kazakh famine contributed to the permanent destruction of the traditional Kazakh herding economy and led to ethnic Kazakhs being a minority in their country until the 1990s.

What Are Famine Foods?

The common image of a famine food is of a little-used and perhaps even despised native plant eaten only during the most desperate times. There is in fact no universal definition of a famine food. In general, there are two views of what famine foods are. The most common term is restricted to those foods not normally eaten but are eaten only during food shortages. An alternative and broader definition is they are foods eaten during food shortages. The latter, broader category can include foods normally eaten but that are consumed in novel ways or in unusual quantities during shortages. Eating cultivated grains or fruits before maturity or increasing the consumption of wild plants that would normally be minor components of the diet are examples of this more expansive view of famine foods, the definition we will use here. For example, in a study in southern Ethiopia, the authors found that of the many wild food plants consumed during shortages, three-fourths were eaten in both times of normal rations and during food shortages, and only a quarter of the species were eaten only during times of food stress. Therefore, focusing simply on plants consumed only during shortages restricts our understanding of how people use plants to feed themselves when food stores are low or absent.

Likewise, the foods discussed here are not restricted to those consumed during famines, the most acute food shortages. There is a range of food shortages. At one end of a continuum of food shortage severity are annual hunger seasons. A hunger season is often anticipated as a time in the normal yearly cycle when food stocks are low. This is common when stored foods are depleted and before harvest, or at the end of a dry season before vegetation grows with the monsoons. At the other end of the continuum are actual famines. In between are a range of food shortages of varying severity but not as catastrophic as famines. Whatever the severity of the food shortage, humans have employed their ingenuity to cope with such events. Among the many strategies used is the consumption of foods not normally eaten or eaten in novel ways. Knowledge of famine foods is a part of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), quite often gained through centuries if not millennia of intimate and intense interaction with the environment. This information has value for helping during modern food shortages.

Why Are Famine Foods Important?

Regrettably, the study of famine foods has been an infinitesimally small niche of food scholarship. Literally thousands of books view food in other ways. Most often, it seems, we read about food as a sensory pleasure, as a focal point of social interaction, as a key component of cultural identity, and as a means to consume an optimal diet. These are all important ways of viewing food. By contrast, it is surprising how little academic and practical attention has been given to famine foods in light of how important these plants have been to humanity’s very existence.

This is unfortunate because the study of famine foods is not simply an obscure academic topic. Because we cannot predict the future with precision, we should prepare for contingencies. It should be obvious that knowledge of famine foods could help ameliorate the effects of food shortages in the future. Famine foods may not be the best tasting, the most nutritious, the most efficient to collect, or the easiest to prepare, but they can help keep people alive, the minimal and essential value of food.

There is a long history of organizations and individuals working to maintain the genetic diversity of poorly known or even nearly extinct crops and crop varieties. The Svalbard Seed Vault (“Doomsday Seed Bank”) in far northern Norway is only the most recent and well-publicized of the many genetic repositories around the world, including dozens in the United States. The concern about preserving the genome of crops has not extended to famine foods. There are famine foods, some of which are highlighted in this volume, that have the potential for greater use because of their favorable nutritional profile. Plants used as famine foods, almost by definition, are some of the most resilient food resources because they have to be available when other foods aren’t. Food resilience is a powerful characteristic when faced with an uncertain and dynamic future.

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!

Meena Khandelwal and “Cookstove Chronicles” on Jugaand Project Podcast

October 24, 2024

Why do so many Indian women in India continue to use their wood-burning, smoke-spewing stoves called “chulhas” when they have other options? Meena Khandelwal, Associate Professor of Feminist Sociocultural Anthropology at the University of Iowa, explores this paradox in her new book Cookstove Chronicles: Social Life of a Women’s Technology in India. Based on multidisciplinary collaboration with engineers, archaeologists, development specialists, and others, Khandelwal discusses chulhas as women’s local low-tech technology as well as craft and work.

In The Jugaad Project: Material Religion in Context podcast, Khandelwal explains the questions that led to her research: “Why do these old technologies persist? Why does the chulha persist? I believe that re-imagining the chulha as a dynamic technology helps us understand the reasons that people and especially rural women may retain older technologies . . . despite the allure of modern energy infrastructures.”

The author also addressed the multidisciplinary aspect of the book: “We’re all trying to have a conversation. The language that we use is very different. The methods in each discipline are different. What counts as reliable data?” For example, the engineers wanted GIS data on forests and harvesting wood, with women’s stories as narratives about that data. But as an anthropologist, Kehandelwal believes women’s words and stories were the actual data. She said, “I pushed back at that moment and said stories are data too, not just embellishment of so-called ‘hard data.’”

Listen to the entire podcast interview here.

About the book:

Based on anthropological research in Rajasthan, Cookstove Chronicles argues that the supposedly obsolete chulha persists because it offers women control over the tools needed to feed their families. Their continued use of old stoves alongside the new is not a failure to embrace new technologies but instead a strategy to maximize flexibility and autonomy. The chulha is neither the villain nor hero of this story. It produces particulate matter that harms people’s bodies, leaves soot on utensils and walls, and accelerates glacial melting and atmospheric warming. Yet it also depends on renewable biomass fuel and supports women’s autonomy as a local, do-it-yourself technology.

2024 International Latino Book Award Winners

October 23, 2024

We are pleased to announce that four of our books were recently selected as winners for the 2024 International Latino Book Awards!

The International Latino Book Awards recognize excellence in literature, honoring books written in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, with the goal of “growing the awareness for books written by, for and about Latinos.”

See more about the winning books and their authors below.

Photo Credit: Empowering Latino Futures

Best Academic Themed Book, College Level – English (Gold Medal)

Ready Player Juan: Latinx Masculinities and Stereotypes in Video Games by Carlos Gabriel Kelly González

Written for all gaming enthusiasts, this book fuses Latinx studies and video game studies to document how Latinx masculinities are portrayed in high-budget action-adventure video games, inviting Latinxs and others to insert their experiences into games made by an industry that fails to see them.

Best Academic Themed Book, College Level – English (Bronze Medal)

Listening to Laredo: A Border City in a Globalized Age by Mehnaaz Momen 

Laredo was once a quaint border town, nurturing cultural ties across the border, attracting occasional tourists, and serving as the home of people living there for generations. In a span of mere decades, Laredo has become the largest inland port in the United States and a major hub of global trade. Listening to Laredo is an exploration of how the dizzying forces of change have defined this locale, how they continue to be inscribed and celebrated, and how their effects on the physical landscape have shaped the identity of the city and its people.

Best Academic Themed Book, College Level – English (Bronze Medal)

Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos by Myrriah Gómez

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.

Best Biography (Bronze Medal)

La Plonqui: The Literary Life and Work of Margarita Cota-Cárdenas, edited by Jesús Rosales and Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez

Celebrating more than forty years of creative writing by Chicana author Margarita Cota-Cárdenas, this volume includes critical essays, reflections, interviews, and previously unpublished writing by the author herself to document the lifelong craft and legacy of a pioneering writer in the field.

Congratulations to all!

Excerpt from “Landscapes of Movement and Predation”

October 22, 2024

Landscapes of Movement and Predation: Perspectives from Archaeology, History, and Anthropology edited by Brenda J. Bowser and Catherine M. Cameron, is a global study of times and places where people were subject to brutality, displacement, and loss of life, liberty, livelihood, and possessions. Extensive landscapes of predation emerged in the colonial era when Europeans expanded across much of the world, appropriating land and demanding labor from Indigenous people, resulting in the enslavement of millions of Africans and Indigenous Americans.

Landscapes of predation also developed in precolonial times in places where people were subjected to repeated ruthless attacks and dislocation. With contributions from archaeologists and a historian, the book provides 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. Read an excerpt from the book’s Introduction below.

“Landscape” is a familiar term for archaeologists. Over the past few decades, the concept of a landscape of the past has grown beyond the idea of human adaptation to a natural environment to include the understanding that humans actively shape their physical, natural, and social environments (Whittlesey 2009). Postmodern approaches to landscape that became common in the 1990s ushered in an increased concern with meaning. Archaeologists following the phenomenological approach used their own senses to assign meaning to landscapes (Tilley 1994; Van Dyke 2007). Increasingly, especially in North America, archaeologists today work closely with Indigenous people to understand landscapes in their terms. Writing about the American Southwest, Severin Fowles (2010) notes that the passage of a law in 1990 concerning the return of Indigenous human remains (the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) forced archaeologists to engage with and learn from the descendants of the Indigenous people they study (see also Lekson 1996, 891). Consulting Indigenous descendants about the spaces their ancestors inhabited and the meanings they gave to natural and cultural features is now common for archaeologists (Bernstein and Ortman 2020; Duwe and Preucel 2019; in this volume see Kater et al.; Marshall and Biginagwa; Seyler and Leventhal; and Silva). Furthermore, Indigenous scholars themselves explore the history and archaeology of their own people (for example, Kuwanwisiwma and Ferguson 2009, Schneider 2021).

People in the past lived in spaces that were, to them, rich in symbolism and full of memories of ancestors and their activities. But we suggest that there are few places in the inhabited world that were not occasionally touched by violence (Keeley 1996, 3–24; Kim and Kissel 2018, 1–2; LeBlanc and Register 2003, 1–22). Our characterization of landscapes of predation is based on the scale of the violence: they are places in which violence became enduring and intense and forced widespread changes to the lives of the people who inhabited them. As noted above, we adopt, for example, Stahl’s (2008) depiction of Africa during the slave trade and Bowser’s (2008) representation of Amazonia during colonialism and call such places “landscapes of predation.”

As a group, the authors in this volume considered how to define landscapes of predation. A working definition frames the chapters that follow:

A landscape of predation is a geographic space primarily marked or characterized by predatory practices and their consequences. Instability and mobility are inherent. Experiences of predation may be inscribed in memory and may be integral to a sense of place and shared identity.

The geographic space in this definition is situational and not conventionally bounded. It is the space within which predation occurs, not necessarily an established territory or physically or environmentally bounded region. A landscape of predation, as considered here, also includes the consequences of predation, both for the predator and their target. Mobility as the result of predatory behavior is apparent in all of the cases considered in this book and is a fundamental aspect of a predatory landscape. Such mobility may seem chaotic and tumultuous as targeted people flee their predators, but a closer look can reveal strategies for resisting predation; in other words, intentional mobility to avoid or engage with predators (see the Resistance and Other Responses to Predation section below). Of course, predators also move in order to encounter their targets or to pursue actions of benefit to themselves.

“Landscape of predation” is a term that we fear might be misappropriated and used in a multitude of inappropriate situations from Roman wars of conquest to places of contemporary urban poverty. Therefore, we want to be clear about the sorts of times and places we include in the term and those we do not. Landscapes of predation are places of violence, but they are not a battlefield, nor even a theater of war. They are not just places where people live with oppression, however bad the oppression may be. They are places where people’s lives are profoundly disrupted, and the disruption extends to virtually every aspect of their lives. Predatory practices involve a wide range of activities that can be physically or structurally violent, can upend cultural traditions, including religious practices, can displace people from their homeland, sever their connection to their social identity, and can intentionally seek to annihilate an entire social group.

Predatory practices created landscapes of movement. Movement was common, almost universal in the small-scale societies that are the focus of this volume. People move for subsistence purposes, to trade with other groups, to attend social events, or to monitor the boundaries of their territory (Anthony 1990, 1997; Cabana and Clark 2011; Daniels 2022; van Dommelen 2014). Predation, however, results in distinctive types of movement, some of which are the direct result of predation and others that are the consequence of the targets of predation moving to protect themselves.

At the very most personal level, captive-taking, a form of movement that characterized many, if not most, landscapes of predation, took people from their homes, erased their social identity, and forced them into a new, generally subordinate identity. For those captives that became slaves, loss of social personhood was complete or nearly so (Cameron 2008, 2016; Santos-Granero 2009; Snyder 2018). At a broader level, predators can dispossess people of their land or exploit or destroy the resources people relied on to survive. Predators might impose ruinous tribute or taxes, leaving their targets facing starvation. They might use a variety of methods to terrorize their targets, including desecration of sacred sites or co-option of religious belief. Physical abuse and injury might be a regular outcome of an encounter with a member of the predator group and murder, persecution, and even genocide might be common in landscapes of predation. Such violence in landscapes of predation is chronic, although it may be episodic and there may be periods of calm. Even during periods of calm, violence is latent in landscapes of predation, never far from the minds of either predators or their targets.

Western History Association 2024: Discounts, New Books, and More

October 21, 2024

We are thrilled to be participating in the 2024 Western History Association meeting in Kansas City this week! Find us on the right side of the exhibit hall at booth #311 to browse our latest history titles and meet with our Editor-in-Chief, Kristen Buckles.

If you can’t attend this year, or if you need an extra copy of a book you discover at our booth, we’ve got you covered: use AZWHA24 for 35% off all titles.

Are you an author or editor? Do you have a project that would be a great fit for The University of Arizona Press? To learn more about publishing with us, click here.


New & Featured History Titles

Rafael A. Martínez 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. Illegalized 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.”


Resistance and Abolition in the Borderlands provides a well-argued look at the Trump era. Editors Arturo J. Aldama and Jessica Ordaz bring together insightful contributions that 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 chapter authors document a long list in what the book calls “Trump’s Reign of Terror.”


For years Professors L Heidenreich and Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz waited for a writing and research manual that was rooted in critical Chicanx and Latinx studies. Now, they have crafted one.

While it includes a brief history of the roots of the fields of Chicanx literature and history, Writing that Matters emphasizes practice: how to research and write a Chicanx or Latinx history paper; how to research and write a Chicanx or Latinx literature or cultural studies essay; and how to conduct interviews, frame pláticas, and conduct oral histories.


This insightful volume delves into land-based Diné and Dene imaginaries as embodied in stories—oral, literary, and visual. Like the dynamism and kinetic facets of hózhǫ́, Restoring Relations Through Stories takes us through many landscapes, places, and sites.

While the Diné (those from the four sacred mountains in Dinétah in the southwestern United States) are not now politically and economically cohesive with the Dene (who are in Denendeh in Canada), they are ancestral and linguistic relatives. In this book, Renae Watchman turns to literary and visual texts to explore how relations are restored through stories, showing how literary linkages from land-based stories affirm Diné and Dene kinship. 


Offering a provocative new perspective, Healing Like Our Ancestors examines sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Nahua healers in central Mexico and how their practices have been misconstrued and misunderstood in colonial records. Edward Anthony Polanco draws from diverse colonial primary sources, largely in Spanish and Nahuatl (the Nahua ancestral language), to explore how Spanish settlers framed titiçih, their knowledge, and their practices within a Western complex. 


The topic of mothers and mothering transcends all spaces, from popular culture to intellectual thought and critique. The collection of essays in Frontera Madre(hood) bridges both methodological and theoretical frameworks to explore forms of mothering that challenge hegemonic understandings of parenting and traditional notions of Latinx womxnhood.

Editors Cynthia Bejarano and Maria Cristina Morales compile the discussions of thirty contributors to articulate the collective experiences of Latinx, Black, and Indigenous mothering from both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.


Featured Series

We are excited to be adding new titles to our BorderVisions, Arizona Crossroads, Modern American West, and Critical Issues in Indigenous Studies series this year! Learn more below.

BorderVisions, edited by Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez and Yvette J. Saavedra, engages the U.S.-Mexico borderlands’ dynamic histories and cultures and expands our understanding of the borderlands beyond a site of geopolitical inquiry. We are especially interested in books that address the complexities and richness of borderlands experiences at different historical, cultural, and sociopolitical moments. Watch a recording of the series launch for BorderVisions here.

Arizona Crossroads, edited by Anita Huizar-Hernández, Eric V. Meeks, and Katherine G. Morrissey, is a series in collaboration with the Arizona Historical Society that explores the history of peoples and cultures, events and struggles, ideas and practices in the place we know today as Arizona. We are open to a variety of book formats: monographs, multi-authored works, and edited collections, as well as broader more synthetic works. Interdisciplinary projects that engage the past are encouraged.

Critical Issues in Indigenous Studies, edited by Jeffrey P. Shepherd and Myla Vicenti Carpio, anchors intellectual work within an Indigenous framework that reflects Native-centered concerns and objectives. Series titles expand and deepen discussions about Indigenous people beyond nation-state boundaries, and complicate existing notions of Indigenous identity. The series editors are especially interested in works that analyze colonization, land dispossession, and oppression while foregrounding Indigenous peoples’ resistance to these processes.

Modern American West, edited by Flannery Burke and Andrew G. Kirk, seeks to advance scholarly and public understanding of the rich history of the twentieth-century American West by publishing creative works of research and synthesis. Volumes in the series are distinguished by both original research and careful analysis of existing secondary literature. The series editors seek single- or co-authored works that identify new directions for scholarship and develop new interpretive frameworks, while also providing comprehensive introductions to particular topics.

For questions or to submit a proposal to any of these series, please contact Kristen Buckles, kbuckles@uapress.arizona.edu.

Five Questions with Denise Low

October 17, 2024

Intertwining a lyrical voice with historical texts, Denise Low brings fresh urgency to the Gnadenhutten Massacre in her new collection, House of Grace, House of Blood. In 1782, a renegade Pennsylvania militia killed ninety-six pacificist Christian Delawares (Lenapes) in Ohio. Those who escaped, including Indigenous eyewitnesses, relayed their accounts of the atrocity. Like Layli Longsoldier’s Whereas and Simon Ortiz’s from Sand Creek, Low delves into a critical incident of Indigenous peoples’ experiences. Readers will explore with the poet how trauma persists through hundreds of years, and how these peoples have survived and flourished in the subsequent generations. Today we ask Low five questions about her book.

What inspired you to write this collection?

I have a double life as a scholar (should I digress about my Mercury in Gemini?), which leads me to write critical works about literature and Plains Indian ledger art. So I have spent many months of my life in Footnote Land, and those original versions, as close as possible to the historic events, have so much textured information—even when recorded by European settler descendants. The Gnadenhutten massacre, which I researched for my memoir The Turtle’s Beating Heart: One Family’s Story of Lenape Survival,  resonated with many people of the time, from Tecumseh to Benjamin Franklin. To keep focus on one family in the memoir, I cut this incident. Every Lenape person I know remembers Gnadenhutten, and few others. I want to make this event part of the conversation about genocide in North America and genocide as a predicament of human experience, along with a conversation about actions toward reconciliation.

These poems weave historical voices and primary sources into the lyric, first-person perspective in a mode sometimes called “documentary poetics” or “archival poetry.” What are some of the challenges—or opportunities—that come with working in this mode?

The complicated history of East Coast Native peoples, especially Lenapes and related nations, leaves behind many archival artifacts, which include: texts about massacres, alliances, marriages, enslavements, destructions, ordinary farm life, military service, scouting, and trading. These moments all create a factual narrative of Delawares, who were the first Indigenous people to trade with the English on the island of Manhattan. This book pushes back at the image of primitive “Indians” selling New York City’s site for a few beads. By foregrounding the back stories—using oral and written histories—I want to uncover the apocryphal and vital presence of Native people. With Gnadenhutten archives, I found myself interacting in present time with the texts, so I created verse forms to engage in intertextual and inter-chronological dialogues. These were couplets woven from a document line alternated with my response. It was a ghost-like call-and-response. One text was a transcription of a massacre survivor’s granddaughter’s account. This was so moving to hear the story from the Delaware point of view. American lyrical poetry is so elastic. With researched information about Pennsylvania-sponsored scalp taking, I used a ledger format to make a point not possible in prose lines. The American poetic tradition can hold all this, plus lyrical words about faith and courage.

Where and how did you do the research for this book? Which sources were particularly important to this collection?

Research began with my uncle and brother—about the family’s occluded Native heritage. Delaware elders have shared information with me orally and some documents. The paper trail includes local Ohio histories, Moravian archives, military records, and maps. My husband Tom Weso, Menominee, used to say the land is the first place to start with Native narratives, and indeed the maps tell so much about this event and the history of Delawares in general. Maps confirm the diaspora. In text and visual maps, I trace the timeline of the Gnadenhutten massacre and then expand the horizontal line into one with depth—all the details that were happening in the same place and time moment by moment. The unfolding consequences, including intergenerational trauma, continue today.

Importantly, this work moves past the Gnadenhutten Massacre and into its aftermath, following the speaker’s childhood memories, visiting monuments, and ending with the wonderful poem “Stomp Dance, Wyandotte County, Kansas,” which feels like both a celebration and a memorial. Why was it important for you to merge the historical with the contemporary moment?

This is a time when awareness of factual, not settler colonial fictions, are evolving. House of Grace, House of Blood contributes to this turn toward truth. I want better understanding of the Lenape and East Coast histories; I also want better understanding of how eradication of populations—human, animal, plants—is part of human experience and how to address it. The local newspaper reports that Governor Newsom of California recently signed a state bill that requires teaching of the Indigenous genocide during Gold Rush times and also Indigenous contributions. This is a great moment in California. My plan with my book is not to simply say, “J’accuse” / “I accuse you.” Telling the truth about the brutality of that massacre is embedded within themes of shared family ties, healings of the earth, spiritual ways, the arts, power of language, and hope. Through the years elders have taught these values as ways to survive as individuals and as communities. This healing is for all of us.

What are you working on now?

Research is taking me to deeper sources for the slavery of Delaware and other related peoples, who were taken from their lands to the Caribbean cane fields. Something is known about the Pequot slaves traded to the West Indies in the 1630s. Little remains, however, about the history of up to 50,000 Indigenous people of mainland United States sent to this forced labor. Erasure of historic facts like Native plantation slavery distort understanding of the eastern tribal nations, especially. I’m also working toward another study of Northern Cheyenne ledger art texts regarding the Fort Robinson Breakout of 1879, connected to my book co-authored with Ramon Powers, Northern Cheyenne Ledger Art by Fort Robinson Breakout Survivors (University of Nebraska, 2021).


Denise Low is a former Kansas Poet Laureate and a founding board member of Indigenous Nations Poets. Her recent books include Shadow Light: Poems, The Turtle’s Beating Heart: One Family’s Story of Lenape Survival, and A Casino Bestiary. Her Northern Cheyenne Ledger Art by Fort Robinson Breakout Survivors won a Kansas Notable Book Award. She founded the creative writing program at Haskell Indian Nations University and is past board president of the Associated Writers and Writing Programs. She currently is a literary co-director for The 222 in Sonoma County, California, and on the advisory board of Write On Door County. She has Northern European and Lenape/Munsee (Delaware) heritage. www.deniselow.net.

Author Rafael Martínez Receives Líderes Under 40 Award

October 15, 2024

Congratulations to author Rafael Martínez, who has received the “Líderes Under 40 Award” from the Arizona Diamondbacks and Los D-backs Hispanic Council. The award honors leadership in Arizona’s Hispanic community.

Martínez was recently interviewed by Scott Bordow of Arizona State University News about the honor, which recognizes Martinez’s 2023 oral history project Querencia: Voices from Chandler’s Latinx Barrios. They also discussed Martinez’s new book Illegalized: Undocumented Youth Movements in the United States, and the Latinx Oral History Lab.

Martínez tells Bordow, “The questions are framed around the idea of querencia. It’s a common Spanish word that means love to place. It’s terminology that’s been developed by Latino and Hispanic Southwest authors. Mexican Americans and people of Spanish descent have been in this region for multiple generations. The idea of connection to place is embodied in this concept of querencia. So, the questions really revolve around talking about growing up in the city of Chandler. What did the city look like at that time? What did their neighborhood look like?”

In the photo above, Rafael Martínez and his daughter are on the left with other award winners at Diamondbacks’ stadium.

Read the full interview here.

About the book:

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. 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.”

2024 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award Winners

October 14, 2024

We’re celebrating two of our books that were recently selected as winners for the 2024 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards!

The New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards are given annually by the New Mexico Book Co-op. Their mission is “to showcase local books, authors, presses, and related professionals; to promote literacy; and to raise public awareness of quality books produced [in New Mexico and Arizona].”

See the full list of winners at this link.

About the award-winning books:

Award Winner: Biography (Arizona Subject)

World of Our Mothers captures the largely forgotten history of courage and heartbreak of forty-five women who immigrated to the United States during the era of the 1910 Mexican Revolution. Miguel Montiel and Yvonne de la Torre Montiel reveal how these women in the early twentieth century reconciled their lives with their circumstances—enduring the violence of the Revolution, experiencing forced labor and lost childhoods, encountering enganchadores (labor contractors), and living in barrios, mining towns, and industrial areas of the Midwest, and what they saw as their primary task: caring for their families.

While the women share a historic immigration journey, each story provides unique details and circumstances that testify to the diversity of the immigrant experience. The oral histories, a project more than forty years in the making, let these women speak for themselves, while historical information is added to support and illuminate the women’s voices.


paperback book cover of Rim to River with photograph of storm on top of desert mountain

Award Winner: Nonfiction (General)

Tom Zoellner walked across the length of Arizona to come to terms with his home state. But the trip revealed more mountains behind the mountains.

Rim to River is the story of this extraordinary journey through redrock country, down canyons, up mesas, and across desert plains to the obscure valley in Mexico that gave the state its enigmatic name. The trek is interspersed with incisive essays that pick apart the distinctive cultural landscape of Arizona: the wine-colored pinnacles and complex spirituality of Navajoland, the mind-numbing stucco suburbs, desperate border crossings, legislative skullduggery, extreme politics, billion-dollar copper ventures, dehydrating rivers, retirement kingdoms, old-time foodways, ghosts of old wars, honky-tonk dreamers, murder mysteries, and magical Grand Canyon reveries.

In Rim to River, Zoellner does for Arizona what Larry McMurtry did for Texas in In a Narrow Grave and what Wallace Stegner did for Utah in Mormon Country: paint an enduring portrait of a misunderstood American state. An indictment, a love letter, and a homecoming story all at once.

Congratulations to Miguel Montiel, Yvonne de la Torre Montiel, and Tom Zoellner!

Five Questions with Gregory McNamee

October 10, 2024

The University of Arizona: A History in 100 Stories is a celebration of the people, ideas, inventions, teaching, and structures that have been part of the school’s evolution from a small land-grant institution to an internationally renowned research institution. Drawing on half a century of connection with the University of Arizona as a student, staff member, and faculty member, Gregory McNamee presents a history through the lens of a hundred subjects. Today we ask McNamee five questions about his book.

What’s a favorite undergraduate moment?

Tucson is a friendly, laid-back town, and when I landed here in 1975 it was immediately apparent that someone forget to tell it that the 1960s were over. One of my favorite moments at the University came when I enrolled as an undergraduate on a hot August day. As I was walking down the olive-tree-lined path along Park Avenue, two bands were setting up on the back of a flatbed truck for a welcome-to-campus concert, Summerdog and the Bob Meighan Band, who were favorites of campus and community alike and who gave extraordinary performances for a body of bobbing, dancing students, many of them as disoriented as I was in the brand-new world of college. I later became friends with players in both bands. Anyway, that capped off my first day here, when, gathering punch cards to get into classes, I met several young men and women who remain dear friends to this very day. Many of them turn up in my book.

Not a moment so much as a series of moments was the delightful fact that on almost any evening on campus during my undergraduate years (1975–78) there was something going on: a lecture from a world-class visiting scholar in Social Sciences, a poetry reading in the Modern Languages Auditorium; a musical, dance, or theatrical performance in what became Centennial Hall; some great film in the Gallagher Theater. Within the space of a few months, if memory serves, I saw Spanish director Victor Erice’s life-changing film Spirit of the Beehive and Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God, as well as repeated showings of the mind-blowing 2001, Allegro Non Troppo, and the collected works of the Marx Brothers; attended poetry readings by W. S. Merwin, Czeslaw Milosz, Joseph Brodsky, Lucille Clifton, and Seamus Heaney, among many others; heard fiery lectures by William Kunstler, Angela Davis, and Noam Chomsky, as well as a slurred one by Hunter S. Thompson; went to a Pink Floyd light-and-sound show at Flandrau and several great rock concerts at the Senior Ballroom; and talked about every possible topic there was to talk about late into the night, night after night, over coffee at the Student Union or beer at Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow down on Fourth Avenue.

Image of McKale Center filled with basketball fans during UA vs U Wisconsin men's basketball game.

University of Arizona vs. University of Wisconsin men’s basketball game at McKale Center.

I don’t want to sound like too much of a cranky old guy, though I am certainly that, but back in those happy days before students glued themselves to cell phones and social media, it was possible to have a happy life with orders of magnitude more actual social interaction. In any event, I could fit an awful lot into my schedule: take a full course load, work a part-time job, keep my grades up, and even get a little sleep from time to time while enjoying all that the campus had to offer.

One hundred stories is a lot of history. Will you share a bonus 101st story, perhaps one that didn’t make it into the book?

Well, it’s telling tales out of school, as the old saying goes, but back in the day I hung out from time to time with several friends who lived at the old grad-student apartments in the Babcock Building, which I believe became office space for a couple of decades and then became a dorm again. One of the residents was a friend of a friend, Barbara Kingsolver, whom I got to know. While the rest of us were hanging out down by the pool, jawboning about politics or literature or whatever until midnight, I could hear Barbara typing away in her room up on the second floor. Just a few years later her first novel, The Bean Trees, appeared, and the race was on. Every now and then I reflect on what might have happened if I’d gone home and hit the typewriter myself on a Saturday night, but things have worked out pretty well.

Thinking about what you call the four foundational pillars at the U of A—agriculture, mining & geology, astronomy, and anthropology—what is a great example of a modern research achievement from one of these areas of study?

Ten-odd years ago, my friend Neal Armstrong, now a retired Regents Professor of Chemistry, invited me to come up to the UA experimental farm in Maricopa, 85 or so miles northwest of Tucson, to see what appeared to be the world’s largest scanner. Some fifty feet high, it weighs thirty tons and moves along steel rails over crop rows the length of four football fields. Those fields contain thousands of sensors, reading data from forty-­two thousand plants below, about five terabytes a day. The numbers are then crunched to determine which plants are thriving under experimental conditions that are expected to resemble the future climate. Those plants that produce good yields are then selected for breeding, while those that fail are pulled. Darwinism in action, that.

TERRA (Transportation Energy Resources from Renewable Agriculture), as it’s called, represents the confluence of three important areas of research, conducted by scientists from many disciplines: energy, water, and food. We’re likely to be scrambling for energy, unless we go fully renewable, in the next quarter century; we’re likely to find that water is ever scarcer; and in the year 2100, by most estimates, the human population of the world will stand at nearly 11 billion people, about a third more people than are alive today. All of them need to eat, so TERRA, helping select crops that will do best under arduous conditions, is a potential life-saver and world-changer. As I say in the book, it’s a matter of life and death.

Photo of LemnaTec machine that assesses crops, moving over 20 rows of wheat in a field.

Agricultural analysis machine that is part of the TERRA program.

The other pillars have done more than their share to keep up with the modern world. But growing food is perhaps the most important thing humans can do, and it pleases me that our school’s very first pillar, agriculture, is such an important part of the planet’s future.

What is the most surprising thing you learned about the University of Arizona while writing this book?

I wouldn’t say I learned it so much as appreciated it more while writing the book, but one of the underlying themes of my book is the power of interdisciplinarity in research and study. Years before it became standard, UA scholars were going from building to building, anthropologists talking with economists, space scientists cooking up projects with hydrologists, physicians teaming up with physicists, writers collaborating with dancers and photographers and musicians, and professors and administrators such as John Schaefer, a chemist, making room in his schedule as UA president to teach a humanities course. Much of the intellectual richness of our school—and it’s always yielded an embarrassment of intellectual riches—comes from that kind of interdisciplinary work, leaving the rigid confines of supposed fields for the freedom of the highway, if you’ll forgive the tortured metaphor.

What is your current writing project?

I have a superstition against talking about work in progress, since it’s altogether too easy to talk all the energy out of the writing, to go out to lunch one time too often on a good anecdote and eventually get so sick of your stories that you want nothing less than to repeat them on the page. I’ve seen it happen many times, not least with my old friend Dick Tuck, scourge of Richard Nixon, who would have had a ten-thousand-page memoir in him if he’d only stopped talking and started writing.

I will let on, though, that I’m hoping to focus my next book on a certain animal that’s a distant cousin of the wildcat rather than on the capital-W Wildcats of the current book.

Apart from that, each month I pull together a Substack newsletter called World Bookcase, four or five thousand words of musing about whatever topics in history, culture, language, food, travel, and suchlike matters happen to be catching my interest at the moment. New subscribers are always welcome!

****

About the Author
Gregory McNamee is the author or editor of more than forty books and author of more than ten thousand periodical pieces. He is a contributing editor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica and a contributing writer to Kirkus Reviews, and his writing and photographs have appeared in dozens of magazines and online publications. McNamee is a former lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of Arizona and is a longtime traveling speaker for AZHumanities.

Excerpt from “Illegalized: Undocumented Youth Movements in the United States”

October 10, 2024

Illegalized: Undocumented Youth Movements in the United States by Rafael A. Martínez, 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. Read an excerpt from the book’s Introduction below.

On May 1, 2006, on International Workers’ Day, undocumented communities across the United States came out of the shadows in the millions to demand immigration reform and to protest anti-immigrant legislation proposed at the federal level. Five months earlier, in December 2005, H.R. 4437, dubbed the “Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005,” aimed like many other predecessors to militarize the borderlands as a direct response to the 9/11 attacks just four years earlier. However, this new piece of proposed federal legislation attempted to move the borderlands to the interior of the country by funding and extending programs to detect, detain, and deport undocumented immigrants. Undocumented communities, mixed-status families, and allies recognized that if this piece of legislation passed, it could set in motion a witch-hunt atmosphere. Ethnic and multilingual radio stations became the vehicle by which people mobilized to spread word in households, car rides, and community spaces about massive public marches happening across major cities in the United States. Urban centers like Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Las Vegas, Dallas, and Phoenix witnessed a wave of white T-shirts on diverse bodies waving multinational flags in a phenomenon many journalists described as “The Giant Awakens.”

May in Los Angeles features a bright, full-bodied sun shining across the concrete jungle. The skyscrapers cast a much-needed man-made shade for the millions of people who had taken over the streets of downtown Los Angeles by noontime. I remember exiting the Metro Blue Line station in downtown Los Angeles to what felt like the hum from a beehive coming from every direction. The energy from the crowd was contagious and motivating, but simultaneously disorienting and chaotic. Up to this point, as with many other fellow undocumented community members, my activism had been relegated to the shadows of traditional forms of civic engagement. Historically, immigrant communities were told by society and even long-standing activist organizations to not call attention to themselves, as their undocumented status placed them in a precarious position. However, the May Day immigrant rights marches, which became widely known and recognized as an annual event after 2006, flipped the narrative of undocumented immigrants remaining in the shadows and set in motion new possibilities outside of civic-engagement modes of organizing.

In the course of my education, in terms of my identity and politics as an undocumented scholar, I have come to value the ability to look back at pivotal moments in the history of undocumented youth social movements that have changed the ways in which immigrant communities are discussed in society and allowed people to see undocumented communities as knowledge producers. Situating my own positionality as an undocu-scholar—that is, someone who identifies as undocumented and as a scholar—is important in this research on undocumented youth activists. I define undocu-scholars as individuals who are conducting research, writing, documenting, producing artwork, and developing public projects based on the lived experiences of being undocumented or formerly undocumented. As such, the history that I am charting in my research represents my experience in the United States as an immigrant with no status for the majority of my life, and recently with protection under DACA that opened the doors to pursuing a career in academia. Thus, my positionality is a central component in the analysis I perform in my research and case studies.

Like other undocumented youth of my time in the mid–2000s, for me the May Day peaceful marches represented new possibilities in mobilizing for immigrant rights. For generations undocumented youth were subjugated to a vision of model citizens who were deemed worthy to the extent that they had potential in educational realms and could assimilate into American values. Politicians had begun categorizing undocumented youth as “DREAMers,” positioning them in terms of a future that was promised or always deferred. Young people were seen for the future prospects they could offer the state. So the offering of a pathway to inclusion rested on the expected deliverables that made them desirable in the first place. However, DREAMers only constituted a small percentage of the larger undocumented immigrant population.

Undocumented youth activists began creating local, state, and national organizations a few years after the 2006/7 May Day marches with the aim of changing the discourse around immigrant rights in the United States. In doing so, these activists realized that it was not enough to fight for the incorporation of a small minority, and that they needed to exchange the cultural capital gained from the visibility of the DREAMer movement at the national level for the ability to advocate for the larger undocumented immigrant population. The beginning of the twenty-first century, when undocumented youth movements grew to prominence, also coincided with high numbers of detentions in the interior of the country, an increase in deportation numbers, and the separation of mixed-status families across borders. Undocumented youth would address the issues of detention, deportation, and family separation head-on in direct forms of activism. This book captures some of the stories of activism that changed how immigrant rights are discussed in the United States.

Illegalized: Undocumented Youth Movements in the United States departs from the idea of undocumented youth movements as a single linear, homogeneous, or united movement. Instead, the case studies in the book characterize undocumented youth movements (UYMs) as a series of movements that are heterogeneous, diverse, and often contradictory, or that have frictions and limitations. Additionally, UYMs never occurred in a linear progression, as history rarely occurs in a continuum; rather, I argue that the case studies in the book are events that represent assemblages of organizational performances and showcase important ruptures related to the U.S. immigration system and its treatment of undocumented immigrants. One such rupture is the disruption and interrogation of the “DREAMer” identity or narrative. Another rupture is represented by an illegalized framework, which allows for the exploration of case studies in which undocumented youth activists take their activism to sites often kept in the shadows by the U.S. state. This book takes an (un)documenting approach—that is, it builds an archive that documents the activism of undocumented immigrant populations who resist violent forms of repression such as detention, deportation, and family separation. Assembling (un) documents represents social imaginaries in which undocumented youth organizers offer a discourse alternative to that of official U.S. immigration systems of policing and control.

Excerpt from “Five Hundred Years of LGBTQIA+ History in Western Nicaragua”

October 7, 2024

Five Hundred Years of LGBTQIA+ History in Western Nicaragua by Victoria González-Rivera, reframes five hundred years of western Nicaraguan history by giving gender and sexuality the attention they deserve. González-Rivera decenters nationalist narratives of triumphant mestizaje and argues that western Nicaragua’s LGBTQIA+ history is a profoundly Indigenous one.

In this expansive history, González-Rivera documents connections between Indigeneity, local commerce, and femininity (cis and trans), demonstrating the long history of LGBTQIA+ Nicaraguans. She sheds light on historical events, such as Andres Caballero’s 1536 burning at the stake for sodomy. González-Rivera discusses how elite efforts after independence to “modernize” open-air markets led to increased surveillance of LGBTQIA+ working-class individuals. She also examines the 1960s and the Somoza dictatorship, when another wave of persecution emerged, targeting working-­class gay men and trans women, leading to a more stringent anti-sodomy law. Read an excerpt from the book’s Introduction below.

SEXUALITY, GENDER, AND LANGUAGE IN NICARAGUAN HISTORY

Spanish colonial authorities sought to punish those they believed to be guilty of what they considered to be the crime (and sin) of sodomy, and they called those who committed it sodomitas, someticos, or sodometicos. Not surprisingly, given that the country’s legal system has its roots in the colonial period, as recently as 2008, Nicaraguan law forbade “scandalous relations between people of the same sex” using exactly the same word: sodomy (sodomía). Pecado nefando (nefarious sin) was another Spanish term used by colonial authorities, a term they brought with them from Europe. But there are also occasional references in the colonial record to a Nahuat word, cuylon (sometimes spelled cuilon), which, according to the Spanish, referred to a man who had sex with another man among Indigenous peoples in western Nicaragua. The existence of the word suggests that at least some of the Nahuat-speaking Indigenous residents of what is now the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, members of a group known as Nicarao, thought of men who had sex with men as a category apart. Alternatively, this usage of the word could have been a simplified Spanish interpretation of a more complex Indigenous lived experience. We also do not know if Nicaraos used the word cuylon in derogatory ways, or if it was simply a descriptive term. An additional question that remains unanswered is whether other Indigenous groups in the area, like the Chorotegas, had terms in their own language that were comparable to cuylon.

Historical evidence suggests that the Nahuat word cuylon evolved over time into the ubiquitous Nicaraguan Spanish word cochón, a word that for much of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries was typically used in a derogatory fashion. It has now been reclaimed by LGBTQIA+ activists, but it continues to be used by others in Nicaragua, usually as an insult for men who have sex with other men. Women who have sex with other women are often called cochonas.

In the twenty-first century, the terms cochón and cochona are commonly used in Nicaragua, along with other terms such as lesbiana, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, and cuir. One of the most common umbrella terms used by LGBTQIA+ activists is the term diversidad sexual, a term that encompasses gender and sexual diversity. This term has been widely adopted, and LGBTQIA+ individuals will sometimes refer to themselves as being sexualmente diversos, diversos, diversas, or de la diversidad.

In this book I use the umbrella terms LGBTQIA+ and sexual diversity interchangeably, even when referring to people who lived hundreds of years ago, when neither of these terms existed. It is impossible to avoid
the anachronistic usage of terms, but I have made every effort to document the lives of people in the past as accurately as possible. The most difficult decision regarding terminology was deciding what term to use in English for those individuals whose lived experience did not correspond to the Spanish/Catholic gender binary. When referring to individuals alive before the mid-twentieth century, I use the term trans in the broadest way possible to refer to individuals who might have identified as trans had the term existed at the time, or had they lived in contemporary times. However, if I am referring to individuals who are currently alive or those who had the opportunity to go on the record with a preferred word, I use the term/s they prefer. For earlier periods I usually use the umbrella term LGBTQIA+ to refer to individuals who today might call themselves gender-fluid, nonbinary, asexual, and/or intersex. It is important to point out that I do not use the terms berdache, two-spirit, third gender, or Muxes. There is no evidence to postulate that any of these terms make sense historically in Nicaragua.

THE LITERATURE ON PRE-1979 LGBTQIA+ HISTORY

Many Nicaraguan writers have briefly described moments or individuals in Nicaragua’s pre-1979 LGBTQIA+ history. Erick Blandón and David Rocha, however, are the only two scholars who have written more than a few pages on the subject. Blandón and Rocha have written the only books that address Nicaragua’s pre-1979 LGBTQIA+ history, albeit from cultural studies and/or literary perspectives. Blandón’s Barroco descalzo, published in 2003, is a magisterial “cultural genealogy” that “investigates . . . the limits of what is considered ‘culture,’ what is excluded from the hegemonic concept of the national, what ‘interrupts’ the official history, [and] the inconvenient or the immeasurable.” It is within this cultural genealogy that Blandón sought to “understand what is the place of anomalous sexualities in the hegemonic culture.” While Blandón’s book is not a chronological LGBTQIA+ history, Barroco descalzo is foundational, for it addresses homosexuality in the colonial period as well as its presence and absence in different historical instances of “popular” and dominant culture.

Rocha’s book, Crónicas de la ciudad, published in 2019, is also a groundbreaking text that defies categorization. It is history, fiction, poetry, and cultural studies, but most of all it is a love letter to Managua and Managua’s LGBTQ+ population. Rocha writes: “This work is for the locas from yesterday, the current ones, the future ones and the urban locas who were born and who will be born in this Managua full of fugitive spaces.” His book constitutes the first “gay” history of Managua, focusing on the years between 1968 and 1972. Building on the Argentine activist and anthropologist Nestor Perlongher’s work, Rocha created a cartography of Managua to map sexual subjectivities based on oral interviews, ethnography, archival research, and participant observation. Like Blandón’s work, Rocha’s is heavily informed by theory and a critical interpretation of the lived experience (whether their own or that of their fellow Nicaraguans) of the Sandinista revolution. In that sense, Blandón’s and Rocha’s books are crucial to understanding not only Nicaragua’s pre-1979 LGBTQIA+ history but also Nicaragua’s postrevolutionary LGBTQIA+ history. They are indeed foundational, and my work builds on theirs.

METHODOLOGY

Between 1990 and 2023, I spent over three years in Nicaragua, conducting participant observation, dozens of interviews, and substantial archival research at the Archivo Nacional de Nicaragua (National Archive of Nicaragua), the Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua y Centroamérica (the Institute of Nicaraguan and Central American History), the newspaper La Prensa, the Biblioteca del Banco Central (the Library of the Central Bank), and multiple privately held collections in Nicaragua. I also conducted extensive research online at the Biblioteca Enrique Bolaños (the Enrique Bolaños Library) and the British Library’s Endangered Archives. Additionally, I visited the Bancroft Library in Berkeley and the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Over the course of my research for other projects, I encountered snippets of Nicaragua’s LGBTQIA+ history, and I knew that the topic deserved a book of its own. I have devoted the last decade specifically to this project.

Brian Haley Talks “Hopis and the Counterculture” on KJZZ Radio

October 4, 2024

This week author Brian Haley discussed his new book Hopis and the Counterculture with reporter Sam Dingman, host of the radio program “The Show,” which is broadcast by Phoenix-based NPR station KJZZ.

In the new book, Haley, who is a cultural anthropologist, addresses how the Hopi became icons of the followers of alternative spiritualities and reveals one of the major pathways for the appropriation of Indigenous identities that exploded in the 1960s.

In the interview, Haley and Dingman discuss the role Los Angeles radio stations played in amplifying appropriated ideas. Says Haley, “The Radio Free Oz broadcast started doing a number of radio documentaries that gave the Hopi traditionalist faction’s view of things without any real significant critique of what was actually going on there.”

Listen to the full interview.

****

About the Author
Brian D. Haley is a professor of anthropology at the State University of New York at Oneonta and a leading scholar of the appropriation of Indigenous identities by people with non-Native histories. 

Photos from Tim Z. Hernandez & Melani Martinez at Special Collections

October 3, 2024

Thank you to everyone who came out Tuesday night for the incredible discussion between Tim Z. Hernandez, author of They Call You Back: A Lost History, A SearchA Memoir, and Melani (Mele) Martinez, author of The Molino: A Memoir.

Below, check out some photos from the event:

Head of Special Collections, Verónica Reyes-Escudero, introduces the authors and moderator.

Hosted in the University of Arizona’s Special Collections reading room, our audience was treated to a fascinating conversation between Tim and Mele, which was moderated by Javier D. Duran, Professor of Latin-American and Border Studies at the Center for Latin American Studies and the founding director of the Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry under The Office of Research, Innovation, & Impact at the University of Arizona.

Javier D. Duran moderates a fantastic conversation between the authors.
Melani Martinez shares about the context of The Molino.

The authors discussed their creative processes, the challenges of writing in the memoir genre, and the way their work is in conversation with traditions both within and beyond Latinx literature. Afterwards, attendees got to chat with the authors and get their books signed.

The audience enjoyed some tasty snacks after the reading!
Both authors signed books and got to continue the conversation with the audience.
University of Arizona Press Editor-in-Chief, Kristen Buckles, talks with Melani Martinez before the event.
Tim Z. Hernandez and Melani Martinez at the book signing table.

Thank you to everyone for making this event truly special! Check out our website’s events page for information about the next opportunity to meet our wonderful authors.

About the books:

They Call You Back: A Lost History, A Search, A Memoir

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.

Hernandez’s mission to find the families of the twenty-eight Mexicans who were killed in the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos Canyon formed the basis for his acclaimed documentary novel All They Will Call You, which the San Francisco Chronicle dubbed “a stunning piece of investigative journalism,” and the New York Times hailed as “painstaking detective work by a writer who is the descendant of farmworkers.”

In this riveting new work, Hernandez continues his search for the 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.

The Molino: A Memoir

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 Molino is also Martinez’s personal story—that of a young Tucsonense coming of age in the 1980s and ’90s. As a young woman she rejects the work in her father’s popular kitchen, but when the business closes, her world shifts and the family disbands. When she finds her way back home, the tortillería’s iconic mural provides a gateway into history and ruin, ancestry and sacrifice, industrial myth and artistic incarnation—revealing a sacred presence still alive in Tucson.

A must-read for foodies, history lovers, and anyone searching for spiritual truth in the desert, this is a story of belonging and transformation in the borderlands. 

Excerpt from “El Fin del Mundo”

October 1, 2024

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.

El Fin del Mundo: A Clovis Site in Sonora, Mexico editors Vance HollidayGuadalupe Sánchez, and Ismael Sánchez-Morales bring together the work of 14 contributors that present and synthesize the archaeological, geological, paleontological, and paleoenvironmental records of this important Clovis site.

Below. read an excerpt from Chapter 1 by Vance T. Holliday, Guadalupe Sánchez, Ismael Sánchez-Morales, and Edmund P. Gaines.


The Clovis occupation of North America is the oldest generally accepted and well documented archaeological assemblage on the continent, dating to ~13,000 cal yr B.P. (Meltzer 2021). The distinctive Clovis points have been reported from throughout most of the lower 48 United States, parts of Canada, as well as Mexico, throughout Central America, and possibly in Venezuela (Smith. Smallwood, and DeWitt 2015; Pearson 2017). Clovis is classically associated with mammoth, although only about 12 firm Clovis/mammoth associations are known (Grayson and Meltzer, 2015). Associations of Clovis and other late Pleistocene megafauna are more rare, consisting of mastodon and bison (Grayson and Meltzer 2015). In this volume we provide a full report on the site of El Fin del Mundo, the first documented Clovis association with gomphothere (Cuvieronius). The site is in Sonora, Mexico (Figure 1.1), making it the northernmost dated late Pleistocene gomphothere and the youngest in North America. It is the first documented intact, buried Clovis site outside of the United States and the first in situ Paleoindian site identified in northwestern Mexico. The site also includes a Clovis activity area on the “upland” surface (described in Chapter 2) that rises gradually from the area with the buried features. In addition, a paleontological bonebed below the Clovis level includes a rare association of mastodon, mammoth, and Cuvieronius sp. The site also provides a paleoenvironmental record rare for the region spanning the Late Glacial Maximum (LGM), Bølling-Allerød Chron, Younger Dryas Chron, and the early Holocene. These archaeological, geological, paleontological, and paleoenvironmental records are presented and synthesized here.

In June 1997, during a visit to the municipal museum in Carbó, Sonora, north of Hermosillo, Guadalupe Sánchez and Vance Haynes observed an unfossilized mammoth femur and rib. The bones were recovered more than 30 years earlier on a remote ranch in the municipio of Pitiquito. The owner, Gustavo Placencia, invited the group to his ranch. They had to decline his generous offer due to the time (four hours one way) involved and lack of access to a suitable field vehicle required in the rainy season. The principal objective of the Spring, 2007 field season of the Proyecto was to visit all the known localities in northern Sonora where Paleoindian artifacts and/or remains of late Pleistocene megafauna were reported. A priority on this list was the remote ranch in the municipio of Pitiquito.

On February 5, 2007, Guadalupe Sánchez, along with Edmund Gaines and Alberto “Beto” Peña, led by Alejandro “Jano” Valdez, the ranch cowboy, visited the locality that produced the bones on display in the Carbó museum. The exposure was an “island” of sediment in the middle of an arroyo system. Two bone layers were observed, exposed in the profiles around the island (Figure 1.2). The size of the bone and presence of tusk fragments (Figure 1.3) indicated that both layers contained the remains of Pleistocene megafauna. The first artifact found was a yellow chert uniface (#45980) that had recently fallen from the exposed upper bone layer, confirming that the bonebed was archaeological. Shortly thereafter, a large rhyolite Clovis-style biface (#46021) was discovered about 3 meters from the island exposure, followed by discovery of the middle portion of a quartz crystal biface (#46022) next to the north wall exposure (Chapter 4). The team knew they had found a potentially important archaeological and paleontological site and named it “El Fin del Mundo” (the end of the world) on the basis of a comment made when the team first arrived at the site. On a return trip two days later, a complete Clovis point of white chert (#46023; Figure 1.4) was found about 28 meters to the south of the island, confirming the team’s suspicions that they had a new Paleoindian site.

When necessary, fossil material recovered via excavation was stabilized using a 1:10 mixture of Resistol™ (akin to Elmer’s glue) and water. This was applied with either a paintbrush or an aerated sprayer along with ample water to ensure maximum penetration of the bone. In some cases, however, identifiable elements were removed without adding this material to keep them free from contamination that would affect radiocarbon analysis.

In some cases, the remains were encased in polyurethane foam to remove them in sound condition. This was accomplished by first applying wet tissue entirely around the bone surface. As the tissue dried it formed a protective casing that prevented the foam from sticking to the bones and facilitated removal in the laboratory. The remains were then encased in polyurethane foam that forms a 10- to 20-cm thick hardened jacket that holds them together and protects them during removal. Cardinal direction, unit number, and grid coordinate information were recorded on the polyurethane casing prior to removal. When possible, individual elements were jacketed separately. It was, however, necessary to group large concentrations of multiple bones together in a single polyurethane jacket.

Stephen J. Pyne Gives Keynote Address on Fire to Geological Society of American Meeting

September 30, 2024

Stephen J. Pyne, author of Five Suns: A Fire History of Mexico and more than 40 other books about fire, gave the keynote address at a fire-themed session at the Geological Society of America (GSA) annual meeting on September 23, 2024.  GSA previewed his address in this Youtube interview with him, “How Our Relationship with Fire Has Changed Through Time with Dr. Stephen Pyne.”

Pyne is a fire historian, urban farmer, and emeritus professor at Arizona State University. He spent 15 seasons with the North Rim Longshots, a fire crew at Grand Canyon National Park. 

During the interview, Dr. Rachel Phillips, a GSA Science Communication Fellow, asked Pyne to explain more about the evolution of fire. He replied: “Fire is a shape shifter, I mean, fire is a reaction. It’s not a substance like earth, air, or water. It can assume many forms but it’s fundamentally a substance. Fire takes its character from its context so it synthesizes, it integrates its surroundings and as those surroundings change, fire changes. So, as oxygen levels on Earth change, fire changes. As plants and animals evolve and rearrange and organize terrestrial landscapes, fire assumes forms appropriate to those landscapes and those conditions.”

About Five Suns:

Narrating Mexico’s evolution of fire through five eras, historian Stephen J. Pyne describes the pre-human, pre-Hispanic, colonial, industrializing (1880–1980), and contemporary (1980–2015) fire biography of this diverse and dynamic country. Creatively deploying the Aztec New Fire Ceremony and the “five suns” that it birthed, Pyne addresses the question, “Why does fire appear in Mexico the way it does?” Five Suns tells the saga through a pyric prism.

Mexico has become one of the top ten “firepowers” in the world today through its fire suppression capabilities, fire research, and industrial combustion, but also by those continuing customary practices that have become increasingly significant to a world that suffers too much combustion and too little fire.

Western Literature Association 2024: Discounts, New Books, and More

September 30, 2024

We hope to see you at the 2024 Western Literature Association meeting here in Tucson this week! We’ll have a vibrant selection of new and featured Indigenous, Latinx, and Southwestern literature titles available for sale at our table.

If you can’t attend this year, or if you need an extra copy of a book you discover at our table, we’re extending a special offer to everyone: use AZWLA24 for 35% off all titles until October 20, 2024.

We’re also excited to be hosting the BorderVisions series editors at our table on Friday, October 4th, 10-11 a.m. Stop by to learn about the most recent book in this series—or share your projects-in-progress about the U.S.-Mexico borderlands with the editors!

New & Featured Titles


A haunting, an obsession, a calling: Tim Z. Hernandez has been searching for people his whole life. Now, in this highly anticipated memoir following his acclaimed documentary novel, All They Will Call You, Hernandez takes us along on an investigative odyssey through personal and collective history to uncover the surprising conjunctions that bind our stories together. 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. 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. A must-read for foodies, history lovers, and anyone searching for spiritual truth in the desert, this is a story of belonging and transformation in the borderlands. 


Illegalized

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. 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.


Renae Watchman‘s insightful volume delves into land-based Diné and Dene imaginaries as embodied in stories—oral, literary, and visual. Like the dynamism and kinetic facets of hózhǫ́,* Restoring Relations Through Stories takes us through many landscapes, places, and sites. Watchman introduces the book with an overview of stories that bring Tsé Bitʼaʼí, or Shiprock Peak, the sentinel located in what is currently the state of New Mexico, to life. The book then introduces the dynamic field of Indigenous film through a close analysis of two distinct Diné-directed feature-length films, and ends by introducing Dene literatures.


Elegiac and powerful, Ancient Light uses lyric, narrative, and concrete poems to give voice to some of the most pressing ecological and social issues of our time. With vision and resilience, Kimberly Blaeser’s poetry layers together past, present, and futures. The collection invites readers to see with a new intimacy the worlds they inhabit. Blaeser brings readers to the brink, immerses them in the darkest regions of the Anthropocene, in the dangerous fallacies of capitalism, and then seeds hope. Ultimately, as the poems enact survivance, they reclaim Indigenous stories and lifeways.


Have you ever wanted a writing and research manual that centered Chicanx and Latinx scholarship? Writing that Matters does just that. While it includes a brief history of the roots of the fields of Chicanx literature and history, L Heidenreich and Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz emphasize practice: how to research and write a Chicanx or Latinx history paper; how to research and write a Chicanx or Latinx literature or cultural studies essay; and how to conduct interviews, frame pláticas, and conduct oral histories.

Featured Series

We are excited to be adding new titles to our BorderVisions, Sun Tracks, and Camino del Sol series!

BorderVisions, edited by Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez and Yvette J. Saavedra, engages the U.S.-Mexico borderlands’ dynamic histories and cultures and expands our understanding of the borderlands beyond a site of geopolitical inquiry. We are especially interested in books that address the complexities and richness of borderlands experiences at different historical, cultural, and sociopolitical moments. Watch a recording of the series launch for BorderVisions here.

Sun Tracks, launched in 1971, was one of the first publishing programs to focus exclusively on the creative works of Native Americans. The series has included more than eighty volumes of poetry, prose, art, and photography by such distinguished artists as Joy Harjo, N. Scott Momaday, Simon J. Ortiz, Carter Revard, and Luci Tapahonso.

Five Questions with Melani Martinez

September 26, 2024

This month author Melani Martinez publishes The Molino, a hybrid memoir that reckons with one family’s loss of home, food, and faith. Weaving together history, culture, and Mexican food traditions, 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. Today, Melani answers five questions:

What sparked your interest in publishing the story of your family and your family’s business?

I wanted my family, and families like mine, to be represented in published stories of American experiences. The Mexican-American community and communities from Tucson and the Borderlands have incredible stories, but they are not shared or platformed as much as they could be for many readers and listeners who care about these stories. I knew El Rapido, our family business, mattered to this community. I believed El Rapido’s stories should be published for Tucson. My personal stories that also make up the memoir may be new for this audience, but I hope they resonate.

How has your relationship with the molino changed over time?

I think about the molino in three different ways: the grinding machine itself, the name my family gave to our place of work, and my reflective writing on the memories of this work with my family. In all three ways, the molino is all about process. It is sometimes a representative of the past, but for me it is more often a symbol of how things are constantly changing. I’ve written about the tension I felt with the molino and how I experienced a fear of it, a desire to get away from it. Putting these ideas in writing has helped me see that it is not something I can just walk away from—it never was. But I am not afraid of the machine anymore. I’m able to mourn the loss of the place where we lived and worked. I feel like I can more authentically celebrate the molino now.

What was the connection between El Rapido and México?

It seems like a tamalería / tortillería would have a pretty clear connection to México, but I’m not sure if it was always clear for me and my brother growing up as workers at El Rapido. This disconnect was often tied to language—even though we used some Spanish vocabulary regularly and listened to Mexican music everyday at El Rapido, we didn’t learn to speak the language fluently and struggled to communicate with our co-workers as well as customers and familiar people in our own community. As third generation, we were very isolated from México. Even though we were part of Tucson and Sonoran culture, we didn’t know quite how to connect to the land, the people, and the culture of a place just 70 miles south of us. In terms of our sense of place, El Rapido was one of the only ways we would experience a microcosm of this big idea that was “México.”  El Rapido let us taste something, hear something, and through iconic images that were all around us to also see something that told the story of México for us. It wasn’t the same story that we learned in school. It wasn’t the same story on television or in the movies. It might have been a little fuzzy and vague sometimes, but it was our most compelling artifact. If we needed any proof of our ancestry and ties to México, El Rapido was a definite “X” on the map we could point to.

Why did you decide to use the sometimes controversial figure of “El Pensamiento” to tell your story?

I had been writing the memoir for over a decade before El Pensamiento was named in the manuscript. I knew the storefront mural was very important to my family, especially my father, but I had only written this idea with plenty of space between me and the image of “The Sleep Mexican.”  I knew it was a complex and powerful image but I didn’t know how to address it confidently. Once I started to imagine the house itself as a character in the story, I realized that I had been missing the voice of an incredibly important El Rapido figure (the mural image) and I wanted to know where he really came from. Searching for “Sleepy’s” origin story made his character come alive for me. I realized his name (El Pensamiento) and then I could hear his voice. He is a narrator in the story because he reveals truth, especially as mijita (me as the primary narrator) struggles to articulate truth to herself. He is also a vessel for compassionately sharing the faith traditions and christian doctrines that have been rejected, resisted, or misunderstood. In this way, he serves as a typology of Christ for mijita. He speaks multiple languages, including the love languages recorded in scripture. His message and his likeness will always be controversial, but full of wisdom for those who listen to his words. 

What project are you working on now?

At the University of Arizona, I teach Borderlands writing courses for first-year students and I’ve been working on a Department of Education grant initiative called Project ADELANTE. The Borderlands classroom is some rich territory for dreaming up new and creative ideas! This year, I hope to participate, alongside my students, in various Borderlands genres including corridos, testimonios, fotonovelas, and more.  

****

About the Author
Melani “Mele” Martinez is a senior lecturer at the University of Arizona, where she teaches writing courses. She earned a BA in creative writing at the University of Arizona and an MFA in creative nonfiction from Goucher College. Her work has appeared in Fourth Genre, Bacopa Literary Review, BorderLore, Bearings Online Journal,Telling Tongues: A Latin Anthology on Language Experiences, and Contemporary Chicanx Writers Anthology. Her family has lived in the Sonoran Desert for at least nine generations

Texas Standard Radio Interviews Cynthia Bejarano and Maria Cristina Morales

September 23, 2024

Texas Standard Radio’s Kristen Cabrera interviewed the editors of Frontera Madre(hood): Brown Mothers Challenging Oppression and Transborder Violence at the U.S.-Mexico Border last week. The book has thirty contributors who all write about the experience of being a mother and care-taking on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Editors Cynthia Bejarano and Maria Cristina Morales spoke about how their own family experience led to the collection of essays on mothering. Bejarano explained the new and disturbing vibe at El Paso’s Thanksgiving parade:

We started taking our families in 2014 when our kids were quite young. And from year to year we started to notice the parade route itself was still the same, but the participants had changed. There seemed to be an overwhelming presence of policing units, of the military, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Border Patrol and several junior exploration programs where we saw young young kids—the adolescent age and even younger—who were kind of marching in unison as they were wearing whatever uniform they were representing. And so that kind of it caught our attention.

Morales expanded on her life in the borderlands:

I grew up in El Paso, she grew up in Anthony, New Mexico. So we have experienced what it’s like being in the margins—not only the geographical margins, but the margins in terms of social class immigration status. I am a second generation Mexican, so my parents came from Juárez and then my upbringing was really on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. I was born in the El Paso side, but I very much had relatives and social events and activities on the Mexican side of the border. And so I grew up with this very rich, bicultural experience, and it’s something that really shaped the way that I look at the world.

Listen to the Texas Standard Radio interview here or read the transcript.

About the book:

The topic of mothers and mothering transcends all spaces, from popular culture to intellectual thought and critique. This collection of essays 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.

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.

Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with These New Books

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

Five Questions with Tim Z. Hernandez

September 16, 2024

This month author Tim Z. Hernandez published They Call You Back, a memoir about the investigations that have shaped the greater part of the author’s life. He takes us along on an investigative odyssey through personal and collective history to uncover the surprising conjunctions that bind our stories together. Hernandez continues his search for the 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. Today, Tim answers five (plus bonus) questions:

In some ways, this memoir is a continuation of All They Will Call You, which documents your work to find the families of the twenty-eight Mexicans who were killed in the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos Canyon. In this new book, you describe your ongoing work tracking down the plane crash victims. Can you give us a peek at what you’ve uncovered since ATWCY was published in 2017?

Since the publication of ATWCY in 2017, I’ve located seven more families and was able to highlight some of them in this new book. But other exciting things have happened since then too. For instance, in 2018 the California State Senate formally recognized the accident and the families on the Senate floor. That was an exciting closure for the families who were there with me that day.

This work is about so much more than ATWCY. How have your searches for the victims intersected with your own life?


I wouldn’t necessarily say they “intersected” with my life, but in my pursuit to find these families I found myself having to grapple with some of my own family’s past, our history, the ups and downs. It was as if looking for their families I came to discover my own, and that’s what I tried to capture in this book.

You have several events this Fall, including one later this month at the Los Gatos Plane Crash Memorial. Why is it so important to present this story in public spaces with the community?

I feel like it’s important for the families so that they can finally receive some long overdue closure for what happened to their relative seven decades ago. But also, it’s a story that contains a lot of power—compassion, empathy, and a message of interconnection—so it’s only beneficial to the larger community if we share it far and wide. 

We are probably biased, but we love the cover! How did it come together?

Haha! Yes, I love it too, VERY much! That’s the genius of University of Arizona Press cover designer Leigh McDonald! I knew I wanted the cover to reflect my own personal journey in some way while at the same time conveying it was still very much based on the historic Los Gatos plane crash. So I sent her a few photos of me looking “contemplative” and suggested there be an airplane in the sky somewhere distant. Leigh found a Douglas DC-3 photo and placed it in the sky, but it’s also slightly offset from my eye line, which is intentional because I didn’t want it to appear like it’s in the same space with me, but rather that it just also happens to exist in some parallel world. But then Leigh added the texture and just some really special nuances that brought the whole thing together. I’ve worked with her on past covers before too, and she’s always a pleasure to work with, but I have to say, this time she really hit it out of the park!      

In addition to community collaborations, you are also collaborating with musicians. What has that been like?

Yes, I’ve always collaborated with musicians over the last 25 years of my writing career. Music is my second love after writing. For this book I actually co-wrote a song with one of my favorite indie folk-musicians, Ted Nunes, and he recorded it. It’s titled “They Call You Back” and as suspected it’s based on the book and my journey. I think music is always a good vehicle for stories and poems, and I try and bring that aspect to my performances as well. I want the work to always be engaging and entertaining, as much as educational. And music just helps with that. 

We can’t help it. We have one more question. What’s next?

Haha! I’d like to keep some of the mystery, but I’ll just say that I’m working on a fictional novel for this next one. And it’s about an issue that is a concern to us all, but because of the approach I’m taking I’m really having to use my “dark tools” to write it. It’s unlike anything I’ve written before. It requires me to enter a very cynical state of mind to write it, which is not at all how I operate. Whereas the subjects of my books and poems are usually about interconnections and compassion, this one is very much about division and what happens when one goes down a twisted path that one can’t return from. Fiction feels like a nice break for the time being.   

****

About the Author
Tim Z. Hernandez is an award-winning author, research scholar, and performer. His books include fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and he is the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Book Award. His work has been featured in international media, and in 2018 he was recognized by the California Senate for his work locating the victims of the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos, which is chronicled in his book, All They Will Call You. Hernandez is an associate professor in the University of Texas at El Paso’s Bilingual Creative Writing program.

Five Questions with Elena Foulis

September 10, 2024

Focusing on service-learning and Latina/o/e communities within a variety of institutional contexts, Working en comunidad: Service-Learning and Community Engagement with U.S. Latinas/os/es 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.

We recently had a chance to interview editor and author Elena Foulis about the book, asking about the origin of the project, the concept of comunidad, and the benefits of service-learning.

Your work, and the work of the contributors in this book, provides a guide to service-learning that is both ethical and reciprocal. How did you come to see that there was a need for this kind of guide?

As a growing population, there is an increased interest to interact and learn about Latina/o/e communities, yet it typically tends to be brief, during a semester, or rather extractive, whether this is intentional or not. In the past two decades, more and more academic programs across the U.S. want to work with Latina/o/e communities, and as someone that identifies as part of this community and who has engaged with these communities with my students for over a decade, I wanted to offer a set of best practices to understand how to work with and in community with such a complex and diverse group.

Comunidad is a central, unifying concept for this book. How did you and the other editors formulate this idea?

When we (all of us editors and authors in this book) think of service-learning, we think of comunidad— there is no other ethical way to do this. Service-learning is reciprocal, mutually beneficial, and should lead to sustainable practices. Seeing communities as integral, long-term collaborators requires that we spend time with each other to develop a respectful and trusting relationship. This is what comunidad is all about! A coming together to build unity and work together to build a better future for us and the generations that come after us.

In Chapter 1, you lay out the importance of cultural humility and empathy as part of the pedagogical preparation for service-learning. You employ the wonderful phrase “listening to understand.” Can you talk about what that means, or what it looks like?

As scholars and students, we can think that our textbook or academic knowledge about a community makes us experts of their issues, but we are not. We have an educated understanding that is true and necessary, but we must be humble in our approach to working with communities outside of our institutions. Communities understand their needs and the structural systems that have prevented them from accessing resources, so our job is to listen. As a Latina, I don’t have all the answers about my own community, because we have different experiences, so we must teach ourselves and our students to listen to their concerns and to the solutions that work best for them. In this interaction, our book knowledge takes a back seat, and we become “vulnerable observers,” as anthropologist Ruth Behar puts it. 

What are some of the benefits or changes you’ve seen among students, educators, and community members who participate in the kind of service-learning this book advocates for?

Well, students never forget these classes. It is often the only service-learning class they’ve ever taken, so I regularly hear back from them to tell me what they are doing or how the class led them into non-profit work, law, education, and medical school because they want to continue to work—within their chosen professions—in the community. There really is much care among community organizations, students and educators, and those who are served by the organizations. I get to see real changes, joy, and empathy for all involved in this work. Just this year, I heard about how much my students are having a positive impact working with an organization that serves adult learners. They often asked when students would be back, because they’d had such a great rapport with them.

What are you working on now?

I am working on a monograph on oral history with Latina/o/e communities. I developed my passion for service-learning and oral history almost at the same time. The tentative title is Embodied Encounters: Bilingual Oral History Archives of Latina/o/e Experiences. I also have several articles coming out on Latina/o/e digital humanities, translanguaging and trauma-informed oral history.


Elena Foulis is an assistant professor and program director of Spanish Language Studies at Texas A&M University–San Antonio. She has directed the oral history project Oral Narratives of Latin@s in Ohio since 2014. Foulis’s research explores Latina/o/e voices through oral history and performance, identity and place, ethnography, and family. She has more than ten years of experience in service-learning pedagogy.

Sergio Troncoso Selected for Texas Literary Hall of Fame

September 9, 2024

Sergio Troncoso, author of The Last Tortilla & Other Stories and From This Wicked Patch of Dust, has been selected to be inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame. The Texas Christian University Mary Couts Burnett Library, in partnership with the TCU AddRan College of Liberal Arts and TCU Press, announced their selection for induction into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame. The authors will be honored at the official induction ceremony on October 29, 2024.

Other authors honored this year are: Tracy Daugherty, Molly Ivins, Stephen Graham Jones, Cormac McCarthy, Jan Seale, and Cynthia Leitich Smith.

The Texas Literary Hall of Fame was established to celebrate and encourage the state’s rich literary heritage by honoring its foremost authors, whose original writing reflects enduring cultural relevance and artistic creativity. The Texas Literary Hall of Fame honors inductees every two years.

Congratulations Sergio!

About The Last Tortilla & Other Stories

Writing in a straightforward, light-handed style reminiscent of Grace Paley and Raymond Carver, Sergio Troncoso spins charming tales that reflect his experiences in two worlds. 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.

About From this Wicked Patch of Dust

In the border shantytown of Ysleta, Mexican immigrants Pilar and Cuauhtémoc Martínez strive to teach their four children to forsake the drugs and gangs of their neighborhood. The family’s hardscrabble origins are just the beginning of this sweeping novel. Spanning four decades, this is a story of a family’s struggle to become American and yet not be pulled apart by a maelstrom of cultural forces.

September 5, 2024

Forging a Sustainable Southwest: The Power of Collaborative Conservation 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. The book contains 153 color images. We interviewed author Stephen E. Strom to learn more about his research and photography for this book. All photos by Stephen E. Strom unless noted otherwise.

aerial view of southern Arizona hills with green grass and trees

Grasslands adjacent to Sonoita Creek in Arizona

Why did you write this book?

The rapid growth of the West continues to fragment landscapes, threaten watersheds, and undermine the complex interactions among plants, animals, and people, disrupting the natural functions and equilibria of ecosystems.  In the 170 years since gold was found in Sutter’s Creek, more than 165,000 square miles of the West’s “wide open spaces” have been lost to development: an area larger than that of the entire state of California.

The consequent loss and fragmentation of open space has undermined the health of forests, grasslands, and watersheds, with resulting detrimental effects on wildlife, species diversity, and water supply. Ecosystems that could otherwise store carbon have been lost or disrupted, and the unquantifiable values of scenic beauty and solitude have been diminished. Climate change threatens to exacerbate the magnitude of these threats and to compress the time available for ecosystems to restore balance and function.

The urgent need to address the challenges posed by the rapid and continuing growth of the West motivated me to explore a number of pressing questions: What lands do we need to conserve or protect in order to foster functioning ecosystems? How do we conserve them? Is it possible to restore some of the damage already inflicted on lands and water? And how do we meet the goals of both sustainable land stewardship and economic vitality in a context where cities, suburbs, and exurbs continue to grow in response to increasing population?

To gain insight into how these questions might best be answered, I spent the better part of three years listening to individuals whose interests and expertise span a broad range of interests and ideologies—ranchers, developers, conservationists, ecologists, representatives from government agencies and NGOs, along with citizen activists. Their message: achieving critical conservation and land stewardship goals will require an all-hands approach involving broad public participation in shaping strategic plans to steward and protect landscapes on scales of hundreds of thousands of acres, and to address the economic, cultural and spiritual needs of citizens who live among and adjacent to these lands.

Pronghorn

Forging a Sustainable Southwest describes four large-landscape conservation efforts, each of which provides an example of how to integrate human and environmental needs on regional scales, and to as well create a positive social context for long-term cooperation among multiple stakeholders.

As Matthew McKinney, Lynn Scarlett, and Daniel Kemmis suggest, forming such collaborative efforts to address large-landscape conservation challenges “might well result in a healing of not only ecosystems, but also related human systems. As traditionally adversarial conservation, community, and economic interests search for common ground, one arena of shared interest is a growing recognition that unscarred landscapes, clean water, fresh air, and a rich biodiversity based on healthy ecosystems, are becoming the best economic engine available to many local communities. Perhaps even more appealing is the prospect that, in the course of working hard to discover and claim that common ground, the people who inhabit those ecosystems will have contributed to the strengthening of their civic culture, and to expanding their capacity to address the next set of challenges.”

Catalina State Park, Arizona (photo credit: Catalina State Park)

How do organizations get people from across the political spectrum to work together to preserve large landscapes?

In Forging a Sustainable Southwest, The Nature Conservancy’s Peter Warren reflects on his experiences in working with groups committed to large-landscape conservation efforts:

To come up with a cohesive conservation approach to something on the scale of one hundred thousand acres, or five hundred thousand acres, or a million acres . . . requires collaboration among different landowners and land managers. I’ve come to view successful collaborations as team problem-solving, troubleshooting, brain-storming efforts based on shared experience.

To develop successful conservation strategies across a large area with multiple landowners—public, private and Tribal—requires ongoing collaborative efforts in which people share a common vision for the future. Most successful conservation efforts start out locally, where individuals motivated by attachment to and passion for a place initiate conversation about the effects of land use on their future. Efforts that endure are those that include individuals with diverse interests—from large-scale landowners and ranchers to the business community and entrepreneurs in the region, other advocates for conservation, and community members who care about the place.

The groups and individuals that shepherded the four successful conservation efforts described in Forging a Sustainable Southwest share the following attributes: recognizing and respecting cultural and ideological differences; understanding with compassion the fears of individuals about their future; taking the time to build relationships and trust; and finding a way to harmonize economic, cultural and conservation goals.

Mountain spring in southern Arizona

Pygmy owl and long-nosed bat

Do you know of other collaborations outside of the southwest that are working toward similar goals?

Efforts to work collaboratively to effect large-landscape conservation have grown significantly over the past twenty years. The Four Forest Restoration Initiative and the Wyoming Landscape Initiative represent two notable examples that demonstrate the effectiveness of collaborative conservation in developing strategies for stewarding and protecting lands in regions facing very different environmental and political challenges.

The Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI) is a restoration initiative for 2.4 million acres of ponderosa pine forestland along the Mogollon Rim in Arizona encompassing four national forests: Apache, Coconino, Tonto, and Kaibab. The principal goals of the program are to restore forest ecosystems so that they are more resilient to naturally and human- caused fires; increase the diversity of plants; protect springs and streams; and promote industries that depend on wood products to the benefit of local economies. The collaboration involves local, county, and state governments, representatives from industrial and environmental communities, as well as other stakeholders.

4FRI has successfully implemented large-scale forest thinning operations to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires. The Initiative has also significantly improved habitat conditions for wildlife species, enhanced the health of watersheds, and provided economic benefits to local communities through job creation and the promotion of sustainable forest industries.

Rain in the mountains next to Animas Valley, New Mexico

The Wyoming Landscape Conservation Initiative (WLCI) is a partnership including representatives from the BLM, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Wyoming Department of Agriculture, Wyoming Game and Fish Department, six county commissions, eleven conservation districts, and industry and landholders. Its dual goals are to conserve and enhance fish and wildlife habitat at landscape scale using science-based programs, and to support responsible energy, mineral, and other development.

WCLI has been successful in developing conservation agreements with ranchers and private landowners, which have helped to preserve open rangelands and to maintain traditional land uses like grazing. By working together with local communities, these agreements have conserved critical habitats for wildlife, such as sage-grouse, mule deer, and pronghorn, while allowing ranchers to maintain viable operations.

Furthermore, WCLI efforts have helped to restore riparian areas across Wyoming—vital for maintaining healthy watersheds and provide essential habitats for fish, birds, and other wildlife. The restoration work includes planting native vegetation, reducing erosion, and improving water quality, benefiting both the environment and local communities.

The initiative has also worked with energy companies to minimize the impacts of oil, gas, and wind energy projects on sensitive landscapes and wildlife habitats.

Chiricahua leopard frog and Swainson’s hawk

What are the challenges of photographing large landscapes, fitting so many square miles into the frame, and how did you overcome them?

I envisioned photographs playing a pivotal role in conveying why the regions discussed in Forging a Sustainable Southwest merit a mix of protection, sustainable stewardship and in some cases restoration. To document the wide range of landscapes discussed in the book, required capturing them from a variety of perspectives. For more intimate evocations, I used a DSLR camera, while aerial images obtained from drones and light aircraft flying from heights of 400 to 4,000 feet above the ground enabled me to capture the sweeping expanses (up to 60 miles in all directions) of the area’s grasslands, forests, riparian areas and watersheds.

Capturing the beauty inherent in these landscapes presented a new challenge for me, as much of my previous work (Death Valley: Painted Light; Voices from Bears Ears: Seeking Common Ground on Sacred Land; Bears Ears: Views from a Sacred Land; and The Greater San Rafael Swell: Honoring Tradition and Preserving Storied Lands) focused on interpreting dramatically different landscapes dominated by deep intricate canyons, majestic buttes, colorful badlands and windswept deserts.

Cienega Ranch, Arizona

What project are you working on now?

I’m currently gathering ground- and aerial-based photographs to complement The Northwest in Transition: Envisioning the future of the Columbia River Basin, a book currently in preparation by journalist and author Rebecca Robinson. To quote Rebecca: “The book aims to capture a pivotal moment when a confluence of events has inspired an urgent search for solutions to a decades-long debate over energy, economic development, and tribal treaty rights in the Columbia River Basin, a 258,000-square-mile region encompassing parts of seven U.S. states and southern British Columbia, Canada.” Robinson is the author of Voices from Bears Ears: Seeking Common Ground for which I provided images of landscapes throughout the Bears Ears National Monument in southeast Utah.

***
Stephen E. Strom has spent forty-five years as a research astronomer after receiving undergraduate and graduate degrees in astronomy from Harvard. He began photographing in 1978, after studying the history of photography and silver and nonsilver photography at the University of Arizona.

2024 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award Finalists

September 4, 2024

We are happy to announce that five of our books have been named as finalists for the 2024 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards!

The New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards are given annually by the New Mexico Book Co-op. Their mission is “to showcase local books, authors, presses, and related professionals; to promote literacy; and to raise public awareness of quality books produced [in New Mexico and Arizona].”

See the full list of finalists at this link.

About the books:

Anthropology/Archaeology Finalist

In Woven from the Center, Diane Dittemore presents breathtaking basketry from some of the greatest weavers in the Southwest. Each sandal and mat fragment, each bowl and jar, every water bottle and whimsy is infused with layers of aesthetic, cultural, and historical meanings. This book offers stunning photos and descriptions of woven works from Tohono O’odham, Akimel O’odham, Hopi, Western Apache, Yavapai, Navajo, Pai, Paiute, New Mexico Pueblo, Eastern Apache, Seri, Yaqui, Mayo, and Tarahumara communities.


Biography (Arizona Subject) Finalist

Editors Jesús Rosales and Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez celebrate more than forty years of creative writing by Chicana author Margarita Cota-Cárdenas in La Plonqui: The Literary Life and Work of Margarita Cota-Cárdenas. The book includes critical essays, reflections, interviews, and previously unpublished writing by the author herself to document the lifelong craft and legacy of a pioneering writer in the field.


Biography (Arizona Subject), Biography (Other), & History (Arizona) Finalist

World of Our Mothers highlights the largely forgotten stories of forty-five women immigrants in the early twentieth century. Through interviews in Arizona mining towns, Phoenix barrios, and selected areas of California, Texas, and the Midwest, authors Miguel Montiel and Yvonne de la Torre Montiel show us how these women negotiated their lives with their circumstances.


Nature/Environment Finalist

Restoring the Pitchfork Ranch tells the story of a decades-long habitat restoration project in southwestern New Mexico. Rancher-owner A. Thomas Cole explains what inspired him and his wife, Lucinda, to turn their retirement into years dedicated to hard work and renewal. The book shares the past and present history of a very special ranch south of Silver City, which is home to a rare type of regional wetland, a fragile desert grassland ecosystem, archaeological sites, and a critical wildlife corridor in a drought-stricken landscape.


paperback book cover of Rim to River with photograph of storm on top of desert mountain

Nonfiction (General) & Travel Finalist

A sharp examination of Arizona by a nationally acclaimed writer, Rim to River follows Tom Zoellner on a 790-mile walk across his home state as he explores key elements of Arizona culture, politics, and landscapes. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in learning more about a vibrant and baffling place.

Congratulations to all our authors!

Excerpt from “Healing Like Our Ancestors”

August 29, 2024

Healing Like Our Ancestors: The Nahua Titiçih, Gender, and Settler Colonialism in Central Mexico, 1535-1660, by Edward Anthony Polanco, offers a provocative new perspective the examines sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Nahua healers in central Mexico and how their practices have been misconstrued and misunderstood in colonial records.

Early colonial Spanish settlers defined, assessed, and admonished Nahua titiçih (healing specialists) and tiçiyotl (healing knowledge) in the process of building a society in Mexico that mirrored Iberia. Nevertheless, Nahua survivance (intergenerational knowledge transfer) has allowed communities to heal like their ancestors through changes and adaptations. Polanco draws from diverse colonial primary sources, largely in Spanish and Nahuatl (the Nahua ancestral language), to explore how Spanish settlers framed titiçih, their knowledge, and their practices within a Western complex. Polanco argues for the usage of Indigenous terms when discussing Indigenous concepts and arms the reader with the Nahuatl words to discuss central Mexican Nahua healing. In particular, this book emphasizes the importance of women as titiçih and highlights their work as creators and keepers of knowledge. These vital Nahua perspectives of healing—and how they differed from the settler narrative—will guide community members as well as scholars and students of the history of science, Latin America, and Indigenous studies. Read an excerpt from the book’s introduction below.

“From the Peruvian Andes to the French court, the potato’s voyages”—thus reads the title of a sign explaining how the potato made its way to Spain. In July 2022, I had the privilege of visiting the Real Jardín Botánico (Royal Botanical Garden) in Madrid. I had read about the garden in books and was curious about its contents. When I asked a garden employee where I could see plants indigenous to the Americas, she informed me that the gardeners had dispersed them throughout the grounds and that the garden’s sections were not organized by geographic location. I immediately looked for corn (Zea mays) and tobacco (Nicotiana sp.), which I was surprised to find growing next to each other in the huerta, or orchard, section. There, like thousands of visitors every year, I was also able to see squash, beans, potatoes, sunflowers, tomatoes, and peppers. Though many of the plants in the orchard are native to Turtle Island (what is now called North America) and Abya Yala (what is now called Central and South America), there was no such descriptor or recognition. I then moved on to the medicinal section, which contained only two plants from Abya Yala, huevo de gallo (Salpichroa origanifolia) and epazote (Dysphania ambrosioides).

In the entire botanical garden, the only placard I found that explained an “American” plant was a sign for what Spaniards call the patata, or the papa in Quechua and Latin American Spanish (potato in English). Most of the text about the potato revolved around its European “discovery” in the Americas and the untapped knowledge about its nutritional attributes, unknown to Europeans until the eighteenth century. One short sentence explained that papas had been domesticated in the Chilean and Peruvian Andes eight thousand years ago. The placard made no mention of the Native cultures that had cultivated (and continue to cultivate) the root, nor did it explain the cultural significance of the papa in what is today known as South America.

This situation embodies the erasure of Native knowledge and culture that occurs with the extraction of native plants. The Real Jardín Botánico presents corn, tomatoes, beans, squash, and tobacco as plants with no Native history or culture. Though this is largely true for many of the plants in the garden irrespective of their origin, it is particularly troubling when the plants were extracted from other parts of world through colonial ventures. In the case of the papa, it appears as a once exotic plant that Europeans haphazardly dominated with their culinary and economic control. The botanical garden’s thousands of visitors could be learning about the vibrant, complex, and diverse knowledge and goods that Native people have willingly and unwillingly provided Spain and its once global empire. Visitors could also learn the importance of native plants in their Native contexts, their uses, and their indigenous names. For instance, corn is originally from Mesoamerica, and it is important to many Native communities throughout Turtle Island and Abya Yala for sustenance, healing, and as a relative. Tobacco, similarly, is a spiritual medicine, and the aromatic plant enjoys therapeutic uses as well.

Before Columbus arrived in the Western Hemisphere, Native peoples throughout Turtle Island and Abya Yala knew about corn and tobacco and grew it. Jesuit priest and settler Francisco Clavijero noted in the late eighteenth century that to Nahuas in Mexico tlaolli (corn kernels) were one of the most important food items, like wheat to Europe and rice to Asia. Nahuas had diverse types of corn that were nutritious and often eaten as “bread” (i.e., tortillas) made by women, and atolli (atole, a corn-based beverage), which had medicinal properties. Nahuas in the sixteenth century often gave cocoxqueh (sick people) atolli to nurse them back to health. Cintli (the entire corn plant) forms a core component of Indigenous foods from Mesoamerica, including tortillas, tamales, and atoles.

Moreover, many Native communities attributed special powers and reverence to tobacco. The Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas reported in the sixteenth century that the Taíno people in what is now the Dominican Republic and Haiti smoked leaves resembling lettuce, which they dried and rolled into the shape of a musket (the musket was called a tabaco). The leaves functioned as a corporal sedative, and Taínos also used them to suppress hunger and fatigue. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés further recorded sixteenth-century ceremonial uses of tabaco among the Taíno, who employed the leaves to gain unknown information. Las Casas reported that in what is now Mexico, the Tlaxcalteca used tobacco (piçiyetl in sixteenth-century Central Mexican Nahuatl and iatl in modern variants of Nahuatl) to tranquilize snakes and that it also boasted many medicinal properties, though he did not expand on them. By the 1570s, the physician Francisco Hernández had learned of a number of health benefits to be gained from smoking the dry leaves: tobacco was a great expectorant, cured asthma and difficulties breathing, was good for women having irregularities with their uterus, fortified the mind, caused drowsiness, and calmed pain. Fresh leaves were good for digestion and cured empacho (abdominal bloating and pain). Nahua specialists also used piçiyetl as an entheogen—a substance to release a nonhuman life force within. For example, healers used piçiyetl and other entheogens to communicate with nonhuman forces and to diagnose and prognosticate illnesses and injuries. Thus, it seems that tobacco might have been better suited to the Real Jardín Botánico’s medicinal section.

Effacing or obfuscating the names and knowledge of indigenous plants is part of the colonial game. Now operated by the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, the Real Jardín Botánico could use its privilege and status to acknowledge the Indigenous names of native plants when making use of plants, technologies, and knowledge acquired from Indigenous peoples.

Renée Dotson Receives Award for Outstanding Contributions to Planetary Science

August 27, 2024

We are thrilled to share the news that Renée Dotson has been selected to receive the 2024 Harold Masursky Award by the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Science!

For more than 20 years, Dotson has served as the Production Editor for the University of Arizona Press’s Space Science Series. She lead in the editing of 15 separate volumes of the series on a wide variety of topics, from planets to comets. These books have served as definitive and critical references for planetary scientists worldwide ranging from graduate students and post-docs to leading researchers exploring new frontiers in planetary science.

Pictured above with photo of Dotson is the next book in the series, Comets III, publishing soon. Her most recent book with UA Press is The Pluto System After New Horizons.

Congratulations to Renée on this incredible achievement!

Brandy Nālani McDougall Wins Elliot Cades Award

August 23, 2024

We are thrilled to share the news that Brandy Nālani McDougall has received the 2024 Elliot Cades Award, the most prestigious literary honor in Hawai’i!

As the Maui News reports, “The Cades Awards, given annually since 1988, were created by Charlotte and J. Russell Cades in memory of his brother, Elliot, a teacher and lover of literature. The awards come with a substantial cash prize for the recipients.”

Brandy Nālani McDougall (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.

She is the author of Aina Hanau / Birth Land, a collection of poetry, and Finding Meaning: Kaona and Contemporary Hawaiian Literature.

Congratulations to Brandy on this incredible achievement!

Behind the Scenes at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory

August 22, 2024

The University of Arizona Press staff recently had the opportunity to visit Carina A. Bennett and Cat W.V. Wolner, two of the five authors of Bennu 3-D: Anatomy of an Asteroid, at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in the Gerard P. Kuiper Space Sciences Building! Below, you can see photos from the tour, including a map of the asteroid Bennu’s surface, a close-up look at some of the sample collected from Bennu, and the powerful microscopes used to analyze and image the sample.

A major highlight of the tour was seeing a vial of sample collected from the Bennu asteroid. Bennett and Wolner revealed that, among many surprises, researchers have discovered that the asteroid is more like a “rubble pile” held together by microgravity and loose cohesion, rather than a solid rock.

Bennu, named for the ancient Egyptian phoenix, was the chosen destination of OSIRIS-REx, NASA’s premier mission of asteroid exploration, launched in 2016. In 2020 the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft successfully landed on the surface of Bennu and collected pristine asteroid material for delivery to Earth in September 2023.

Like a map of the planet Earth, the asteroid Bennu is depicted here in stunning high resolution. Author Carina A. Bennett explains how it took around 2,500 individual images to create this massive picture.
Bennett explains how the OSIRIS-REx team selected a location to collect a sample from the asteroid.

Below, members of the Press admire commemorative posters designed by Heather Roper, celebrating milestones of the OSIRIS-REx mission.

Our staff was also delighted to find not one, but two Guinness World Record certificates hanging in the halls of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory offices!

And finally, the tour concluded with a visit to the basement where we saw some extremely powerful microscopes. This equipment is stored below ground level to avoid vibrations, which is of utmost importance when analyzing images as small as 100 nanometers—far, far smaller than the width of a human hair.

Thanks for coming along with us on this virtual version of the tour! If all of these pictures have inspired you with a sense of wonder about the mysteries of the cosmos, check out our incredible list of space science books!

Header image photo credit: Leigh McDonald

Excerpt from “Kidnapped to the Underworld”

August 14, 2024

Víctor Montejo’s Kidnapped to the Underworld recounts the near-death experience of his grandfather, Antonyo Mekel Lawuxh (Antonio Esteban), who fell gravely ill in Guatemala in the late 1920s but survived to tell his family and community what he had witnessed of the afterlife.

Narrated from Antonio’s perspective, the reader follows along on a journey to the Maya underworld of Xibalba, accompanied by two spirit guides. Antonio traverses Xibalba’s levels of heaven and hell, encountering instructive scenes of punishment and reward: in one chapter, conquistadors are perpetually submerged in a pool of their victims’ blood; in another, the souls of animal abusers are forever unable to cross a crocodile-infested river. Infused with memory, the author illustrates Guatemala’s unique religious syncretism, exploring conceptions of heaven and hell shared between Catholicism and Indigenous Maya spirituality. In the tradition of both the Popol Vuh and the Divine Comedy, Montejo’s narrative challenges easy categorization—this is a work of family history, religious testimony, political allegory, and sacred literature. Read an excerpt from the book’s first chapter below.

It was already late as I was coming back from working in the milpa that day. Though I knew the way to my pueblo very well, I suddenly found myself lost in the thick woods, unsure where I was going. The solitude took my heart prisoner, and I grew sad thinking that no one accompanied me on that grim and desolate path. Oh, how terrible is solitude! I walked and walked with no one to give me directions or point the correct way home. Time passed, bit by bit, and I began to lose hope. Father Sun was dying, and night darkened the peaks of the far-off mountains.

The birds in the forest started flying like crazy, their melodious trills bidding farewell to the melancholy afternoon. Everything seemed to be falling asleep under the looming black cloak of night. Only my constant and hurried steps broke that sepulchral silence, and from time to time I whistled, hoping it could help me escape the overpowering fear. Thousands of thoughts pecked at my brain like a crazed woodpecker, forcing me to reflect on my past life. And so, pensive and sweaty, I gave myself over into an uncontainable soliloquy.

My thoughts took wing, flying to the infinite, forgetting my poor body that walked fatigued within that shadow of chilling monotony. Soon something called powerfully to my attention, shaking me from my meditations. It was a bird of many-colored feathers that hopped in the middle of the path, not a bit disturbed by my presence. Oh, how beautiful was that bird!

I approached cautiously, hoping to catch it, but just when my hands almost had it, the bird would jump nimbly from the ground, making me fail each time. I took off my hat in hopes of using it to catch the bird, but again it scurried away from my clumsy hands. Ah, I didn’t want to let that most beautiful and strangely colored fowl get away, but my efforts kept proving futile.

Before my eyes the bird arose and flew to a small branch, nearly within my reach. I jumped as high as I could, but I couldn’t grasp it because it flew to a higher branch. Now very desperate, I picked up a round stone and rashly threw it. In vain! The bird had flown higher, to a ceiba branch. Frantically, I hurled a second stone, but the extraordinary bird kept ascending and going further away. Meanwhile, I was dying from the intense desire to contemplate and caress it between my hands. I kept throwing my hopeless stones, but the colorful bird continued until it was lost in the topmost canopy of the enormous ceiba.

It was as if that multicolored bird had guided me to the highest elevations, toward a higher goal that I would have to reach, but which would require much more effort. Saddened by my failure, I sat down, sweaty, at the foot of that tree without even caring about the time passing by. I felt so sad, as if I had just lost the most valuable treasure, or as one who loses part of their own being.

Weariness finally took me over, and I decided to lie down on the ground and rest. But as I was doing that, my head started spinning like I was drunk. Then the earth seemed to move dizzily from under my feet, and I collapsed on the ground, losing consciousness.

Suddenly I was in great danger, as I somehow found myself attached to the roots and vines growing on the wall of a great abyss.

Poor me! There I was, clinging helplessly to the rock like a climber stuck on that vertical wall. I had managed to reach the middle of the abyss when I began to lose strength and give up. From below, I heard the frightening rumble of a prodigious river running precipitously through gigantic rocks. Over my head rose the vertical side of the ravine, impossible to climb.

I couldn’t even take another step, I was stuck, holding onto those fragile roots to keep from falling into the precipice. One false step meant certain death. Who could save me if there was no one with me? To whom could I scream? Where could I direct my voice if no one could hear me? Never in my life have I felt so alone and wretched as I found myself in those moments. But I had one hope; and therefore, I made a great effort to maintain my balance. More than anything, I had the desire to keep living and return to my pueblo with my family.

There I was, fighting desperately against the death that was stalking me, when I was amazed to see a ball of fire come falling from the sky to strike my trembling chest. That unbelievable light strengthened my body and infused me with tremendous valor. In this way I felt myself a man full of bravery and with new hopes to keep living. Then, with utmost care I began the dangerous ascent, holding tightly to those tenuous roots in the vertical wall of that overwhelming precipice. Great was my astonishment when I found I had reached the top of the abyss and could finally move unscathed from that immense danger.

I don’t know how I happened to expose my life to the middle of that great precipice, nor did I see the benevolent hand that rescued me from such horrible risk, placing me on the most accessible path.

Tired and dazed, I lay down at the foot of some old guava trees. The afternoon continued on its sad way, grey and unforgettable, and the clouds rolled apart and back together, forming strange figures that found no exit from the sky. There was sun, but it was a pale sun whose rays brought no heat.

There I stayed, quietly contemplating the grey and nebulous sky. I was so engrossed that I failed to dodge the droppings a damned vulture left on my head. At that precise moment also a husky-voiced owl began to sing, sometimes sounding like the cackle of the very devil, laughing at my lamentable situation. That owl was the messenger of the lords from beyond, and its song sounded to me like the funeral chimes that tolled when they buried someone in my pueblo.

Author Toolbox: Prepare for Publication Day

August 8, 2024

Your publisher has years of expertise in publicizing your book to targeted audiences, whether they are scholars or general readers. But your publisher values your expertise too! Authors are their own best publicists. You know more about your book, your research, your process, and your readers than anyone else. In our second installment of the “Author Toolbox” series, we offer a behind the scenes look at how the University of Arizona Press tells the world about your book, and the author’s role in publicity.

Author Questionnaire

Preparing for publication begins long before your book even goes to the printer. The University of Arizona Press, and most other publishers, provide an Author Questionnaire for you to fill out to help provide feedback to the Press’s marketing department. At our Press, this is part of our final manuscript submission process.  We ask authors to help us identify key review outlets books for review and press releases. It is very important that authors answer these questions. If you know an editor at a specific journal or publication, let us know so we may contact that person directly. In addition, provide information so that we may notify your institution as well as your alma mater so the book can be publicized through the alumni magazine or online channels.

Author Self-Promotion

Some authors enjoy talking about themselves, their research, and writing; others do not. Maybe you fall somewhere in the middle. Fear not! There are easy ways to market your book through venues you use every day. First, include your book in your email signature, “Author of [book title here], forthcoming [publication date] from the University of Arizona Press.” As soon as your book is listed in our catalog and on our website, you can link to the book’s webpage from your email signature line. Second, update your bio online—on your personal website, on your institution’s website—to include the title of your book and publication date. Third, if you write articles for newspapers or magazines, make sure the title of your book is in your author bio and link if possible. For example, author Tom Zoellner wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times, and linked his book Rim to River in his bio at the end (see screenshot below).

Book Launch

Your colleagues, friends, and family want to celebrate with you, so plan a book launch! There are many places to hold a book launch party: your academic department, your local bookstore, your backyard, your favorite cafe or brewpub. Send invitations far and wide. If your event is open to the public, create a flyer to post around campus and around town. Post your book launch in online campus and community calendars. Choose a place that fits the tone of your book and your personality. Refreshments create a festive atmosphere, and maybe you want to add music—create your own playlist, hire musicians or a DJ. Photos below are from Alma García’s All That Rises book launch for her debut novel at Secret Garden Books in Seattle.

At the event, schedule a time to read from your book and tell people why the topic of your book is important, or what first inspired you to write it. Make sure there are books available for sale and a place for you to sign books. You may order books using your author discount, and sell directly to people at your launch. Ask your academic department for support in organizing, or ask your friends and family to help out. People want to share in your success, so bring them along for the ride.

Keep the Momentum Going

Before your book is published, ask your colleagues at other universities if they would like to host you as a campus speaker. Perhaps they can fund your travel to their university, or perhaps it is a place that is a simple train ride or car drive from where you live. The more places you speak about your book, the more it is advertised on flyers, email lists, and local newspapers. Keep your book title on the digital and traditional media airwaves by organizing events in the months after your book is published.

Social Media

Book publicity starts long before your book’s publication date. As you prepare your manuscript and as you move through the copy-editing process, you can share the process on social media. Use the social media platform where you already have a presence and where you already connect with family, friends, and colleagues. There is no need to start another social media account. Give people updates on your writing and make them feel part of your progress: “Happily writing draft of chapter 4 of my book,” “Great news! Just finished writing the conclusion of my book,” “This week, I’m excited to work with the copyeditor to fine-tune my book,” or “Summer is here and I have time to finish my book edits.” Include the title of your book, and the specific names of chapters. Be sure to include images: a view of your workspace, a view out your window, a picture of your feline or canine assistant, photos of places or people from when you researched your book, or images from your book. As soon as your cover is finalized, you can post a “cover reveal.” Check out the cover reveal example below from Diego Báez on his Instagram for his book, Yaguareté White. This format is simple and works for any other social media with image and text.

When you receive your advance copies of the book, create an “unboxing” social media post or post a picture of yourself proudly holding your book in your hands. If you want to make a video, check out tools like Canva or Adobe Express that are user friendly and have free versions. Be creative and have fun! If you remind people once a month or so that you’re writing a book, it increases the likelihood that they will purchase your book on publication day.

Links to Current Events and Special Months

The University of Arizona Press will promote your book during the special months to which it relates. For example, we will promote our new Chicano/a/x books during National Hispanic Heritage Month, September 15-October 15, 2024. We promote books during Women’s History Month, Black History Month, and other months too. Perhaps your book deals with issues along the U.S.-Mexico Border, and border issues are often in the news. You can pitch an opinion piece to your local or even a national newspaper like the New York Times or Washington Post. For example, Mehnaaz Momen, author of Listening to Laredo, wrote an opinion piece for the L.A. Times (see screenshot below). Be sure to include the title of your book in your bio.

The University of Arizona Press Website and Social Media

As you schedule events, be sure to let us know. For every event that is open to the public, we will create an event post, and share it via our social media channels. Let us know your social media handles so we can tag you in our posts. We also share some events in our monthly newsletter that reaches about 4,000 people.

We are teammates in the marathon of promoting your book. Just as you provide the names of journals or mainstream media where your book should be reviewed to the publicity team at the University of Arizona Press, we will support your promotion efforts to celebrate your book on publication day and in the months following publication.

Arizona Road Trip!

July 30, 2024

Summer means road trip! Here are a few University of Arizona Press titles to inspire you to explore the beautiful state of Arizona. Start with a trip closest to the University of Arizona and Tucson at Sabino Canyon, quench your thirst with Arizona adult beverages, admire the towering geology of the Grand Canyon State, then finish with a hike on the Arizona Trail. For the last one, stick to higher elevations to stay cool. Even if it’s too hot to drive, tag along with these authors for a journey that is virtual the old-fashioned way: in the pages of a great book.

book cover for Picturing Sabino with historic black and white photos of 2 women by Sabino Creek and tram on a bridge

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. The story is vividly told through numerous historical photographs, lively anecdotes, and an engaging text, informed by decades of research by David Wentworth Lazaroff.

paperback book cover of Rim to River with photograph of storm on top of desert mountain

Rim to River is the story of this extraordinary journey through redrock country, down canyons, up mesas, and across desert plains to the obscure valley in Mexico that gave the state its enigmatic name. Author Tom Zoellner’s trek is interspersed with incisive essays that pick apart the distinctive cultural landscape of Arizona: the wine-colored pinnacles and complex spirituality of Navajoland, the mind-numbing stucco suburbs, desperate border crossings, dehydrating rivers, retirement kingdoms, old-time foodways, honky-tonk dreamers, and magical Grand Canyon reveries.

book cover for Brewing Arizona with photograph of glasses of beer

Since 1864, the state’s breweries have had a history as colorful as the state. With an eye like a historian, the good taste of a connoisseur, and the tenacity of a dedicated collector, author Ed Sipos serves up beer history with gusto. Brewing Arizona is the first book of Arizona beer. It includes every brewery known to have operated in the state, from the first to the latest, from crude brews to craft brews, from mass beer to microbrews. This eye-opening chronicle is encyclopedic in scope but smooth in its delivery. Like a fine beer, the contents are deep and rich, with a little froth on top.

book cover for Natural Landmarks of Arizona with photo of butte in desert landscape with blue sky

Whether you have climbed these peaks many times, enjoy seeing them from your car window, or simply want to learn more about southwestern geology and history, reading Natural Landmarks of Arizona is a fascinating way to learn about the ancient and recent history of beloved places such as Cathedral Rock, Granite Dells, Kitt Peak, and many others. With David Yetman as your guide, you can tuck this book into your glove box and hit the road with profound new knowledge about the towering natural monuments that define our beautiful Arizona landscapes.

Author Toolbox: Getting the Most out of Conferences

We’re excited to be kicking off a new series called “Author Toolbox,” a collection of insider tips and tricks for both aspiring and established authors. Through this series, we hope to demystify parts of the university press world and share lessons learned from our work with the incredible authors who form the foundation of the University of Arizona Press.

First up in this series are some suggestions to help authors optimize their limited time at a professional conference. Read on, and then go pitch that book!

Why attend conferences?

Conferences are a way to stay up-to-date on academic trends, and they provide dedicated time for networking and collaboration. Conferences are also an essential moment to connect with publishers and fellow authors. That goes for both seasoned academics who have published extensively in their discipline and first-time authors promoting a new book that may be an important step toward academic advancement.

For many of our authors, conferences are also a valuable chance to promote a new or forthcoming book. Depending on a book’s publication date, authors will sometimes bring promotional fliers with a discount code so that anyone interested can pre-order the book, or they will work with their publisher to arrange book signings. In the photo below, for example, you can see University of Arizona Press authors signing books for admiring fans—and sometimes, signing books for other authors!

Juan Martinez draws customized creatures as he signs books for attendees at the 2024 Association of Writers & Writing Programs.
Authors Rita Urquijo-Ruiz and Yvette J. Saavedra signing books for each other at the 2024 National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies conference in San Francisco.

Navigating the exhibit hall

As Rebecca Knight writes, “Conferences are exhausting, and can be especially so if you’re not an extrovert.” This is true nowhere more than conference exhibit halls. But before you skip your visit, remember that some of the most important networking happens here: the exhibit hall is the “public square” of the conference, part social gathering, part workday meeting. The mood is casual and people are ready to chat, unencumbered by the usual demands of the office and classroom.

Inside the Kansas City Convention Center, attendees gather on their way up to the AWP bookfair.

Before you commit to visiting every booth, it’s worth taking a moment to find the exhibit hall map and prioritize which publishers you want to meet. You can also usually find a list of exhibitors in the conference program. Doing some reconnaissance in advance will save you precious time and energy. Which leads us to the next point…

Know your potential publisher

Being familiar with a university press’s publishing program before you talk to editors can be a big advantage. For example, we always appreciate when fiction and poetry authors who visit our booth at the annual Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference are already familiar with our Camino del Sol and Sun Tracks series, highlighting Latinx and Indigenous literature, respectively. An author who is familiar with some of our titles in either series will probably have a decent idea about whether their work is a good fit for our Press.

Before a conference, check prospective publishers’ websites and take a quick glance at their current catalog or recently published titles in your field. Do you recognize any of the authors’ names? Do you like the design of the covers? Do you notice any bestsellers or books people in your network are talking about on social media? If the answer to any of these is yes, it may be a sign that you’re on the right track.

Talking with exhibitors and pitching your book

Once you stop at a publisher’s booth and strike up a conversation, it’s wise to take a moment to do proper introductions before launching into a book pitch. A good exhibit interaction might follow these steps: explain your academic role and affiliation, ask what the person you’re talking to does at the press (acquiring? marketing? editing? production?), and then ask if an acquiring editor has time to hear about a book project that might be a good fit for their list.

Don’t feel weird about asking to talk with an editor—it’s a big part of the reason they’re attending! Acquiring editors typically use conferences to find (and compete for) the most compelling new books in their fields. They want to know about your project! But set reasonable expectations: editors have packed schedules and won’t have time to read a whole chapter from your manuscript (this is where having a good two-minute pitch ready comes in handy), and you’re not going to leave with a contract in hand. If an editor is truly interested, they may ask to exchange information, to meet again later during the conference, or to receive a draft of your project proposal. You might just get a link to their website or a business card. If your project isn’t a great fit, they might politely redirect you to another publisher at a booth nearby.

Find the University of Arizona Press at an upcoming conference

Keep an eye on our events page to see the most updated list of conferences we plan to attend each year!

Do you have some conference wisdom you’d like to share? Things you wish you’d known when you first started attending the conferences of your professional organizations? Whether it’s at WHA, ASA, AAA, or WLA 2024 right here in Tucson, we hope you’ll stop by our table and tell us about it. And if you have a book project in the works, we’d love to hear about it!

A Closer Look at Nahuatl Symbolism on our Covers

July 16, 2024

Paging through our Spring 2024 and Fall 2024 catalogs, you will see a variety of modern and historic Nahuatl images.  Several covers include an image known as a glyph representing communication: a circular swirl, like a breath of air, often placed near the mouths of human figures. This glyph is even visible just outside the University of Arizona Press offices in a newly installed art piece.

In Indigenous Science and Technology: Nahuas and the World Around Them, editor Kelly McDonough writes that the Nahuatl language was spoken throughout Mexico and much of Central America before Spanish colonization, and more than 2.5 million people speak Nahuatl today. The root “nahua” means “audible, intelligible, clear.” (Karttunen, Frances 1992, An analytical dictionary of Nahuatl. Norman: University of Oklahoma Pres, 156–157).

Writing that Matters: A Handbook for Chicanx and Latinx Studies by L Heidenreich and Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz emphasizes practice: how to research and write a Chicanx or Latinx history paper; how to research and write a Chicanx or Latinx literature or cultural studies essay; and how to conduct interviews, frame pláticas, and conduct oral histories. The authors offer an alternative to handbooks written with white, Eurocentric frameworks and/or from a white, Eurocentric lens. To emphasize the Chicanx and Latinx focus, the book is illustrated with images by Anel Flores using Nahuatl, a language that predates European contact. Flores used the Nahuatl glyph for communication illustrating a conversation between two people. It is a circular swirl, like a breath of air. Flores also created versions of the glyph for the front cover art; UA Press Art Director Leigh McDonald incorporated the glyph into the final cover design:

Founded in 1997, Mujeres de Maiz (MdM) is an Indigenous Xicana–led spiritual artivist organization and movement by and for women and feminists of color. Chronicling its quarter-century-long herstory, Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento: Spiritual Artivism, Healing Justice, and Feminist Praxis weaves together diverse stories with attention to their larger sociopolitical contexts. The book crosses conventional genre boundaries through the inclusion of poetry, visual art, testimonios, and essays. Editors Amber Rose González, Felicia ‘Fe’ Montes, and Nadia Zepeda selected a painting by Margaret Alarcón for their cover, with the Nahuatl communication glyph at the center:

Kelly S. McDonough reveals how Nahuas have explored, understood, and explained the world around them in pre-invasion, colonial, and contemporary time periods in Indigenous Science and Technology: Nahuas and the World Around Them. In this work, she address Nahua understanding of plants and animals, medicine and ways of healing, water and water control, alphabetic writing, and cartography. Interludes between the chapters offer short biographical sketches and interviews with contemporary Nahua scientists, artists, historians, and writers, accompanied by their photos. The book also includes more than twenty full-color images from sources like the Florentine Codex, a 16th-century ethnographic research study in Mesoamerica by the Spanish Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún. The cover features illustrations of Nahuatl glyphs from the Florentine Codex:

Edward Anthony Polanco, author of Healing Like Our Ancestors: The Nahua Tiçitl, Gender, and Settler Colonialism in Central Mexico, 1535–1660, requested Nahua art on the cover of his book. Historian Polanco draws from diverse colonial primary sources, largely in Spanish and Nahuatl, to explore how Spanish settlers framed titiçih (healing specialists), tiçiyotl (healing knowledge), and their practices within a Western complex. Polanco argues for the usage of Indigenous terms when discussing Indigenous concepts and arms the reader with the Nahuatl words to discuss central Mexican Nahua healing. In particular, this book emphasizes the importance of women as titiçih and highlights their work as creators and keepers of knowledge. The author commissioned the cover art from an artist in the Nahua community in Panchimalco, El Salvador. In the painting, the Nahuatl communication glyph emanates from two women’s mouths. This book will be published in Fall 2024:

Modern Nahua painting of two women sitting on a rug, with healing happening and Nahuatl communication symbol coming from their mouths

Finally new art installed in our central staircase in the Main University of Arizona Libraries last year reminds the University of Arizona Press staff about the importance of communication. Located on the same floor as the UA Press office, “Desert Dwellers, 2023” by Carlos Valenzuela and Jennifer Dwyer is one of four mosaics. The prickly pear cactus has the Nahuatl glyph for communication on its pads and fruits, perhaps showing that the desert plants and animals communicate with each other and with us:

mosaic image of sonoran desert plants and animals with nahua communication symbol on prickly pear cactus pads

Excerpt from “Accompaniment with Im/migrant Communities”

July 12, 2024

Accompaniment with Im/migrant Communities edited by Kristine E. Yarris and Whitney L. Duncan, 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. Read an excerpt from the book’s Introduction below.

This edited volume brings together anthropologists whose engaged work with im/migrant communities pushes the boundaries of ethnography toward a mode of engagement inspired by feminist care ethics, decolonial methodologies, and Latin American activist traditions of acompañamiento, or accompaniment. Collectively, this volume contributes to applied anthropological scholarship by challenging prescribed boundaries and dichotomies, such as researcher-participant, scholar-activist, and academic-community member. In so doing, the chapters collected here unsettle received ways of doing anthropology and explicitly address issues of power, positionality, inequity, and the broader social purpose of our work. We also situate this work within a longer trajectory of applied, engaged, and activist anthropological research and within contemporary decolonial and feminist critiques of anthropology, which seek to redress historical inequities within the discipline and beyond. Drawing together an array of anthropologists working with im/migrant communities in various research settings and experimenting with different modes of doing and writing ethnography, the volume represents a collective conversation about possibilities—both epistemic and empirical—for caring, decolonial forms of ethnographic engagement.

Many of the authors featured in these pages originally came together in the fall of 2016, at the American Anthropological Association (AAA) meetings in Minneapolis. There, we attempted to gather our collective
responses to the rise of a xenophobic, racist, and white supremacist political moment in the United States, which culminated in the election of the forty-fifth president. Reeling in the wake of the presidential election, we organized a late-breaking AAA session to talk and strategize about how best to support our im/migrant research participants, students, friends, family members, and communities experiencing overt and rhetorical attacks on their safety, health, wellbeing, and very existence. From this initial encounter, we established the Anthropological Action Network for Immigrants and Refugees (AANIR), an informal collective of engaged anthropologists working with immigrant communities. AANIR has continued to meet regularly since our 2016 founding, acting as a space of solidarity, information-sharing, inspiration, and organization. We have shared strategies for creating sanctuary campuses and advocating for policy change; we have offered webinar series; we have organized conference sessions; we have collectively drafted op-eds, policy papers, and position statements together. In the process, we’ve offered and received care, community, and encouragement. In these ways, AANIR itself has served as a space of accompaniment that helps inspire this volume.

We are mindful of the historical specificity and the collegial solidarity that has given rise to and sustained the ethnographic engagements detailed here. At the same time, of course, troubling xenophobic, racist, and anti-immigrant tendencies have deep roots in the United States, just as efforts to build a more welcoming and inclusive society and polity also have longstanding roots in social movements for civil rights and immigrant justice in this country and beyond. Though we represent a variety of training backgrounds and perspectives, as U.S.-based anthropologists our work collectively responds to and addresses present sociopolitical conditions: entrenched inequality, heightened xenophobia, unbridled white nationalism, and the challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, with its disparate impacts on marginalized and impoverished communities. We have invited all volume contributors to reflect on how the current political and historical moment has inspired and shaped our scholarship and relationships as engaged anthropologists working with im/migrant communities.

The central questions guiding this volume are: How do we understand and enact accompaniment with im/migrant communities? What does accompaniment offer our engaged anthropological work—as research modality, as practical engagement, and as a collaborative option for thinking and writing together and with our interlocutors? While we situate our approach to accompaniment historically within related theoretical concepts and methodologies, we do not intend to provide a definitive account or to foreclose avenues for thinking about accompaniment. Indeed, one commonality across the work of the authors in this volume is our willingness to engage with the uncertainties and discomfort that our shifting subjectivities as anthropologists accompanying im/ migrant communities require. We seek to draw forward these tensions, describing how and why our roles may shift from scholar to social worker, observer to friend, witness to advocate. Across the chapters, then—as contributors describe fighting deportations, engaging in social protest, writing reports and editorials, developing immigrant-friendly programs, advocating for inclusive health and social policies, and fostering systems of support for migrants—accompaniment acts as a grounding force, a being-with and standing alongside, a form of care that shifts us away from received ways of doing ethnography into more unsettled but productive spaces of possibility for solidarity and social justice.

Cool Off with Desert River Reading

July 10, 2024

Desert rivers weave through arid landscapes, providing oases of resilience and adaptation in some of our harshest environments. Shimmering lifelines, such as the Colorado River and the Gila River, teem with life and serve the communities that depend on them. However, this is only made possible through protective measures that defend against looming threats. Questionable water distribution policies and lower water flows threaten plant and animal habitats, and may reduce water for industrial, agricultural, and residential use. Now more than ever, it is imperative that restoration and preservation efforts are implemented to ensure the desert ecosystem and communities continue to thrive. Cool off this summer with some of our books that feature desert rivers listed below.

Unraveling a complex web of tension, distrust, and political maneuvering, Damming the Gila continues the story of the Gila River Indian Community’s struggle for the restoration of its water rights. This volume chronicles the history of water rights and activities on the Gila River Indian Reservation. Centered on the San Carlos Irrigation Project and Coolidge Dam, it details the history and development of the project, including the Gila Decree and the Winters Doctrine. Embedded in the narrative is the underlying tension between tribal growers on the Gila River Indian Reservation and upstream users. Told in seven chapters, the story underscores the idea that the Gila River Indian Community believed the San Carlos Irrigation Project was first and foremost for their benefit and how the project and the Gila Decree fell short of restoring their water and agricultural economy.

Our rivers are in crisis and the need for river restoration has never been more urgent. Water security and biodiversity indices for all of the world’s major rivers have declined due to pollution, diversions, impoundments, fragmented flows, introduced and invasive species, and many other abuses. Developing successful restoration responses are essential. Renewing Our Rivers addresses this need head on with examples of how to design and implement stream-corridor restoration projects. Based on the experiences of seasoned professionals, Renewing Our Rivers provides stream restoration practitioners the main steps to develop successful and viable stream restoration projects that last. Ecologists, geomorphologists, and hydrologists from dryland regions of Australia, Mexico, and the United States share case studies and key lessons learned for successful restoration and renewal of our most vital resource.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Americans assumed the land and water resources of the West were endless. Water was as vital to newcomers to Arizona’s Florence and Casa Grande valleys as it had always been to the Pima Indians, who had been successfully growing crops along the Gila River for generations when the white settlers moved in. Diverting the Gila 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. Into this political foray stepped Arizona’s freshman congressman Carl Hayden, who not only united the farming communities but also used Pima water deprivation to the advantage of Florence-Casa Grande and Upper Gila Valley growers. The result was the federal Florence-Casa Grande Project that, as legislated, was intended to benefit Pima growers on the Gila River Indian Reservation first and foremost. As was often the case in the West, well-heeled, nontribal political interests manipulated the laws at the expense of the Indigenous community.

No fewer than forty million people have come to rely on the Colorado River system in modern times—a river system immersed in an unprecedented, unrelenting megadrought for more than two decades. Attempting to navigate this “new normal,” policymakers are in the midst of negotiating new management rules for the river system, a process coinciding with the compact’s centennial that must be completed by 2026. Animated by this remarkable confluence of events, Cornerstone at the Confluence leverages the centennial year to reflect on the compact and broader “Law of the River” to envision the future. It is a volume inviting dialogue about how the Colorado River system’s flows should be apportioned given climate change, what should be done about environmental issues such as ecosystem restoration and biodiversity protection, and how long-standing issues of water justice facing Native American communities should be addressed.

Sarah Hernandez Wins 2024 NAISA First Book Award

July 3, 2024

We are thrilled to share the news that Sarah Hernandez’s We Are the Stars: Colonizing and Decolonizing the Oceti Sakowin Literary Tradition has been selected for the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association’s (NAISA) 2024 Best First Book Award!

Hernandez’s book recovers the literary record of Oceti Sakowin (historically known to some as the Sioux Nation) women, who served as their tribes’ traditional culture keepers and culture bearers. In so doing, it furthers discussions about settler colonialism, literature, nationalism, and gender.

Read an excerpt from the book where Hernandez makes the case, invoking Native feminist scholars Maile Arvine, Eve Tuck, and Angie Morrill, that “the United States is founded on the theory and practice of settler colonialism: a continuous and ongoing process of Indigenous erasure…”

This is the latest achievement for a book that has already received significant national recognition: In 2023, Hernandez represented South Dakota at the National Book Festival in Washington, DC.

We Are the Stars is part of the University of Arizona Press’ Critical Issues in Indigenous Studies Series, which anchors intellectual work within an Indigenous framework that reflects Native-centered concerns and objectives.

Congratulations to Sarah on this incredible achievement!

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.

Five Questions with David H. DeJong

June 26, 2024

Unraveling a complex web of tension, distrust, and political maneuvering, Damming the Gila continues the story of the Gila River Indian Community’s struggle for the restoration of its water rights.

We recently had a chance to interview author David H. DeJong about the book, asking about the origin of the project, the lessons we should learn from this history, and what’s next in DeJong’s water chronicles.

What first sparked your interest in the story of the Gila River and the San Carlos Irrigation Project?

I was 16 years old when I first traveled through what was once the “breadbasket” of the Gila River Indian Community. Being from an agricultural background, I was struck by how many acres of land were lying fallow. It was apparent to me that many thousands of acres had once been irrigated but were now lying abandoned. I resolved then that I would seek to answer why so much land on the reservation had gone out of production. I later learned the San Carlos Irrigation Project was intended to restore the agricultural economy of the Community, but as with so many federal promises, it failed to do so. I have now spent over 40 years researching and learning the why of this failure.

This is the third volume in your chronicle of the history of water rights on the Gila River Indian Reservation, spanning nearly 100 years. Did you always plan for this series to have three parts?

Damming the Gila follows Stealing the Gila (2009) and Diverting the Gila (2021). It will be followed by Fighting for the Gila and Restoring the Gila. I always envisioned a two-volume history that would cover the history of Akimel O’otham agriculture through the 1940s. Once I joined the Pima-Maricopa Irrigation Project in 2001, I realized there was much more to the story than two volumes could contain. After the Gila River series is completed in 2030, I plan to shift my focus to the Pee Posh (Maricopa) and the story of their struggle to secure rights to Salt River water.  I also have several federal-Indian policy books in the works.

Damming the Gila shifts focus toward the Coolidge Dam and its failed promise to benefit the Gila River Indian Community. Was it politics, lack of foresight, or something else entirely that made this project flop?

Coolidge Dam and the San Carlos Irrigation Project (SCIP) were hailed in the 1920s and early 1930s as “the savior of the Pima.” Coolidge Dam was the central component of the SCIP as it regulated flows and stored water for future needs. It was also first and foremost for the “benefit of the Pima Indians of the Gila River Indian Reservation.” Ever the master politician, Carl Hayden sold Congress on the SCIP based on the legal and moral claims of the Akimel O’otham, but he then employed a distributive policy to spread the benefits of the irrigation project to include non-Indian growers. These non-tribal growers were politically well-heeled and, as voting constituents, had the ear of Hayden who was not beholden to the Akimel O’otham since they could neither vote prior to 1924, nor exercised much political authority. In the end, it was politics and continued upstream diversions and groundwater pumping that deprived the Community of the benefits of the SCIP.

What lessons should policymakers be taking from this chapter of the Gila River’s history as water becomes an increasingly limited resource in Arizona and the Southwest?

While they had been extraordinary growers prior to upstream diversions, the Akimel O’otham were completely marginalized from the discussions related to the SCIP and the Gila Decree. Pinal County and Arizona political leaders largely ignored the voice of the Akimel O’otham, with the result that there was never any buy-in for the project by the Community since they believed the project and decree deprived them of their rights. Add to this the reality that Akimel O’otham lacked the financial resources to put their water to use—individual tribal growers were assigned uneconomical 10-acre allotments at Gila River and the land could not be mortgaged, combined with the continued theft of their water by Upper Valley growers—left Community growers in a difficult position. The lesson is that policy makers must include a seat at the table of decision making for tribal nations when making decisions that affect all Arizonans.

What are you working on now?

I am currently working on the fourth volume of the Gila River series: Fighting for the Gila. This volume will cover the Community’s legal battles beginning in the 1930s and continuing through the 1950s and 1960s Indian Claims Commission, the U.S. Court of Claims, and the enforcement of the Gila Decree in federal district court. It will then transition to the Arizona Gila River general stream adjudication. All of these legal engagements culminated in the Arizona Water Settlements Act of 2004. The battle against unlawful diversions and water uses, however, continues today as the Community seeks to enforce the decree and provisions of the water settlement act.


David H. DeJong holds MA and PhD degrees in American Indian policy studies from the University of Arizona. He has published seven books, including Stealing the Gila, as well as dozens of articles about federal Indian policy. DeJong is director of the Pima-Maricopa Irrigation Project, a construction project funded by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and designed to deliver water—from the Central Arizona Project, the Gila River, and other sources—to the Gila River Indian Reservation.

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.

Excerpt from “Indigenous Health and Justice”

June 18, 2024

Colonial oppression, systemic racism, discrimination, and poor access to a wide range of resources detract from Indigenous health and contribute to continuing health inequities and injustices. These factors have led to structural inadequacies that contribute to circular challenges such as chronic underfunding, understaffing, and culturally insensitive health-care provision. Nevertheless, Indigenous Peoples are working actively to end such legacies.

In Indigenous Health and Justice, edited by Karen Jarratt-Snider and Marianne O. Nielsen, contributors demonstrate how Indigenous Peoples, individuals, and communities create their own solutions. Chapters focus on both the challenges created by the legacy of settler colonialism and the solutions, strengths, and resilience of Indigenous Peoples and communities in responding to these challenges. It introduces a range of examples, such as the ways in which communities use traditional knowledge and foodways to address health disparities. Read an excerpt from the book’s first chapter “Indigenous Peoples’ Involvement in the U.S. Justice System, Trends, Health Impacts, and Health Disparities” below.

To more fully grasp the significance of strides made in recent decades to introduce Indigenous cultural and spiritual practices into correctional facilities, these practices must be understood within the context of colonialism. The Indigenous experience with settler-colonial states through systemic means of oppression is a long one. Countries such as the United States, Canada, and Australia have historically passed and upheld national and state or provincial laws aimed at dismantling Indigenous cultural identities and traditions through religious suppression—instituting bans on practices and rites expressive of Indigenous spirituality, obstructing access to sacred sites, and outlawing possession of ceremonial objects such as peyote and sacred pipes (Irwin 2006).

Attempting to simplify Indigenous religious beliefs and practices for generalizable consumption is a daunting and nearly impossible task. Generally, most Indigenous Peoples around the world view their everyday cultural ways of being and living as being spiritually purposeful and significant. Hence, culture and spirituality (or religious practice) are inextricably connected because one structures the other. Unlike Euro-Western notions of religion, which impose a separation between God and the world we exist in, Indigenous spirituality and religious orientations see a Creator or multiple sacred deities as a part of the world. This difference in the perception of religion and the human relationship to the “holy” is but one aspect of the Othering process employed by Westerners to cast Indigenous Peoples as primitive, ahistorical, unsophisticated, uncivilized, unstable, and savage nonhumans. This was a means to justify colonial tactics of genocide (e.g., subjugation of Indigenous Peoples, atrocious acts of violence, removal from homelands, and cultural assimilation) that were employed in order to lay claim to Indigenous land and natural resources for the establishment of settler-colonial expansion, wealth, and prosperity (Nielsen and Robyn 2019).

Indigenous individuals have only been granted U.S. citizenship within the last century through the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, which also conferred the right to vote. After that, it took another half century before all Native citizens were afforded protection of the right to practice their religious, spiritual, and cultural beliefs, with the 1978 passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA). Between 1993 and 2000, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) were passed to increase these protections. Regarding RFRA and RLUIPA, a guidance document produced by the Native American Rights Fund (2016) and intended for Indigenous people in correctional facilities explains, “Both statutes prevent the government from substantially burdening [an inmate’s] religious practice unless it has a compelling reason to do so in [the inmate’s] particular case,” and that prisons may only burden or hinder religious practices if they have “no other, less restrictive alternatives available.” Admittedly, this is a very condensed presentation of some of the historical strides made by the U.S. government to suppress and then protect and preserve Indigenous traditional religious beliefs and practices, but this contextual information is pertinent for understanding the advances made from the 1960s forward.

The 1960s and 1970s marked a social movement in the United States that was pushing for the right of Indigenous individuals who were incarcerated to exercise their Native religious practices. In the early 1960s, Clyde Bellecourt, an Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) man, met a young Anishinaabe spiritual leader named Eddie Benton-Banai when they were both serving time in Minnesota’s Stillwater prison (Reha 2001). Bellecourt and Benton-Banai, known for their founding roles in the American Indian Movement, formed the American Indian Folklore Group while incarcerated, to help incarcerated Indigenous people heal by learning about Native history, epistemologies, culture, and spirituality through pan-Indian frameworks (Tighe 2014). Tighe (2014, 5) describes this effort as a “model for Indian cultural renaissance within prisons.” Bellecourt affirms that ceremonies are an integral component of the healing process that can support individuals involved in the criminal justice system to make positive changes in their lives, and credits how establishing a spiritual base in his own life helped him to overcome his battle with alcoholism (Reha 2001).

With the aid of the Native American Rights Fund, one of the oldest and largest legal organizations committed to defending the legal rights of Indigenous people and nations, Indigenous individuals incarcerated in Nebraska won a federal court consent decree in Wolff v. McDonnell (1974), which allowed them to practice their religious and cultural beliefs in prison. This opened the way in Nebraska for sweat lodges to be conducted, Native clubs and spiritual collectives to be formed, and elders to serve as spiritual advisors and cultural-based counselors inside correctional facilities (Irwin 2006). Irwin (2006, 42) notes that the consent decree “established an important precedent for native prisoners in other states.”

Traction on this issue continued to grow in other parts of the United States during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Incarcerated Indigenous people were increasingly bringing suits against prison administrators for denying their rights to religious freedom. In the Southwest, the Navajo Nation appointed a Navajo spiritual advisor who eventually was conducting ceremonies in nineteen prisons throughout the region (Echo-Hawk 1996). Incarcerated Indigenous women formed a spiritual organization within a Montana state prison in the early 1990s and perceived their unification as threatening to prison staff (Ross 1998). As a way of weakening the close bonds formed through the organization, the women felt staff strategically targeted Indigenous women who were labeled as “troublemakers” and then written up for “trumped-up charges” (Ross 1998, 243) which resulted in their transfer to a maximum-security facility. White women incarcerated in prison interviewed by Ross also noticed the same pattern, identifying it as “prejudiced” practice (265). At that time, Indigenous women made up 25 percent of the prison population while making up 6 percent of the Montana state population. In addition to the institutional discrimination experienced by incarcerated Indigenous women, Ross (278) notes the direct racist remarks about “Indians” and “Indian culture” made by prison staff and incarcerated white individuals to her and incarcerated Indigenous individual. By the time RFRA was passed in 1993, a large number of successful suits were being filed by Indigenous individuals incarcerated in prison, who were protesting infringement of their religious and spiritual needs and advocating for the right to bring traditional tobacco pipe and sweat lodge ceremonies into the prison complex (Irwin 2006).

Octavio Quintanilla wins 2024 Ambroggio Prize for “Las Horas Imposibles / The Impossible Hours”

June 13, 2024

The Academy of American Poets has announced that Las Horas Impossibles | The Impossible Hours, written by Octavio Quintanilla and co-translated by Quintanilla and Natalia Treviño, was selected by Norma Cantú as the winner of the 2024 Ambroggio Prize, which is given annually for a book-length poetry manuscript originally written in Spanish and with an English translation. The winners receive $1,000 and publication by the University of Arizona Press, a nationally recognized publisher of emerging and established voices in Latinx and Indigenous literature. Previous winners include Mara Pastor, with translators María José Giménez and Anna Rosenwong; Margarita Pintado Burgos, with translator Alejandra Quintana Arocho; and Elizabeth Torres.

Cantú commented on the collection: “If this were a meal the various courses would delight my senses. With alacrity and wit the poet pokes and jokes at life and the elements that make human existence a conundrum. The inclusion of computer generated design-poems adds to the impact of the volume. The translator more than ably renders the original Spanish poems into an equally moving English, often opting for the unexpected translation.”

Octavio Quintanilla

Octavio Quintanilla is the author of the poetry collections If I Go Missing (Slough Press, 2014) and The Book of Wounded Sparrows (Texas Review Press, 2024). He is the founder and director of the literature and arts festival VersoFrontera; publisher of Alabrava Press; and former poet laureate of San Antonio, Texas. His visual poems Frontextos have been published and exhibited widely. He teaches literature and creative writing at Our Lady of the Lake University.

Born in Mexico, Natalia Treviño is the author of the poetry collection Lavando La Dirty Laundry (Mongrel Empire Press, 2014) and the chapbook VirginX (Finishing Line Press, 2018). Her awards include the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, the Wendy Barker Creative Writing Award, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, the Menada Literary Award from Macedonia, and the San Antonio Artist Foundation Literary Prize. She is a professor of English at Northwest Vista College.

The 2025 Ambroggio Prize will be judged by Giannina Braschi and will be open for submissions from June 15, 2024, to September 15, 2024.

We are thrilled to be publishing this award-winning collection. Congratulations, Octavio!

***

About the Academy of American Poets

Founded in 1934, the Academy of American Poets is a leading champion of poets and poetry with supporters across the United States and beyond. The organization annually awards $1.3+ million to more than two hundred poets at various stages of their careers through its prize program, which includes the Poet Laureate Fellowships. The organization also produces Poets.org, the world’s largest publicly funded website for poets and poetry; established and organizes National Poetry Month each April; publishes the popular Poem-a-Day series and American Poets magazine; provides free resources to K–12 educators, including the award-winning weekly Teach This Poem series; hosts an annual series of poetry readings and special events; and coordinates a national Poetry Coalition that promotes the value poets bring to our culture. To learn more about the Academy of American Poets, including its staff, its Board of Directors, and its Board of Chancellors, visit: https://poets.org.

Five Questions with Elizabeth Villalobos

June 11, 2024

Focusing on both Mexico’s northern and southern borders, Border Killers uses Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics and various theories of masculinity to argue that contemporary Mexico is home to a form of necropolitical masculinity that has flourished in the neoliberal era and made the exercise of death both profitable and necessary for the functioning of Mexico’s state-cartel-corporate governance matrix. Today, author Elizabeth Villalobos answers questions about the work:

Your work engages with Mexican cultural production to better understand the violence along Mexico’s borders, both north and south. How did you come to this project?

The northern border of Mexico has always had primacy over the southern border in many ways, and there are many academic studies that have been done on the northern limits of the country as a geographical, political, social, economic, and cultural space. It was important for me to focus my research on this area because I grew up on the northern border, but at the same time, it seemed necessary to include the context of the southern border because of the lack of critical studies that examine the literature, theater, and film of both borders. I’ve always felt close to the south, where my father lives. In fact, this project originated even further south in Argentina, where I did research on human rights in the context of detention centers for the torture and extermination of about thirty thousand people in the last dictatorship between 1976 and 1983. I was able to interview survivors from these concentration camps, and one of them challenged me, saying, “What are you doing here when Mexico has its own killers?” That conversation set me off on the last twenty years of investigation of killers in Mexican cultural production.

You demonstrate how border violence was and is often misrepresented, dismissed, and sensationalized by popular Mexican news media. Therefore, one must turn to creative work to get a fuller understanding of the underlying forces resulting in violence. What are some of the works you discuss?

The book advances a theory of works that I call “interstitial narratives,” many created by artists born in the 1970s. Such narratives investigate the impact of neoliberalism in the Mexican border milieu with a distinctive approach to violence. These works are unlike the famous and much-studied narcocorridos and narcocinema that lionize the violence specialists of narcotrafficking cartels and replicate the iconography of narcoculture. In addition, they vary from la nota roja [blood-soaked journalism] that reproduces gory death ad infinitum in the news and media. Rather, my book argues that interstitial works have different aesthetic and ideological commitments. These works decenter cartels, place violence off stage or off the page, and are characterized by five qualities or topical concerns: refusal; spectrality; the flattening of cultural hierarchies; the failure of the state and its national imaginaries; and mass production in a neoliberal global order.

Some of the most well-known works from the eight cultural narratives that I discuss in my book in prose, theater, and film are the noir detective novel Partitura para mujer muerta by Vicente Alfonso, the play Ánima sola by Alejandro Román, and the documentary film La libertad del diablo by Everardo González.

This study is grounded in Achille Mbembe’s theorization of necropolitics, the idea that states profit by inflicting death on the many, including their own citizens. How are creative works demonstrating the real-world impacts of this idea in the borderlands?

These creative works abstain from graphic displays of violence to instead examine necropolitics and its connections with past forms of oppression. The interstitial narratives discussed in Border Killers tell us about the tragedies of workers in contemporary Mexico’s neoliberalism, in spheres such as maquiladoras, narcotrafficking, human trafficking, criminal gangs, the military, the police, and the sicariato [hired assassins]. While many scholarly works explore the perspectives of victims in Mexico’s cultural production, my book is one of a smaller number that investigate the perspective of the perpetrators, who are revealed to be victimizers and, in a sense, victims as well, trapped within collapsing possibilities for bettering their lives.

Your work underscores the important and sobering contributions of the arts in critiquing and drawing attention to violence and its impact on lives in the borderlands. What do you see as hopeful in this kind of work?

Art that is critical of the impact of neoliberalism in Mexico is devastating, but it is necessary to identify and reflect on the systems of violence that affect daily life in border areas. These works allow us to recognize the humanity of both victims and perpetrators and demystify the idea that assassins are merely monsters. We must face the reality that murderers are human beings who commit terrible acts but also have stories that deserve to be told and are capable of experiencing all the feelings of any other human being. So, this work is hopeful in that it allows us to see art as a weapon that can disarm the official and popularized discourses in the media about murderers, masculinity, and violence in Mexico and its borderlands.

What are you working on now?

At the moment, I’m working on a comparative study of documentary theater and film about life after the implementation of necropolitics in Argentina and Mexico. Writing Border Killers was a reaffirmation for me that one of my main interests in researching violence and human rights is in analyzing the different ways in which people are able to affirm life after being deeply affected by the terrifying conditions of extremely violent regimes. There is an increasing number of creative works in this vein that require wider dissemination and research within and outside of academia.

I’m also working on another project investigating the cultural semiotics of visual images of the transborder U.S.-Mexican space in photography, painting, graphic design, sculpture, and installation works by artists that integrate an interdisciplinary perspective about migration, ecocriticism, gender, and human rights.

***

Elizabeth Villalobos is an assistant professor of Spanish literature at the University of Nevada, Reno, and a scholar of Latin American literature and contemporary cultural production of Mexico and its border regions. She has conducted research on border studies and human rights in Mexico, Argentina, and Germany. Her research focuses on the intersections of gender, neoliberalism, and violence represented in prose, theater, and cinema of Mexico’s northern and southern border regions.


Association of University Presses Gives Design Honor to The University of Arizona Press

June 7, 2024

The Association of University Presses (AUPresses) selected the hard cover version of Rim to River: Looking Into the Heart of Arizona by Tom Zoellner, to be part of the 2024 Book Jacket and Journal Show. Leigh McDonald, Art Director and Book Designer at The University of Arizona Press, designed the cover and the interior of the book. Porter McDonald created the cover illustration and interior illustrations. This book was honored in the category for 2024 Trade Typographic Selections. The full book jacket is pictured above.

The 2024 Book, Jacket and Journal Show will be on display at the AUPresses Annual Meeting in Montreal, June 11-14. The show will then be on tour for the next year, hosted by university presses in the United States and Canada. The University of Arizona Press will host the show; however, the date has not been finalized.

Victor Mingovits, one of the judges, said, “While some books immediately caught our eye and made the short list, others sparked lively discussions. We were particularly drawn to those designs that revealed their brilliance over time, prompting us to reconsider what makes a design truly successful. These unexpected gems left a lasting impression, drawing us back for more as their unique design unfolded with each reading.”

AUPresses advances the essential role of a global community of publishers whose mission is to ensure academic excellence and cultivate knowledge. The Association envisions a world that values the many ways that scholarship enriches societies, institutions, and individuals.

.

Five Questions with Kelly McDonough

June 3, 2024

In Mexico today, the terms “Indigenous” and “science and technology” are rarely paired together. When they are, the latter tend to be framed as unrecoverable or irreparably damaged pre-Hispanic traditions⁠, relics confined to a static past. In Indigenous Science and Technology, Kelly McDonough works against such erroneous and racialized discourses with a focus on Nahua environmental engagements and relationalities, systems of communication, and cultural preservation and revitalization. Attention to these overlooked or obscured knowledges provides a better understanding of Nahua culture, past and present, as well as the entangled local and global histories in which they were—and are—vital actors. Today, we ask five questions of scholar Kelly McDonough:

This is a book about how Nahuas—native⁠ speakers of Nahuatl, the common language of the Aztec Empire and of more than 2.5 million Indigenous people today—have explored, understood, and explained the world around them in pre-invasion, colonial, and contemporary time periods. What started you on this work?

Thanks for asking! The project is a natural extension of my earlier work on Nahua intellectual history – I wanted to continue getting at what Nahua intellectual life was and is. I wanted to keep poking holes in the widely circulating myth that Nahua intellectual life was rich only prior to the Spanish invasion in the sixteenth century when it rapidly deteriorated. I definitely knew that “science” was a topic I wanted to dig into deeper when I was talking (ranting) to a colleague, and I said, “it drives me crazy when people say that Indigenous people do not have science!”

I’ve learned that most times when I say “it drives me crazy that…” (at least related to my work) it is likely an area of research I will enjoy and will feel worthwhile. Related to science, I wanted to draw attention to the many Nahua technological innovations I have seen in the archives and in person to disrupt another erroneous myth about “lack of technology” that still circulates today.

This is a deep dive into Nahua theoretical and practical inquiry related to the environment, as well as the dynamic networks in which Nahuas create, build upon, and share knowledges, practices, tools, and objects to meet social, political, and economic needs. What are some of your approaches to this research?

I took cues from lots of smart people from a variety of disciplines and fields to approach and think about Nahua science and tech. I ended up drawing a lot and creating multimedia diagrams on the walls to try to understand scholarship along with Nahua theories, networks, and layers of needs and interests all together in such a way that I could even attempt to write about them. But most importantly, I have had lengthy, ongoing conversations with Nahua friends and colleagues who are deeply concerned about how Nahua youth are barraged with messaging in mainstream educational settings and general discourses that tells them that only non-Indigenous people are thinkers and inventors.

You included what we called “interludes” between the chapters of short biographical sketches and interviews with contemporary Nahua scientists, artists, historians, and writers, accompanied by their photos. Why was this critical to this work?

The book would have been impossible without these individuals, their families, and communities; they have been wonderful, patient teachers who have guided and encouraged me. For example, Flor Hernández spent a full day showing me how backstrap weaving, from dying of yarns to the dance of the warp and weft is, in her words, physics. Baruc Martínez Díaz took me to work at his chinampa (raised lakebed garden), and talked for hours about all of the relationships among plants, animals, humans, and geographic features that inhabited the chinampas. And I was absolutely struck by how Abraham de la Cruz Martínez talked about his laboratory at work and his laboratory in the corn field.  I also wanted to include their words and photographs to hammer on the idea that Nahua brilliance is still in action, not stuck in a static past. The interludes or “interruptions” are also meant to avoid any notion of a lineal, chronological march toward “progress.”

What advice would you offer to up-and-coming scholars embarking on their own projects?

We all have such different temperaments and work styles, so I’ll just say that for me it was time well spent talking to people and reading about workflows and practices related to the craft of writing. I have a tried-and-true system for dealing with everything from naming conventions of files to how I take notes (I subject my poor graduate students to a 5-page description of said system every year). But some people would hate that – it really is about finding what works best for you. It has also been immensely helpful to have a writing partner. I’ve been working with the same person since 2016. We don’t do anything elaborate, we just check in on most days on Slack and share a sentence or two about our plan for our writing session(s) that day. For me, the accountability is good, the articulation of reasonable and measurable writing goals is practical, and the ability to share doubts, irritations, breakthroughs, small victories, and ugly first drafts as they come along indispensable.

What are you working on now?

My next monograph deals with 400 years of Indigenous justice in the town of Cholula in the state of Puebla, Mexico. My team has been digitizing the town’s judicial archive, once thought to have burned in the Mexican Revolution, for five years. Cholula was one of nine “Indian Cities” in colonial Mexico, which meant they had a unique juridical personality and relationship to the king of Spain. This archive gives an unprecedented view of what that mean in day-to-day practice during the colonial period, but also transitions when, for example, Mexico became independent from Spain or during the Porfirian dictatorship at the end of the twentieth century. I’m really interested in how Nahuas interpreted the changing laws, how they influenced the implementation of new ones, and how they used evolving notions of “justice” (or not) to their benefit.

Before jumping into that project, I have two smaller ones right now: one is an oral history project with Nahua women in the diaspora (within Mexico and beyond) and the other is an article that was meant to be a chapter in the book, but I didn’t get to it in time. For now, it is called “Sky Stories:” it is about how Nahuas have explained and related to what is understood to be in or part of the sky – clouds, planets, sun, moon, stars, meteors, ancestors, gods, and so on. 

***

Kelly S. McDonough is an associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Program in Native American and Indigenous Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. She is also the author of The Learned Ones: Nahua Intellectuals in Postconquest Mexico.

MALCS Summer Institute 2024

The University of Arizona Press is proud to be a MALCS 2024 sponsor! We’re offering a special discount on all of our books for MALCS attendees. Use AZMALCS24 on our website or for call-in orders to get 35% off all our books from 6/23/24 to 7/25/24.

In their own words, Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS) “is a volunteer professional organization for self-identified Chicana, Latina, Native American / indígena mujeres and gender non-conforming academics, students, and activists.”

For the last 40 years, MALCS has hosted a summer institute bringing together this vital group to engage “feminist intersectionality, social justice, empowerment, and healing.” For their 41st year, MALCS is in Oaxaca, México, and the theme is “De Aquí y de Allá: Reclaiming Our Indigenous Lineages and Serving Future Generations.” The institute will be held June 24-27, 2024.

Below, read about some of our recent and forthcoming titles in Latinx Studies, Indigenous Studies, Gender & Women’s Studies, Border Studies, and more.

Founded in 1997, Mujeres de Maiz (MdM) is an Indigenous Xicana–led spiritual artivist organization and movement by and for women and feminists of color. Chronicling its quarter-century-long herstory, editors Amber Rose GonzálezFelicia ‘Fe’ Montes, and Nadia Zepeda collect diverse stories with attention to their larger sociopolitical contexts. Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento: Spiritual Artivism, Healing Justice, and Feminist Praxis crosses conventional genre boundaries through the inclusion of poetry, visual art, testimonios, and essays.


Have you ever wanted a writing and research manual that centered Chicanx and Latinx scholarship? Writing that Matters does just that. While it includes a brief history of the roots of the fields of Chicanx literature and history, L Heidenreich and Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz emphasize practice: how to research and write a Chicanx or Latinx history paper; how to research and write a Chicanx or Latinx literature or cultural studies essay; and how to conduct interviews, frame pláticas, and conduct oral histories. It also includes a brief chapter on nomenclature and a grammar guide. Each chapter includes questions for discussion, and all examples from across the subfields are from noted Chicanx and Latinx scholars.


The topic of mothers and mothering transcends all spaces, from popular culture to intellectual thought and critique. In Frontera Madre(hood): Brown Mothers Challenging Oppression and Transborder Violence at the U.S.-Mexico Border, editors Cynthia Bejarano and Maria Cristina Morales collect essays from thirty contributors that bridge 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.


Edited by Norma Elia Cantú, Chicana Portraits: Critical Biographies of Twelve Chicana Writers pairs portraits with critical biographies of twelve key Chicana writers, offering an engaging look at their work, contributions to the field, and major achievements. Arranged chronologically by birth order of the authors, the book can be read cover to cover for a genealogical overview, or scholars and general readers can easily jump in at any point and read about an individual author, regardless of the chronology.

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.

“Mujeres de Maiz” Editors Featured on Imagine Otherwise podcast

May 28, 2024

Imagine Otherwise podcast host Cathy Hannabach interviewed Amber Rose González, Felicia Montes, and Nadia Zepeda, editors of Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento: Spiritual Artivism, Healing Justice, and Feminist Praxis. In the conversation, Amber, Felicia, and Nadia share their journey with the Mujeres de Maiz organization and the collective liberation the group is building. Traversing poetry, performance, zines, healing ceremonies, visual art, autoethnography, and a plethora of other mediums, these scholars demonstrate the power of collaboration and intersectional solidarity. They explore how the Mujeres de Maiz book publishing process builds on their longstanding practices of making publishing more accessible and collaborative, embodying the political and ethical commitments found across their art and activism as well.

And so I think that’s the beauty of Mujeres de Maiz. It allows us to practice the relationships that we want to see. It allows us to live in our full beingness. It allows us to undo some of the harmful ideologies and harmful ways of being that we’ve inherited. I think we’re working toward it by living it and providing opportunities for other people and inviting them into that.

Amber Rose González, Imagine Otherwise podcast

Listen to the full episode here.

About the book:

Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento: Spiritual Artivism, Healing Justice, and Feminist Praxis‘ political-ethical-spiritual commitments, cultural production, and everyday practices are informed by Indigenous and transnational feminist of color artistic, ceremonial, activist, and intellectual legacies. Contributors fuse stories of celebration, love, and spirit-work with an incisive critique of interlocking oppressions, both intimate and structural, encouraging movement toward “a world where many worlds fit.”

The multidisciplinary, intergenerational, and critical-creative nature of the project coupled with the unique subject matter makes the book a must-have for high school and college students, activist-scholars, artists, community organizers, and others invested in social justice and liberation.

Five Questions with Ricardo Quintana-Vallejo

May 23, 2024

Growing Up in the Gutter: Diaspora & Comics is the first book-length exploration of contemporary graphic coming-of-age narratives written in the context of diasporic and immigrant communities in the United States by and for young, BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and diasporic readers. The book analyzes the complex identity formation of first- and subsequent-generation diasporic protagonists in globalized rural and urban environments and dissects the implications that marginalized formative processes have for the genre in its graphic version. Today, author Ricardo Quintana-Vallejo answers our questions:

What were some of your favorite books growing up?

I’m a 90’s kid, so I loved Harry Potter. It’s atrocious that one needs to follow up that statement with the necessary: but I hate what J.K. has done with her fame to hurt the people I love and my friends. But before all the bigotry went down, my 11-year-old self loved HP. And fiction belongs to the reader anyway. Ron Weasley was my first crush. As a queer, bullied kid, I dreamed of getting a letter and what amounts to an 11-inch, phoenix-feather-cored weapon to bludgeon the world into a kinder place.

Despite how different our worlds were—I grew up in Mexico City—HP did for me what coming-of-age novels have done for many, for centuries. It saved me. It enabled me to escape, to figure out how to grow up, to find my (fictional) people. I grew up with them, alongside them.

I loved the books that explained me to me.

I loved Looking For Alaska because it explained to me why my friend in high school didn’t want to live anymore. I loved Demian because it showed me the world outside and because it ends with the first gay kiss I ever imagined; the idea of boys kissing was unintelligible. I loved Aura because it was so creepy, and it talked directly to me. I loved A Hundred Years of Solitude because it was sweaty and erotic—which blew away my young mind.

I’m so lucky I got to read a lot of different things.

Why do you think the coming-of-age (COA) construction resonates so strongly?

Because we’re all growing up all the time!

There is nobody, big or small, who is not constantly negotiating who they are and what their place in the world is. I agree with Stuart Hall that identity is always a process, always in flux. We know that instinctively about ourselves, whether we meet the flux with resistance, patience, or joy.

We want to see others in flux. We want to know how other people are building themselves, we want to see our struggles mirrored. More than mere pleasure (although infinitely important), seeing how others grow and negotiate what it means to be an adult is necessary. We need these stories like we need to rebel against our parents, like we need to love whom we love, like we need to fight, explore, and try. Coming-of-age stories are for me, the best antidote to despair.

And collectively, we recognize the value of young people finding those admirable and heroic role models. Why else do we insist our kids read To Kill a Mockingbird if we don’t want them to learn compassion from Scout, or The Diary of a Young Girl to learn bravery from Anne? Or, for that matter, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass or Beloved if we don’t want them to fight tooth and nail against injustice?

These stories enable us to ponder who we want to be—individually and collectively!

How do you hope students, scholars, and instructors use this work?

GUITG is a flexible text. The language is welcoming for students without previous knowledge of either the coming-of-age genre or comix. Even if you have never read any theory about either, this book is designed to be accessible and fun.

Yet, if you are already a fan, you’ll find new connections to issues of identity, diaspora, queerness, and immigration that you’ll hopefully find inspiring.

Go to the index or list of works cited to get an idea of the extensive literature on comix produced in the last few years.

I’ve had stimulating conversations with instructors who want to use graphic media to engage in “difficult” conversations with students (about race, class, the gender gap, etc.) but don’t know where to begin. GUITG aims to answer that question by putting theory to work: providing examples of close readings and illustrations of visual analysis.

Use it as a textbook for an upper level seminar. Use individual chapters to explore how comix address gender, performativity, queerness-as-magic, police brutality, diaspora, and national identity.

I truly hope scholars use it, abuse it, and destroy it. It should make Bildungsroman scholars (particularly those who think it’s an exclusively European genre) very uncomfortable.

What graphic COA narratives are you looking forward to reading next?

I’m currently teaching an undergrad graphic COA narratives class! We’re reading Persepolis, Genderqueer, The Low Low Woods, and American Born Chinese through the lens of growing up and negotiating adulthood. Re-reading these with students is reading them for the first time, finding new connections because of their particular curiosities. 

Personally, I am very curious about comix and graphic media produced and distributed in places that have not traditionally been associated with the medium. In other words, I really want to know what is going on with comix in non-American and non-Japanese markets. I am not sure yet where this will take me.

What is your next writing project?

I am working on an edited volume titled The Post-Bildungsroman: Coming of Age at the Margins to fully dismantle the notion that the genre should be European or a project of a white, middle-class, able-bodied, heteronormative Enlightenment. I want to open the genre to study underrepresented and previously non-canonical voices that either engage with the likes of Charles Dickens and James Joyce or who completely disregard them. I hope this will be a launching point for studies about graphic media, videogames, manga, and other productions that challenge preconceived notions of the Bildungsroman.

Additionally, I am working on personal essays. To provide an example of what I’m thinking, I am very curious about how we can engage with young heterosexual men to prevent them from sympathizing with alt-right and/or neo-fascist ideologies and mindlessly consuming their podcasts, books, and shows.

***
Ricardo Quintana-Vallejo (@ric_writes_books) 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.

Space Science Collection Now Open Access

May 15, 2024

The University of Arizona Press is thrilled to offer a new collection on our open access (OA) platform Open Arizona, featuring fourteen works from The University of Arizona Space Science Series.

The Space Science collection makes available again the work of leaders in their fields, including Richard P. Binzel, Tom Gehrels, Mildred Shapley Matthews, and many others. These works provide an important archive of a pivotal time in several emerging fields connected to astronomy and the space sciences. The books were originally published between 1976 and 2000.

Since 1974, the University of Arizona Press has published exceptional works in the field of space science. The volumes in The University of Arizona Space Science Series bring together the world’s top experts, who lay out their foundational research on current understandings, while also building frameworks for the highest-priority questions for the future. Since 2000, books in the Space Science Series have been produced in collaboration with the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas.

About each title:

Asteroids
Originally published in 1979, this is a comprehensive source and textbook on asteroids by 70 authors covering exploration, composition, evolution, and the interrelations with other small solar system bodies. It also includes an extensive file of all known asteroid parameters including magnitudes, colors, proper elements and compositional types.

Asteroids II
This sourcebook brings together our knowledge about asteroids based on a gather during the week of March 8-11, 1988 with more than 160 scientists from 14 countries who gathered in Tucson for the Asteroids II conference. Asteroids II offered a fresh treatment intended to stand on its own as a complete description of the understanding of the field at the time. It was first published in December 1989. The work showcases a large international collaboration, a sign of an active and growing discipline.

Jupiter
When Jupiter was first published in August, 1976, editor T. Gehrels wrote, “we may never do a better book.” Summarizing the research and data following the first flyby of Jupiter in December 1973, this work brings together the knowledge of the best scientists in the fields at the time of it’s publication. The work covers the origin of Jupiter, origin and structure of its satellites, models of Jupiter, comparison of those models, and much more.

Meteorites and the Early Solar System
First published in November 1988, this work provided a coherent narrative about the known understandings of meteorites and the early solar system. From the original publication, “Although the Earth was formed, together with the other planets, at the birth of the solar system, geological activity has since erased all but a hint of the processes that accompanied its formation. If we wish to explore the processes that occurred in the earliest solar system, and the nature of the environment in which they took place, we must turn to the record contained in more primitive material. This book provides a synthesis of what has been learned so far about the earliest stages of solar system history through the study of meteorites, and what, given our current level of understanding, remains to be learned.”

Planetary Rings
At the time of its publication, the editors wrote, “it is our hope that this book will become out-of-date quickly, that new observations and theoretical connections will continue to revolutionize our knowledge of planetary rings.” Published in 1985, Planetary Rings brought together scientists from a variety of disciplines to the study of planetary rings to provide a textbook for graduate students and researchers in related fields. It introduced newcomers to the subject and addressed issues at the forefront of ring research at the time.

Planetary Satellites
Published in 1977, this source book on natural satellites brings together thirty-four distinguished contributors from various fields of satellite astronomy to offer a thorough examination of Orbits and Dynamical Evolution.

Protostars and Planets
Originally published in 1979, at the time of it’s publication this work was a unique source book on star formation and the origin of planetary systems from some 35 distinguished authors. Topics include the formation of stars from the cloudy to the stellar to the planetary state. Special emphasis on stars believed capable of producing planets. This foundational work sought to define a new discipline and set the course for the University of Arizona Space Science series.

Protostars and Planets II
Based on meetings held in Tucson, Arizona in 1984, this volume brought up-to-date recent advances and research on the cosmogony of stars and planets. This book presents the written thoughts of the principle speakers (and their colleagues) from the 1984 meeting. It continues work started in 1978 to investigate the problems of star formation and the formation of the solar system.

Protostars and Planets III
Previous Space Science Series volumes Protostars and Planets (1978) and Protostars and Planets II (1985) were among the most timely offerings of this illustrious collection of technical works. Protostars and Planets III continues to address fundamental questions concerning the formation of stars and planetary systems in general and of our solar system in particular. Drawing from advances in observational, experimental, and theoretical research, it summarizes our understanding of these processes and addresses major open questions and research issues. Among the more notable subjects covered in the more than three dozen chapters are the collapse of clouds and the formation and evolution of stars and disks; nucleosynthesis and star formation; the occurrence and properties of disks around young stars; T Tauri stars and their accretion disks; gaseous accretion and the formation of the giant planets; comets and the origin of the Solar-System; and the long-term dynamical evolution and stability of the solar system.

Protostars and Planets IV
This title, out of print in 2008, is now available open access. Both a textbook and a status report for every facet of research into the formation of stars and planets, Protostars and Planets IV brings together 167 authors who report on the most significant advances in the field since the publication of the previous volume in 1993. Protostars and Planets IV reflects improvements in observational techniques and the availability of new facilities such as the Infrared Space Observatory, the refurbished Hubble Space Telescope, and the 10-m Keck telescopes. It include chapters describing the discoveries of extrasolar planets, brown dwarfs, and Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt objects, and the first to include high-resolution optical and near-infrared images of protoplanetary disks.

Resources of Near-Earth Space
Originally published in 1993, this work is available again. From the original publication,”A base on the Moon, an expedition to Mars. . . . Some time in the near future, for scientific or cultural reasons, humanity will likely decide to pursue one of these fantastic ventures in space. How can we increase the scope and reduce the cost of these ambitious activities? The parts of the solar system that are most accessible from Earth—the Moon, the near-Earth asteroids, Mars and its moons—are rich in materials of great potential value to humanity. Resources of Near-Earth Space explores the possibilities both of utilizing these materials to produce propellants, structural metals, refractories, life-support fluids, and other materials on site to reduce the costs of space exploration, and of providing a source of materials and energy for our own planet that would not be environmentally destructive to Earth.”

Satellites of Jupiter
Originally published in 1982, here is the description from the original publication: “The findings of Voyager have brought Jupiter’s moons out from the shadows. Now as much of interest to geologists as to astronomers, these satellites are brought under closer scrutiny by more than 50 international authorities in this volume. Included is research on thermal evolution, surface composition, cratering time scales, and other subjects; but also key chapters focusing on the satellite Io’s volcanic eruptions, thermodynamics, phase composition and more. These 24 contributions constitute a reference that will stand as the decade’s definitive work on Jupiter’s satellites and a springboard to further hypotheses.”

Saturn
Originally published in 1984, here is the description from the original publication: “The Saturn system is the most complex in the solar system, and this book is to summarize it all: the planet, rings, satellites, the magnetospheres, and the interaction with the interplanetary medium. The effective date of the material is approximately November 1983.”

The Galaxy and the Solar System
Originally published in 1986, this work came out of a conference held in Tucson, Arizona in January 1985 which explored the influence of the Galaxy on the solar system. The meeting was the first get-together of the galactic and solar system scientific communities. At the time, the conversations covered new and sometimes controversial topics. This work presented the latest research and stimulated new research and ideas.

Author Mike Anastario on “Agents of Change” Podcast

May 13, 2024

The Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast interviewed Mike Anastario, co-author of Kneeling Before Corn: Recuperating More-than-Human Intimacies on the Salvadoran Milpa. The book’s co-authors are Elena Salamanca and Elizabeth Hawkins. Anastario talks about their ethnographic research with corn farmers in El Salvador and how this evolved from focusing on the relationship between plants and people, to the impact of agrichemicals on the environment and human health. Listen to the podcast on Environmental Health News.

About the book:

Kneeling Before Corn focuses on the intimate relations that develop between plants and humans in the milpas of the northern rural region of El Salvador. It explores the ways in which more-than-human intimacies travel away from and return to the milpa through human networks. Collective and multivocal, this work reflects independent lines of investigation and multiple conversations between co-authors—all of whom have lived in El Salvador for extended periods of time. Throughout the six chapters, the co-authors invite readers to consider more-than-human intimacies by rethinking, experimenting with, and developing new ways of documenting, analyzing, and knowing the intimacies that form between humans and the plants that they cultivate, conserve, long for, and eat. This book offers an innovative account of rural El Salvador in the twenty-first century.

New OA Titles: The Hemenway Southwestern Archaeological Expedition

May 8, 2024

The University of Arizona Press is thrilled to feature a new collection on our open access platform Open Arizona, featuring new and previously published works on the Hemenway Southwestern Archaeological Expedition.

In the fall of 1886, Boston philanthropist Mary Tileston Hemenway sponsored an archaeological expedition to the American Southwest. Directed by anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing, the Hemenway Expedition sought to trace the ancestors of the Zuñis with an eye toward establishing a museum for the study of American Indians. In the third year of fieldwork, Hemenway’s overseeing board fired Cushing based on doubts concerning his physical health and mental stability, and much of the expedition’s work went unpublished. Today, however, it is recognized as a critical base for research for southwestern archaeology.

The volumes in this collection examine the expedition through the diaries and writings of those who participated. These books are part of the Southwest Center Series, an ongoing partnership between the University of Arizona Press and the Southwest Center, which is a research unit of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences of the University of Arizona.

The titles in this new featured collection are available for online reading or downloading from Open Arizona, the press’s OA portal. Learn more about each title:



On a Trail of Southwest Discovery
Edited by Curtis M. Hinsley and David R. Wilcox, print publication April 2024
This final volume examines the Hemenway Southwestern Archaeological Expedition, directed by Frank Hamilton Cushing, through the diaries of two participants who fell in love on the expedition: the field secretary, Fred Hodge—who became a major figure in early twentieth-century anthropology—and the expedition artist, Margaret Magill. Divided into three parts, the book’s first two sections chronicle the field operations of the expedition, while the third part describes the anthropological career of Hodge after the end of the expedition.



The Lost Itinerary of Frank Hamilton Cushing
Edited by Curtis M. Hinsley and David R. Wilcox, print publication May 2002
This second installment of a multivolume work on the Hemenway Expedition focuses on a report written by Cushing—at the request of the expedition’s board of directors—to serve as vindication for the expedition, the worst personal and professional failure of his life. Reconstructed between 1891 and 1893 by Cushing from field notes, diaries, jottings, and memories, it provides an account of the origins and early months of the expedition. Hidden in several archives for a century, the Itinerary is assembled and presented here for the first time.

The Southwest in the American Imagination
Edited by Curtis M. Hinsley and David R. Wilcox, print publication May 1996
This work is the first installment of this multivolume work, which presents a cultural history of the Hemenway Expedition and early anthropology in the American Southwest, told in the voices of its participants and interpreted by contemporary scholars.

***
About the authors
Curtis M. Hinsley is Regents’ Professor Emeritus of history at Northern Arizona University. He has written widely on American cultural history and the history of American anthropology.

David R. Wilcox was a senior research archaeologist and special assistant to the deputy director at the Museum of Northern Arizona.

Stephen Pyne Warns about the Pyrocene in Scientific American

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:

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.

May 2, 2024

Last week was the 2024 National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies conference in San Francisco. Thank you to the authors, editors, contributors, and new friends who spent time at our booth. Check out the photos and feel the vibe.

If you weren’t able to visit us at the conference, there’s still time to order the books we had on display. Get 35% off with discount code AZNACCS24 at checkout until 5/25/24.

Thanks to everyone who came by to say hello, browse books, and talk with us at the conference!

Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento panel features editors Amber Rose González, Felicia ‘Fe’ Montes, Nadia Zepeda, and several contributors to the book.

Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz, co-author with L Heidenreich of Writing That Matters, shows off her new copies of Pasadena Before the Roses and La Plonqui.

Mary Reynolds, publicity manager at the University of Arizona Press, joins authors Michelle Téllez and Rafael Martínez. Michelle holds her book, Border Women and the Community of Maclovio Rojas. Rafael holds flyer for our BorderVisions series; his book Illegalized will be the first in this series in October 2024!

Left photo: Mexican American Studies represent! with associate professor Michelle Téllez and program coordinator Lucia Echeverria Madera. Right photo: Authors Rita Urquijo-Ruiz and Yvette Saavedra sign books for each other.

L Heidenreich and Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz prepare to sign Writing That Matters: A Handbook for Chicanx and Latinx Studies.

La Plonqui fans flank editor Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez.

Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento editors and a future mujer de maiz.

Authors and editors signing books and one dog named Quilla, who wishes she could read all of our books!

Five Questions with Stephen J. Pyne about ‘Five Suns’

April 29, 2024

Narrating Mexico’s evolution of fire through five eras—pre-human, Indigenous, colonial, industrializing (1880–1980), and contemporary (1980–2015)—Stephen J. Pyne’s newest work Five Suns offers a comprehensive fire history of Mexico. Today, the author answers five questions about this work.

What do the five suns of the title stand for?
Every 52 years the Aztecs celebrated the ceremony of the New Fire to ensure that a new sun would arrive to replace the extinction of the old. All fires everywhere would be extinguished, and at midnight a new fire would be kindled on a sacrificial victim atop the Cerro de Estrella, then distributed throughout the countryside. In Aztec history, five New Fires had birthed five new suns. I use the ceremony to organize the five eras of Mexican fire history, each of which had a characteristic fire that diffused throughout the land.

Almost everywhere in Mexico fire is possible, and most everywhere inevitable. What makes Mexico so combustible?
Mexico has plenty to burn—the annual cycle of wet and dry seasons guarantees that stuff can grow and then be readied to combust. It has ample ignition—lightning is abundant, and humans use fire deliberately and accidentally with hardly a pause. All this makes fire a constant in most of the country, though the regimes of burning change with land use, the ebb and flow of climate, the coming and going of species and peoples, and the reorganizations of the countryside. Over the last century, Mexico has used its vast reservoirs of oil to convert a significant fraction of that burning into the combustion of fossil fuels, with both national and global consequences.

Why do you write that Mexico has become one of the top ten “firepowers” in the world?
Since colonial times, officials distrusted and condemned burning, even though most Mexican agriculture, which was the basis for the bulk of Mexican societies, required fire at some point, and though the authorities were mostly incapable of ending the fires they loathed and criminalized. In the 1980s, links developed to the United States fire community that helped to revolutionize Mexico’s capacity to manage fire, to study it scientifically, and to upgrade policies to embrace a more ecological and holistic conception of fire’s management. By 2020 Mexico’s capabilities ranked it among the ten most robust nations on the planet for engaging with fire.

What makes Mexico’s approach to fire management so unique?
Mexico’s history is not unique. Its colonial experience was pretty much typical throughout the European imperium. By the 1970s, however, led by the U.S. and Australia, a vision of fire exclusion—which was a bad idea and never successfully implemented for long—was replaced by a conception of integrated fire management, which sought to move fire protection beyond emergency responses and to promote fire’s active management, not least through the use of deliberate burning. Mexico’s long heritage of fire and the persistence of traditional uses, once they were recognized as potentially good practices, has given it a strength that countries without that kind of inheritance lack. Instead of dragging Mexico backwards, much of its traditional fire lore could help it leap into the future.

What are you working on now?
Pyrocene Park, published by the University of Arizona Press in 2023, narrated a fire history of Yosemite National Park, which can be imagined as a story of good fire lost and partially restored. I wanted a complementary book that would look at the problems with bad fire, that is, trying to manage damaging fires with very little environmental or social space to maneuver. The Tonto National Forest—two of whose signature peaks I can see outside my window—offers a marvelous study in the complexity of contemporary fire programs. I’m using the 2021 Telegraph fire as an organizing device.
***

Stephen J. Pyne is a fire historian, urban farmer, and emeritus professor at Arizona State University. He spent 15 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, Mexico, Europe (including Russia), and the Earth. From that career, Pyne has developed the notion of a Pyrocene, a human-driven fire age.

April 26, 2024

Last week was the 2024 Society for American Archaeology conference in New Orleans, Louisiana! We want to thank the many authors, editors, contributors, and new friends who spent time at our booth. Check out the photos below to get a glimpse of this wonderful gathering.

If you weren’t able to visit us at the conference, there’s still time to order the books we had on display. Get 35% off with discount code AZSAA24 at checkout until 5/19/24.

Our booth in the exhibit hall at the New Orleans Marriott Hotel, located just outside the French Quarter.
Senior Editor Allyson Carter with Nancy Parezo (A Marriage Out West) and Shelby Tisdale (No Place for a Lady)
Samuel Duwe, author of Tewa Worlds, beside his son, the youngest conference attendee at SAA!

Thanks to everyone who came by to say hello, browse books, and talk with us at the conference!

Writing Westward Podcast Interviews Andrew Curley

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.

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.

John P. Schaefer to Bring “Desert Jewels” to Downtown Tucson

April 23, 2024

The Southern Arizona Heritage & Visitor Center will host renowned Tucson photographer, author, and University of Arizona President Emeritus John P. Schaefer for a book signing. He will sign his book, Desert Jewels: Cactus Flowers of the Southwest and Mexico on May 14, at 11 a.m., at the Visitor Center in the Historic Pima County Courthouse, 115 N Church Ave., in downtown Tucson.

Cactus flowers are jewels of the desert—they add brilliant pops of color to our arid surroundings. In Desert Jewels, photographer Schaefer brings the exquisite and unexpected beauty of the cactus flower to the page. Hundreds of close-up photographs of cactus flowers native to the U.S. Southwest and Mexico offer a visual feast of color and texture, nuance and light.

These stunning photographs allow us to appreciate the spectacular range of color and form cactus flowers have to offer. The book offers a glimpse into Schaefer’s process for capturing these elusive desert gems. His beautiful photographs were featured as a book of stamps issued by the U.S. Postal Service.

About the author
John P. Schaefer had an active twenty-one-year career in teaching and research at the University of Arizona. A conservationist and avid birdwatcher, he helped organize the Tucson Audubon Society and founded the Nature Conservancy in Arizona. In addition to his academic and conservation work, Dr. Schaefer is a skilled photographer and author of several books on photography, including A Desert Illuminated: Cactus Flowers of the Sonoran Desert. He and Ansel Adams founded the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in 1975.

April 22, 2024

We had a great time at the 2024 Latinx Studies Association’s Annual Meeting in Tempe, Arizona, last week. Sincerest thanks to everyone who visited our table!

If you weren’t able to visit us at the bookfair, there’s still time to order the books we had on display. Get 35% off with discount code AZLSA24 at checkout until 5/18/24.

Check out the photos of the event below!

Co-editors Jesús Rosales and Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez with their work La Plonqui: The Literary Life and Work of Margarita Cota-Cárdenas, along with forthcoming author Rafael A Martínez, author of Illegalized: Undocumented Youth Movements in the United States.

Author Michelle Téllez with her books Border Women and the Community of Maclovio Rojas
Autonomy in the Spaces of Neoliberal Neglect
and The Chicana Motherwork Anthology.

Co-editors Natalia Deeb-Sossa and Jennifer Bickham Mendez with their book Latinx Belonging: Community Building and Resilience in the United States.

Co-editors Nadia Zepeda and Amber Rose González sign copies of their book Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento: Spiritual Artivism, Healing Justice, and Feminist Praxis.

Lisa Magaña, author of Empowered!: Latinos Transforming Arizona Politics, and Editor-in-Chief Kristen Buckles

Author and series editor Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez and Editor-in-Chief Kristen Buckles discuss the new series BorderVisions during a panel on publishing.

2024 NACCS Conference: Signings, Discounts, and New Books

April 22, 2024

We are thrilled to be attending the 2024 National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Conference in San Francisco, California this week! From April 24 to 27, find our table at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square to purchase books and meet our authors in-person.

We’re also thrilled to have a number of University of Arizona Press authors signing books at our table this year! Take a look at the schedule below to find out where and when you can meet them and get your books signed. You can also meet Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez and Yvette J. Saavedra, the editors of our BorderVisions series, on Thursday, 4/25 from 3:00-3:30 PM.

Finally, we’ll be selling a curated selection of our new, featured, and popular Chicana/o/x Studies and Latina/o/x Studies titles at a special conference discount of 35%. If you can’t attend this year, or if you need an extra copy of a book you discover at our table, we’ve got you covered: enter AZNACCS24 at checkout on our website for 35% off all titles through 5/25/24.

Book Signing Schedule

Thursday, April 25

10:30-11:30 AM: Michelle Téllez, author of Border Women and the Community of Maclovio Rojas

1:00-2:00 PM: L Heidenreich and Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz, authors of Writing that Matters

2:00-3:00 PM: Amber Rose GonzálezFelicia ‘Fe’ Montes, and Nadia Zepeda, editors of Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento: Spiritual Artivism, Healing Justice, and Feminist Praxis

Friday, April 26

9:30-10:30 AM: Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez, co-editor of La Plonqui: The Literary Life and Work of Margarita Cota-Cárdenas

New & Featured Chicano/a/x and Latina/o/x Studies Titles

Have you ever wanted a writing and research manual that centered Chicanx and Latinx scholarship? Writing that Matters does just that. While it includes a brief history of the roots of the fields of Chicanx literature and history, L Heidenreich and Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz emphasize practice: how to research and write a Chicanx or Latinx history paper; how to research and write a Chicanx or Latinx literature or cultural studies essay; and how to conduct interviews, frame pláticas, and conduct oral histories. It also includes a brief chapter on nomenclature and a grammar guide. Each chapter includes questions for discussion, and all examples from across the subfields are from noted Chicanx and Latinx scholars. Women’s and queer scholarship and methods are not addressed in a separate chapter but are instead integral to the work.

Founded in 1997, Mujeres de Maiz (MdM) is an Indigenous Xicana–led spiritual artivist organization and movement by and for women and feminists of color. Chronicling its quarter-century-long herstory, Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento weaves together diverse stories with attention to their larger sociopolitical contexts. The book crosses conventional genre boundaries through the inclusion of poetry, visual art, testimonios, and essays. The multidisciplinary, intergenerational, and critical-creative nature of the project coupled with the unique subject matter makes the book a must-have for high school and college students, activist-scholars, artists, community organizers, and others invested in social justice and liberation.

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, Ricardo 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.

Author Karina Alma offers a systemic method and artistic mode for unpacking social and political memory formation that resists dominant histories. Central American Counterpoetics responds to political repression through acts of creativity that prioritize the well-being of anticolonial communities. Building on Toni Morrison’s theory of rememory, the volume examines the concept as an embodied experience of a sensory place and time lived in the here and now. By employing primary sources of image and word, interviews of creatives, and a critical self-reflection as a Salvadoran immigrant woman in academia, Alma’s research breaks ground in subject matter and methods by considering cultural and historical ties across countries, regions, and traditions. The diverse creatives included explore critical perspectives on topics such as immigration, forced assimilation, maternal love, gender violence, community arts, and decolonization.

In Indigenous Science and Technology:
Nahuas and the World Around Them
, author Kelly S. McDonough addresses Nahua understanding of plants and animals, medicine and ways of healing, water and water control, alphabetic writing, and cartography. Interludes between the chapters offer short biographical sketches and interviews with contemporary Nahua scientists, artists, historians, and writers, accompanied by their photos. The book also includes more than twenty full-color images from sources including the Florentine Codex, a sixteenth-century collaboration between Indigenous and Spanish scholars considered the most comprehensive extant source on the pre-Hispanic and early colonial Aztec (Mexica) world.

Featured Series

BorderVisions engages the U.S.-Mexico borderlands’ dynamic histories and cultures and expands our understanding of the borderlands beyond a site of geopolitical inquiry. The series conceptualizes borderlands as both a place and a methodology and addresses the constraints of traditional fields, challenging authors to think creatively and critically about the expansive frameworks and possibilities of borderlands studies.

The Feminist Wire Books: Connecting Feminisms, Race, and Social Justice is a new series from The Feminist Wire (TFW) and the University of Arizona Press that presents a cultural bridge between the digital and printing worlds. These timely, critical books will contribute to feminist scholarship, pedagogy, and praxis in the twenty-first century.

Latinx Pop Culture is a new series that aims to shed light on all aspects of Latinx cultural production and consumption as well as the Latinx presence globally in popular cultural phenomena in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

The Critical Issues in Indigenous Studies series anchors intellectual work within an Indigenous framework that reflects Native-centered concerns and objectives. Series titles expand and deepen discussions about Indigenous people beyond nation-state boundaries, and complicate existing notions of Indigenous identity.

Arizona Crossroads explores the history of peoples and cultures, events and struggles, ideas and practices in the place we know today as Arizona.

Are you an author or editor? Do you have a project that would be a great fit for The University of Arizona Press? For questions or to submit a proposal to any of these series, please contact Editor-In-Chief Kristen Buckles at KBuckles@uapress.arizona.edu.

Excerpt from “Restoring Relations Through Stories”

April 19, 2024

This insightful volume delves into land-based Diné and Dene imaginaries as embodied in stories—oral, literary, and visual. Like the dynamism and kinetic facets of hózhǫ́,* Restoring Relations Through Stories takes us through many landscapes, places, and sites. Renae Watchman introduces the book with an overview of stories that bring Tsé Bitʼaʼí, or Shiprock Peak, the sentinel located in what is currently the state of New Mexico, to life. The book then introduces the dynamic field of Indigenous film through a close analysis of two distinct Diné-directed feature-length films, and ends by introducing Dene literatures.

While the Diné (those from the four sacred mountains in Dinétah in the southwestern United States) are not now politically and economically cohesive with the Dene (who are in Denendeh in Canada), they are ancestral and linguistic relatives. In this book, Watchman turns to literary and visual texts to explore how relations are restored through stories, showing how literary linkages from land-based stories affirm Diné and Dene kinship. She explores the power of story to forge ancestral and kinship ties between the Diné and Dene across time and space through re-storying of relations. Read an excerpt from the book’s first chapter below.

Per Diné protocol, I open with a decolonial Diné approach, “kodóó hózhǫ́ dooleeł,” translated as “it begins in beauty” or “in beauty it begins.” Situated in northwest New Mexico, within the four sacred mountains, Tsé Bit’a’í means “Winged Rock,” “Rock with Wings,” or “Wings of Rock,” but is called Shiprock Peak (or just Shiprock). Tsé Bit’a’í is located on the outskirts of a reservation town formerly known in Diné bizaad (the Navajo language) as Naat’áanii Nééz (“tall leader”), but it is now called Shiprock too. The town is a flourishing reservation metropolis on the northern edge of the great Diné Nation, which spans the states of Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. Locals are primarily Diné. Historian Jennifer Nez Denetdale explains, “We call ourselves the Diné or The People. We also name ourselves Náhookah Diné (Earth Surface People) and Bilá’ ashdla’ (FiveFingered Ones).” Shiprock (the town) prides itself as the “Naashjizhii’ Capital of the World.” Naashjizhii’ is dried steamed corn. This designation of Diné culinary pride is featured on the cover of every issue of the annually published Shiprock Magazine, edited by Eugene B. Joe. The magazine is organized by the Shiprock Historical Society (est. 2010), whose aim is to preserve “the cultural significance of the town, the annual Northern Navajo fair and the historical growth of the community.”

Existence, presence, being, and places are reliant on names, but whose version of a place-name, whose toponym, matters? Shiprock is an English name that eclipses two distinct Navajo names: one a landmark, Tsé Bit’a’í; and the other a nearby reservation community, Naat’áanii Nééz. In N. Scott Momaday’s The Names: A Memoir (1976), he makes a grave error. He refers to “Shiprock, which is called in Navajo Naat’aaniineez [sic] (literally ‘tall chief’; the town takes its name from the great monolith that stands nearby in an arid reach of the San Juan Basin). The name Shiprock, like other Anglicizations in this region, seems incongruous enough, but from certain points of view—and from the air, especially—the massive rock Naat’aaniineez resembles very closely a ship at sea.” The tendency for settlers to claim and name lands that they are unfamiliar with is not surprising; however, Momaday lived in Shiprock from 1936 to 1943. That he would retell a settler’s account of the anglicization of Tsé Bit’a’í is surprising. This demonstrates the prominence of settler narratives eclipsing Indigenous ones. Furthermore, Momaday misunderstands the meaning of Naat’áanii Nééz, which does not literally mean “tall chief.” It literally means “tall leader” or “tall one who speaks.” In the context of Shiprock, the town’s name meant “tall boss,” to describe the height of William Taylor Shelton (1869–1944), who in 1903 was assigned as superintendent for the San Juan Indian Agency by “President Theodore Roosevelt to go to New Mexico and establish the Shiprock Reservation for the Navaho [sic].” Momaday also attributes the wrong Navajo name to the pinnacle and does not acknowledge the Diné name Tsé Bit’a’í. Even more troubling is that he completely ignores the traditional Diné stories about Tsé Bit’a’í and privileges an “incongruous” colonial version. In 1860, prior to the Navajo Long Walk to Fort Sumner, Captain J. F. McComb called Tsé Bit’a’í “The Needle.” The Needle was replaced by the English name Ship Rock (two words) in 1870 because non-Navajo settlers believed that it resembled a nineteenth-century “full-rigged sailing schooner.” This renaming reflects an unimaginative and nonsensical nautical nomenclature that further stripped Tsé Bit’a’í of her origin stories. Place naming, and naming in general, is significant to Diné and other Indigenous Peoples. A narrative of “place links present with past and our personal self with kinship groups. . . . Our knowledges cannot be universalized because they arise from our experience with our places. This is why name-place stories matter: they are repositories of science, they tell of relationships, they reveal history, and they hold our identity.” Margaret Kovach’s observations are relevant to Tsé Bit’a’í and the stories of her presence.

Georges Erasmus is Dene, or Tłįchǫ (Dogrib), from Behchokǫ̀ (which means “Big Knife” and replaced the town’s former name, Rae-Edzo) in the Northwest Territories. He advocated for restoration of Dene place-names and turned to Dene literary autonomy: “We made our own history. Our actions were based on our understanding of the world. With the coming of the Europeans, our experience as a people changed. We experienced relationships in which we were made to feel inferior. . . . They began to define our world for us. They began to define us as well. Even physically, our communities and our landmarks were named in terms foreign to our understanding. We were no longer the actors—we were being acted upon. We were no longer naming the world—we were being named.” This instance of Tsé Bit’a’í’s place-name is a case in point. This act of replacing and renaming our storied places interrupted the process of becoming hózhǫ́, affecting communities on both sides of the Medicine Line. If recognized at all, our stories have been dismissed as quaint storytelling and mythologizing. In thinking about Tsé Bit’a’í, my maternal family’s hometown mother, I am grappling with how the regenerative hane’ responds as a corrective.

2024 LSA Conference: Signings, Discounts, and New Books

April 16, 2024

We are thrilled to be attending the 2024 Latina/o/x Studies Association conference in Tempe this week! From April 17 to 20, find our table in the LSA Plaza, “a dynamic space to get together with long-time friends and colleagues—and find new ones—over coffee and conversation.” Navigation help and additional details are available on the LSA website.

We’re also thrilled to have some University of Arizona Press authors signing books at our table this year! Take a look at the schedule below to find out where and when you can meet our authors and get your books signed.

Finally, we’ll be selling a curated selection of our new, featured, and popular Latinx studies titles at a special conference discount of 35%. If you can’t attend this year, or if you need an extra copy of a book you discover at our table, we’ve got you covered: enter AZLSA24 at checkout on our website for 35% off all titles through 5/18/24.

Book Signing Schedule

Thursday, April 18

1:30-2:30 PM: Jesús Rosales and Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez, editors of La Plonqui: The Literary Life and Work of Margarita Cota-Cárdenas

2:30-3:30 PM: Michelle Téllez, author of Border Women and the Community of Maclovio Rojas

Friday, April 19

2:00-3:00 PM: Natalia Deeb-Sossa and Jennifer Bickham Mendez, authors of Latinx Belonging: Community Building and Resilience in the United States

Saturday, April 20

10:00-11:00 AM: Amber Rose GonzálezFelicia ‘Fe’ Montes, and Nadia Zepeda, editors of Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento: Spiritual Artivism, Healing Justice, and Feminist Praxis

New & Featured Latinx Studies Titles

Have you ever wanted a writing and research manual that centered Chicanx and Latinx scholarship? Writing that Matters does just that. While it includes a brief history of the roots of the fields of Chicanx literature and history, L Heidenreich and Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz emphasize practice: how to research and write a Chicanx or Latinx history paper; how to research and write a Chicanx or Latinx literature or cultural studies essay; and how to conduct interviews, frame pláticas, and conduct oral histories. It also includes a brief chapter on nomenclature and a grammar guide. Each chapter includes questions for discussion, and all examples from across the subfields are from noted Chicanx and Latinx scholars. Women’s and queer scholarship and methods are not addressed in a separate chapter but are instead integral to the work.

Founded in 1997, Mujeres de Maiz (MdM) is an Indigenous Xicana–led spiritual artivist organization and movement by and for women and feminists of color. Chronicling its quarter-century-long herstory, Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento weaves together diverse stories with attention to their larger sociopolitical contexts. The book crosses conventional genre boundaries through the inclusion of poetry, visual art, testimonios, and essays. The multidisciplinary, intergenerational, and critical-creative nature of the project coupled with the unique subject matter makes the book a must-have for high school and college students, activist-scholars, artists, community organizers, and others invested in social justice and liberation.

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 the Trump era. 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 chapter authors document a long list in what the book calls “Trump’s Reign of Terror.” Resistance and Abolition in the Borderlands is an essential reader for those wishing to understand the extent of the damage caused by the Trump era and its impact on Latinx people.

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, Ricardo 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.

Kneeling Before Corn focuses on the intimate relations that develop between plants and humans in the milpas of the northern rural region of El Salvador. It explores the ways in which more-than-human intimacies travel away from and return to the milpa through human networks. Collective and multivocal, this work reflects independent lines of investigation and multiple conversations between co-authors—all of whom have lived in El Salvador for extended periods of time. Throughout the six chapters, the co-authors invite readers to consider more-than-human intimacies by rethinking, experimenting with, and developing new ways of documenting, analyzing, and knowing the intimacies that form between humans and the plants that they cultivate, conserve, long for, and eat. This book offers an innovative account of rural El Salvador in the twenty-first century.

Author Karina Alma offers a systemic method and artistic mode for unpacking social and political memory formation that resists dominant histories. Central American Counterpoetics responds to political repression through acts of creativity that prioritize the well-being of anticolonial communities. Building on Toni Morrison’s theory of rememory, the volume examines the concept as an embodied experience of a sensory place and time lived in the here and now. By employing primary sources of image and word, interviews of creatives, and a critical self-reflection as a Salvadoran immigrant woman in academia, Alma’s research breaks ground in subject matter and methods by considering cultural and historical ties across countries, regions, and traditions. The diverse creatives included explore critical perspectives on topics such as immigration, forced assimilation, maternal love, gender violence, community arts, and decolonization.

Featured Series

BorderVisions engages the U.S.-Mexico borderlands’ dynamic histories and cultures and expands our understanding of the borderlands beyond a site of geopolitical inquiry. The series conceptualizes borderlands as both a place and a methodology and addresses the constraints of traditional fields, challenging authors to think creatively and critically about the expansive frameworks and possibilities of borderlands studies.

The Feminist Wire Books: Connecting Feminisms, Race, and Social Justice is a new series from The Feminist Wire (TFW) and the University of Arizona Press that presents a cultural bridge between the digital and printing worlds. These timely, critical books will contribute to feminist scholarship, pedagogy, and praxis in the twenty-first century.

Latinx Pop Culture is a new series that aims to shed light on all aspects of Latinx cultural production and consumption as well as the Latinx presence globally in popular cultural phenomena in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

The Critical Issues in Indigenous Studies series anchors intellectual work within an Indigenous framework that reflects Native-centered concerns and objectives. Series titles expand and deepen discussions about Indigenous people beyond nation-state boundaries, and complicate existing notions of Indigenous identity.

Arizona Crossroads explores the history of peoples and cultures, events and struggles, ideas and practices in the place we know today as Arizona.

Are you an author or editor? Do you have a project that would be a great fit for The University of Arizona Press? For questions or to submit a proposal to any of these series, please contact Editor-In-Chief Kristen Buckles at KBuckles@uapress.arizona.edu.

2024 SAA Conference: Discounts, New Books, and More

April 15, 2024

We are thrilled to be attending the 89th annual meeting annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology this week in New Orleans! On April 17-21, find us at booth #203 and 205 to browse the University of Arizona Press’ latest archaeology titles and meet with Senior Editor Allyson Carter.

If you can’t attend this year, or if you need an extra copy of a book you discover at our booth, we’ve got you covered: use AZSAA24 for 35% off all titles.

Are you an author or editor? Do you have a project that would be a great fit for The University of Arizona Press? To learn more about publishing with us, click here.

New Archaeology and Anthropology Titles

El Fin del Mundo describes a remote desert corner of Sonora, Mexico where the first evidence of Paleoindian interactions with gomphotheres, an extinct species related to elephants, has been recorded. This site is the northernmost dated late Pleistocene gomphothere and the youngest in North America. It is the first documented intact buried Clovis site outside of the United States, the first in situ Paleoindian site in northwestern Mexico, and the first documented evidence of Clovis gomphothere hunting in North America. This volume also describes a paleontological bone bed below the Clovis level, which includes a rare association of mastodon, mammoth, and gomphothere.

The Spanish conquest of Peru was motivated by the quest for precious metals, a search that resulted in the discovery of massive silver deposits in what is now southern Bolivia. The enormous flow of specie into the world economy is usually attributed to the Spanish imposition of a forced labor system on the Indigenous population as well as the introduction of European technology. This narrative omits the role played by thousands of independent miners, often working illegally, who at different points in history generated up to 30 percent of the silver produced in the region. In Silver “Thieves,” Tin Barons, and Conquistadors, Mary Van Buren examines the long-term history of these workers, the technology they used, and their relationship to successive large-scale mining.

In the Mimbres Valley of southwestern New Mexico, archaeologists have been working for decades to meticulously excavate archaeological sites. Expanding beyond studies that focus on a single pueblo, Ancient Communities in the Mimbres Valley represents the final report on the excavations of the Mimbres Foundation. It brings together data from a range of pithouse and pueblo sites of different sizes and histories in diverse locations—to refine the current understandings of Mimbres region archaeology in the context of the Greater Southwest.

Focused on the coast near Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, Mexico, Coastal Foragers of the Gran Desierto examines the diverse groups occupying the coast for salt, abundant food sources, and shells for ornament manufacturing. The archaeological patterns demonstrated by the data gathered lead to the conclusion that, since ancient times, this coastal landscape was not a marginal zone but rather an important source of food and trade goods, and a pilgrimage destination that influenced broad and diverse communities across the Sonoran Desert and beyond.

Including research from both highland central Mexico and the tropical lowlands of the Maya and Olmec areas, Ancient Mesoamerican Population History reexamines the demography in ancient Mesoamerica. Contributors present methods for determining population estimates, field methods for settlement pattern studies to obtain demographic data, and new technologies such as LiDAR (light detecting and ranging) that have expanded views of the ground in forested areas. Contributions to this book provide a view of ancient landscape use and modification that was not possible in the twentieth century. This important new work provides new understandings of Mesoamerican urbanism, development, and changes over time.

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.

Arizona KJZZ Interviews Anthony Macías

April 12, 2024

Anthony Macías was interviewed by Arizona’s KJZZ radio station about his book Chicano-Chicana Americana. Macías is a scholar of twentieth-century cultural history and a professor in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California, Riverside. Read the full interview here.

In the interview, Macías said, “These bit part actors that steal their scenes and manage to carve out some kind of success. I try to convey to a general audience the cultural studies notion that that representation matters, that how you see people and how you perceive them, impacts the way that you treat them and and their chances for upper mobility in the American dream.”

About the book:

Chicano-Chicana Americana is a cultural history of Mexican Americans in film, television, and theater. Through biographical sketches of performers such as Anthony Quinn, Katy Jurado, Robert Beltran, and Lupe Ontiveros, this work asserts Mexican Americans’ proper place in the national narratives of our collective imaginary. Conveying a multicentered, polycultural America, this book shows us intriguing performers in bit parts who steal the scene and redefine what it means to be American.

Excerpt from “We Stay the Same”

April 11, 2024

On a remote island in the South Pacific, the Lavongai have consistently struggled to obtain development through logging and commercial agriculture. Yet many Lavongai still long to move beyond the grind of subsistence work that has seemingly defined their lives on New Hanover, Papua New Guinea, for generations.

Following a long history of smaller-scale and largely unsuccessful resource development efforts, New Hanover became the site of three multinational-controlled special agricultural and business leases (SABLs) that combined to cover over 75 percent of the island for ninety-nine-year lease terms. These agroforestry projects were part of a national effort to encourage “sustainable” rural development by tapping into the growing global demand for agricultural lands and crops like oil palm and biofuels. They were supposed to succeed where the smaller-scale projects of the past had failed. Unfortunately, these SABLs resulted in significant forest loss and livelihood degradation, while doing little to promote the type of economic development that many Lavongai had been hoping for.

It is within this context that Jason Roberts’ “We Stay the Same” grounds questions of hope for transformative economic change within Lavongai assessments of the inequitable relationships between global processes of resource development and the local lives that have become increasingly defined by the necessities and failures of these processes. Read an excerpt from the book’s first chapter below.

New Hanover (Lavongai) is a relatively small, remote volcanic island located within New Ireland Province (NIP), Papua New Guinea (PNG). The island is 119,140 hectares in size, with a mountainous interior that can reach up to 1,000 m above sea level (Kaiku and Kaiku 2008). It is home to approximately 31,882 people, collectively called the Lavongai (PNG NSO 2021), who speak an indigenous language, Tungak, as well as one of the national languages of PNG—Tok Pisin. “Mipela stap olsem” is a Tok Pisin phrase that means “we live like this,” “we are like this,” or “we stay the same.” It is a phrase that I heard often during my time on New Hanover, normally when people would discuss issues related to economic development, or more likely, the lack of sustained development or positive material change on the island. In this way, the phrase was often used as an implicit critique of a subsistence lifestyle that many Lavongai presented as having existed relatively unchanged since time immemorial. At the same time, “mipela stap olsem” was also a critique of the structural forces that allowed some groups to achieve tremendous prosperity while others were seemingly destined for hardship and toil. While the Lavongai were only too familiar with the comparative affluence that outsiders like me enjoyed by mere circumstance of birth, they were also painfully aware that their own lives remained directly tied to the ground and the necessities of subsistence.

The Lavongai are, and always have been, self-sufficient. They make their living as shifting horticulturalists, producing a variety of food crops including staples such as taro (kirak), sweet potato (“kau”), banana (ur), cassava (“tapiok”), sago (ngavia), and greens (banga). People raise money for other necessities like salt, clothes, medicine, and school fees through the smallscale trade of cash crops like betelnut (vua) and mustard (sia), as well as surplus food crops. The work required to “find money,” therefore, is normally a difficult and slow task. Moving away from the rigors of subsistence living toward the anticipated prosperity of consumer-capitalist lifestyles has been, and continues to be, a prime objective for many Lavongai. Unfortunately, like other politically and economically marginal peoples throughout the world, their options for achieving development within the global market have been slim and poorly supported by successive colonial and national governments (Billings 2002; Tauvasa 1968/1969). Historically, what integration New Hanover has achieved within the global economy has been limited to the intermittent production and export of primary products such as copra, timber, and seafood.

In 2007, however, New Hanover became the site of three large-scale, multinational-controlled special agricultural and business leases (SABLs) that combined to cover approximately 79 percent of the island, for ninety-nine-year lease periods. These SABLs, like SABLs throughout PNG, were supposed to develop commercially viable agricultural plantations through the conversion of forested lands and the broad simplification of communal land tenure structures (95% of PNG’s land base), thought necessary to facilitate private investment (Filer 2011, 2012). SABL expansion throughout the country was part of a larger effort to promote national development and rural economic integration by combining the historically important logging and commercial agricultural industries in a way that would tap into the growing global demand for agricultural lands and crops like oil palm and biofuels (GoPNG 2011). These joint public-private development projects offered the Lavongai the opportunity to exchange timber and land rights for promises of fair-market timber royalties, commercial agricultural development, employment and job training, infrastructure improvements, and enhanced social service provisioning. As the New Ireland provincial administrator suggested above, this opportunity initially proved appealing for many Lavongai—particularly those in positions of decision-making power. People on the island had long been hoping for development to deliver these promises. SABLs seemed to offer a real path toward sustained global economic integration, as well as the social recognition that tends to go along with this integration. These projects appeared capable of succeeding where the smaller-scale, typically state-led projects of the past had failed.

As Abraham, a local landowner director in charge of representing the interests of his lineage group at Sulava village, as well as those of other Lavongai living within the 56,592-hectare Central New Hanover Limited SABL explained:

“The big motivation for making this [SABL] agreement was to improve life for the people of the island. Because we [PNG] got independence in 1975, and so far, there hasn’t been one good change for all of us who live here [on New Hanover]. We haven’t gotten one good service. From the time of the ancestors until now, we’ve stayed the same. There’s been no true development to come here because our government doesn’t work for us. New Hanover is a place where government has no mark. Our politicians only come around here at the time of elections. They make big talk with lots of big promises. Then we mark their names on the ballot and they go back [to town], and that’s where they stay. They forget about us—all of us who live out in the villages, out in the bush. They don’t work to create development for us like they say they will. All the government money that is supposed to be used for these things; it never turns out well. So, that’s why we finally decided that we must try to find a different road [to development]. That’s why we decided to bring the private sector to the island. We wanted the Company [Tutuman Development / Joinland Logging] to bring money, infrastructure, agriculture, and the savvy to help us develop.”

2024 NOAZ Book Festival: Discounts, New Books, and More

April 13, 2024

We are thrilled to be attending the 2024 Northern Arizona Book Festival (NOAZBF) in Flagstaff, AZ this week! On April 13, find our table in Heritage Square where we’ll have the University of Arizona Press’ latest Indigenous literature titles on sale for 35% off.

If you can’t attend this year, or if you need an extra copy of a book you discover at our table, we’ve got you covered: use AZNOAZ24 for 35% off all titles.

If you’re at the festival, don’t miss Assistant Editor Elizabeth Wilder, who is on an Indigenous Publishing Panel happening at 1:00 PM at the Theatrikos Theatre Company, 11 W Cherry Ave. See the full schedule of events for more details.

Are you an author or editor? Do you have a project that would be a great fit for The University of Arizona Press? To learn more about publishing with us, click here.

New Indigenous Literature Titles

Light As Light is acclaimed poet Simon J. Ortiz’s first collection in twenty years. The poems in this volume celebrate the wonders and joy of love in the present while also looking back with both humorous and serious reflections on youth and the stories, scenes, people, and places that shape a person’s life. Light As Light brims with giddy, wistful long-distance love poems that offer a dialogue between the speaker and his beloved. Written in Ortiz’s signature conversational style, this volume claims poetry for everyday life. The collection also includes prayer poems written for the speaker’s son; poems that retell traditional Acoma stories and history; and poems that engage environmental, political, and social justice issues—making for a well-rounded collection that blends the playful and the profound.

Elegiac and powerful, Ancient Light uses lyric, narrative, and concrete poems to give voice to some of the most pressing ecological and social issues of our time. With vision and resilience, Kimberly Blaeser’s poetry layers together past, present, and futures. Against a backdrop of pandemic loss and injustice, MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women), hidden graves at Native American boarding schools, and destructive environmental practices, Blaeser’s innovative poems trace pathways of kinship, healing, and renewal. With an Anishinaabe sensibility, her words and images invoke an ancient belonging and voice the deep relatedness she experiences in her familiar watery regions of Minnesota.

The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature is unprecedented. It showcases the breadth, depth, and diversity of Diné creative artists and their poetry, fiction, and nonfiction prose.This wide-ranging anthology brings together writers who offer perspectives that span generations and perspectives on life and Diné history. 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.

Featured Series

Sun Tracks, launched in 1971, was one of the first publishing programs to focus exclusively on the creative works of Native Americans. The series has included more than eighty volumes of poetry, prose, art, and photography by such distinguished artists as Joy Harjo, N. Scott Momaday, Simon J. Ortiz, Carter Revard, and Luci Tapahonso.

For questions or to submit a proposal to this series, please contact Assistant Editor, Elizabeth Wilder, at EWilder@uapress.arizona.edu.

LA Times Festival of Books Features Pelaez Lopez and Báez

April 3, 2024

Editor Alan Pelaez Lopez and Poet Diego Báez will be at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on Sunday, April 21. Pelaez Lopez, editor of When Language Broke Open: An Anthology of Queer and Trans Black Writers of Latin American Descent, will speak on “Everything Latinidad: Challenging the Myth of the Monolith.” They will speak on the Latinidad Stage, 4:00 – 4:40 p.m. Báez will read from his latest collection, Yaguareté White, on the Poetry Stage, 2:20 – 2:40 p.m. All festival events take place on the University of Southern California campus.

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books began in 1996 with a simple goal: to bring together the people who create books with the people who love to read them. The festival was an immediate success and has evolved to include live bands, poetry readings, film screenings and artists creating their work on-site. All outdoor events, including those with Pelaez Lopez and Báez, are free to attend. Indoor panels require a small fee for advance reservations. Discover all the 2024 Festival participants.

Congratulations to Alan and Diego!

About When Language Broke Open:

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.

By exploring themes of memory, care, and futurity, these contributions expand understandings of Blackness in Latin America, the Caribbean, and their U.S.-based diasporas.

About Yaguareté White:

In Diego Báez’s debut collection, Yaguareté White, English, Spanish, and Guaraní encounter each other through the elusive yet potent figure of the jaguar. The son of a Paraguayan father and a mother from Pennsylvania, Báez grew up in central Illinois as one of the only brown kids on the block—but that didn’t keep him from feeling like a gringo on family visits to Paraguay. Exploring this contradiction as it weaves through experiences of language, self, and place, Báez revels in showing up the absurdities of empire and chafes at the limits of patrimony, but he always reserves his most trenchant irony for the gaze he turns on himself.

Kamat’s “In a Wounded Land” Available on Open Arizona

April 2, 2024

We’re excited to announce that Vinay R. Kamat’s In a Wounded Land: Conservation, Extraction, and Human Well-Being in Coastal Tanzania has just been published and is simultaneously available on Open Arizona! Open Arizona is a portal of open-access titles from the University of Arizona Press. We are adding new content to the site monthly. Please check back frequently to see our latest offerings!

About the book:

Focusing on the human element of marine conservation and the extractive industry in Tanzania, this volume illuminates what happens when impoverished people living in underdeveloped regions of Africa are suddenly subjected to state-directed conservation and natural resource extraction projects. Drawing on ethnographically rich case studies and vignettes, the book documents the impacts of these projects on local populations and their responses to these projects over a ten-year period.

April 1, 2024

We had a great time at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology in Santa Fe, New Mexico last week! Sincerest thanks to everyone who visited our table.

If you weren’t able to visit us at the bookfair, there’s still time to order the books we had on display. Get 35% off with discount code AZANTH24 at checkout until 4/26/24.

Check out the photos of the event below!

Senior Editor Allyson Carter at our table with new and recent anthropology titles.

Thanks to everyone who came by to say hello, browse books, and talk with us at the conference!

CALÓ News Interviews Amber Rose González, Felicia ‘Fe’ Montes, and Nadia Zepeda

March 28, 2024

In advance of the April 7 Los Angeles book launch party for Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento: Spiritual Artivism, Healing Justice, and Feminist Praxis, Denise Florez of CALÓ News interviewed editors Amber Rose González, Felicia ‘Fe’ Montes, and Nadia Zepeda.

In the article, Fe Montes said, “We see art as a tool for education, empowerment and transformation. And so we could educate about a holiday or community event or historical event in a poem.” She further explained that Mujeres de Maiz will also hold poetry processions in the streets, in an auto repair store or a nail salon. She said: “We walk along the south side of César Chávez Boulevard and do that. So bringing it to not only the cultural centers, but literally to the people or to high school assemblies in the schools.”

Nadia Zepeda said, “I really see the importance of documenting our movements and documenting the work that has been done in Los Angeles and surrounding cities. I came to the work around wellness and connections to ancestral indigenous knowledge.”

Read the full interview here.

About the book:

Founded in 1997, Mujeres de Maiz (MdM) is an Indigenous Xicana–led spiritual artivist organization and movement by and for women and feminists of color. Chronicling its quarter-century-long herstory, this collection weaves together diverse stories with attention to their larger sociopolitical contexts. The book crosses conventional genre boundaries through the inclusion of poetry, visual art, testimonios, and essays.

MdM’s political-ethical-spiritual commitments, cultural production, and everyday practices are informed by Indigenous and transnational feminist of color artistic, ceremonial, activist, and intellectual legacies. Contributors fuse stories of celebration, love, and spirit-work with an incisive critique of interlocking oppressions, both intimate and structural, encouraging movement toward “a world where many worlds fit.”

Five Questions for L Heidenreich and Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz

March 26, 2024

Have you ever wanted a writing and research manual that centered Chicanx and Latinx scholarship? Writing that Matters: A Handbook for Chicanx and Latinx Studies does just that. While it includes a brief history of the roots of the fields of Chicanx literature and history, Writing that Matters emphasizes practice: how to research and write a Chicanx or Latinx history paper; how to research and write a Chicanx or Latinx literature or cultural studies essay; and how to conduct interviews, frame pláticas, and conduct oral histories.

How did you first come up with the idea for this book?

When teaching writing, whether in literature or history classes, we were both frustrated with a lack of resources for teaching from a Chicanx or from a Latinx base of knowledge.  Most handbooks are written with white, Eurocentric frameworks and/or from a white, Eurocentric lens. Using the supposedly generic writing and research manuals was alienating for us when we were students.  As professors, we found ourselves altering assignments and reworking prompts so that our students would connect with them and see themselves and our communities represented.

In our early careers, we both kept hoping for a handbook in our respective fields.  As senior scholars, we realized we were the generation that needed to do this—that we could create our own handbook.  Aside from our writing materials, we were fortunate to know an incredible artist, Anel Flores, who could create images and a book cover to help inspire our students.  At the Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS), the organization where we first workshopped our ideas, many of our colleagues and friends who teach writing gave us their unanimous endorsement; therefore, we crafted the handbook we had needed all along.

What do you mean in the book when you say: “Research is Me-search?”

This is an expression that Dr. Urquijo Ruiz learned while at the University of California, San Diego, and that she shared with Dr. Heidenreich.  Of course, we use it because it rings true with us and we have found that it rings true with our students.  To say that “research is me-search” is to say that the best work we do tends to come from a connection within us.  When we allow ourselves to be inspired, to do work that matters to us, that resonates with our life experiences and those of our multiple communities, then we have the energy to do great work. We teach our classes, we encourage students to seek out questions that resonate deeply within themselves.  We have worked to make sure that our handbook takes a similar approach.

How will students use this book to crush the patriarchy?

Words, research, and a solid argument are all tools that can be wielded to create fissures in the structures that create inequality in our lives and the world around us.  The handbook is structured to help students develop their tool sets so that they have strong research, writing, and rhetoric skills with which to challenge multiple systems of inequality—systems constructed by, and constitutive, of patriarchy and heteronormativity.

What are the challenges that Chicanx and Latinx students face when interviewing family members or others in search of oral history, pláticas and testimonios?

Wow, there are many challenges; so here are just a couple of them.  On a very basic level, it can be hard to find a quiet place to hold the interview.  Our homes are busy places.  So, we encourage students to take advantage of library rooms – both public libraries and campus libraries, which are much quieter.  On a deeper level, because of the ways in which sexism and racism function in society, many of our family members experienced difficult, if not traumatic experiences either in coming to the U.S., or here in the U.S. itself. This is why, even when interviewing family members, it is important for students try to have a preliminary meeting where they can discuss their goals with the interviewee and let their family member ask them questions about the process.  Of course, it is always critical to make sure family members know they can skip questions, take a break, or just change their mind about doing the interview.  The wonderful thing about interviewing family members is that the family gains a narrative of their own history that they can keep and share with present and future generations.

What are you both working on now? 

L Heidenreich:  I am working on a book about women religious (Catholic sisters) and the United Farm Worker movement.  Not much has been written about the women of the movement, and since women religious were a strong influence on my formative years, I wanted to start the project there: excavating the work of Catholic sisters and the Union.  Of course, women of the UFW, in general, are grossly under-researched and so the project will not be exclusively about the sisters.  My m.o. is to draft a mini proposal, produce a couple articles or book chapters, and then draft a book proposal proper.

Because I started the project right as the Covid pandemic began, I had to start with online and print sources.  So, the first article wound up being about Dolores Huerta and a 2009 speech she gave at the Twenty-first National Conference on LGBT Equality.  That was published in Catholic Women’s Rhetoric in the United States (Lexington, 2022).  Huerta is an inspiring figure and being able to do that work during the pandemic kept me grounded and hopeful.  I now have a broader article coming out in U.S. Catholic Historian (Summer, 2024) titled “Saintly Protest: Women Religious, Religious Women, and the Early United Farm Worker Movement.”  That brings me to “two”; and so now it is time for me to sit down and draft the book proposal–which makes it all very real.

Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz: I am currently enjoying my work as a culturally and linguistically sensitive translator of children’s books (from English to Spanish). Because my siblings and I were raised in Sonora, Mexico, in an environment that lacked basic needs, books (except for textbooks) were rarely present when we were growing up. I want to change that for the new generations of children in my family and in my communities in general. Thus far, I have translated six picture books for ages K-5th grade, and I translated one novel in verse from Dr. Carmen Tafolla, the first Texas Poet Laureate, titled Warrior Girl / Guerrera. The novel is about a pre-teen Chicanita from San Antonio, Texas, raised in a mix-status family, who is proud of her Mexican and Chicanx heritages.

On the research side: we just finished the last edits for our book Latinidad and Film: Queer and Feminist Cinema in the Americas (Palgrave Macmillan, July 2024) that I co-authored with my dear colleagues-friends Drs. Dania Abreu-Torres and Rosana Blanco-Cano. On the creative side: I continue to work on my memoir and I’m proud that my piece “First Visit” was published in the anthology Somewhere We Are Human: Authentic Voices on Migration, Survival, and New Beginnings, co-edited by Reyna Grande and Sonia Guiñansaca (HiperVia, 2023).
***
L Heidenreich is a professor of history at Washington State University. They are the author of “This Land Was Mexican Once”: Histories of Resistance from Northern California and Nepantla2: Transgender Mestiz@ Histories in Times of Global Shift. Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz is a Mexicana/Chicana fronteriza queer educator, translator, writer, activist, and performer from Sonora, Mexico, and southern California. She is a professor of Spanish as well as Chicanx studies, queer studies, and global Latinx studies at Trinity University.

2024 SfAA Conference: Discounts, New Books, and More

March 25, 2024

We are thrilled to be attending the 2024 Society for Applied Anthropology annual meeting in Santa Fe, New Mexico this week! From March 26-30, find our table to browse the University of Arizona Press’ latest anthropology titles and meet with editor Allyson Carter.

If you can’t attend this year, or if you need an extra copy of a book you discover at our booth, we’ve got you covered: use AZANTH24 for 35% off all titles.

Are you an author or editor? Do you have a project that would be a great fit for The University of Arizona Press? To learn more about publishing with us, click here.

New Anthropology Titles

Editors Kristin Elizabeth Yarris and Whitney L. Duncan bring 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.” 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.

Focusing on the human element of marine conservation and the extractive industry in Tanzania, Vinay R. Kamat illuminates what happens when impoverished people living in underdeveloped regions of Africa are suddenly subjected to state-directed conservation and natural resource extraction projects, implemented in their landscapes of subsistence. In a Wounded Land draws on ethnographically rich case studies and vignettes collected over a ten-year period in several coastal villages on Tanzania’s southeastern border with Mozambique.

Kneeling Before Corn focuses on the intimate relations that develop between plants and humans in the milpas of the northern rural region of El Salvador. It explores the ways in which more-than-human intimacies travel away from and return to the milpa through human networks. Collective and multivocal, this work reflects independent lines of investigation and multiple conversations between co-authors—all of whom have lived in El Salvador for extended periods of time. This book offers an innovative account of rural El Salvador in the twenty-first century.

We Stay the Same grounds questions of hope for transformative economic change within Lavongai assessments of the inequitable relationships between global processes of resource development and the local lives that have become increasingly defined by the necessities and failures of these processes. Written in a clear and relatable style for students, Jason Roberts combines ethnographic and ecological research to show how the Lavongai continue to survive and make meaningful lives in a situation where their own hopes for a better future have often been used against them as a mechanism of a more distantly profitable dispossession.

In this delightful biography, Shelby Tisdale gives us insight into a time when there were few women establishing full-time careers in anthropology, archaeology, or museums. No Place for a Lady 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.

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.

Featured Series

Global Change/Global Health is a new series for scholarly monographs that treat global change and human health as interconnected phenomena. The goals of the series are to advance scholarship across the social and health sciences, contribute to public debates, and inform public policies about the human dimensions of global change.

biodiversity in small spaces is a series that provides short, to-the-point books that re-examine the conservation of biodiversity in small places and focus on the interplay of memory, identity, and affect in determining what matters, and thus what stays, thereby shaping the fabric of biodiversity in the present and, ultimately, the future. The authors will cover, in an accessible way, the range of marginalities, subjectivities, and chronologies, from indigenous farmers nurturing, defending, or repatriating their traditional crop varieties to college towns re-embedding food production and consumption into the social fabric of their communities.

Critical Issues in Indigenous Studies anchors intellectual work within an Indigenous framework that reflects Native-centered concerns and objectives. Series titles expand and deepen discussions about Indigenous people beyond nation-state boundaries, and complicate existing notions of Indigenous identity.

Critical Green Engagements is a series that critically engages with the growing global advocacy of the “green economy” model for environmental stewardship and puts forth alternatives to discourses that dominate “green” practices. The series explores how different advocates, bystanders, and opponents engage with the changes envisaged by policy directives and environmental visions.

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

Manuela L. Picq Wins Outstanding Activist Scholar Award

March 20, 2024

Manuela L. Picq is the 2024 Outstanding Activist Scholar Awardee from the International Political Economy section of the International Studies Association. She joins an extraordinary list of past recipients that includes Angela Davis, Naomi Klein, Walden Bello, and David Graeber. 

A celebratory reception will take place on Thursday, April 4, 12:30 p.m., Imperial A, Hilton Union Square, at the International Studies Association Annual Convention in San Francisco. After the reception, there will be a panel discussing Picq’s scholarship; the panel features Hasmet Uluorta, Markus Thiel, Robin Broad and Arlene Tickner. Finally, Picq will give a talk titled “When Our Bodies Stand With Our Ideas.”

About Vernacular Sovereignties: Indigenous Women Challenging World Politics:

Indigenous women are rarely accounted for in world politics. Imagined as passive subjects at the margins of political decision-making, they often epitomize the antithesis of international relations. Yet from their positions of marginality they are shaping sovereignty.
 
In Vernacular Sovereignties, Manuela Lavinas Picq shows that Indigenous women have long been dynamic political actors who have partaken in international politics and have shaped state practices carrying different forms of resistance. Her research on Ecuador shows that although Kichwa women face overlapping oppressions from socioeconomic exclusions to sexual violence, they are achieving rights unparalleled in the world.

Five Questions for Amber Rose González, Felicia ‘Fe’ Montes, and Nadia Zepeda

March 18, 2024

Founded in 1997, Mujeres de Maiz (MdM) is an Indigenous Xicana–led spiritual artivist organization and movement by and for women and feminists of color. Chronicling its quarter-century-long herstory, editors Amber Rose González, Felicia ‘Fe’ Montes, and Nadia Zepeda weave together diverse stories with attention to their larger sociopolitical contexts. Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento crosses conventional genre boundaries through the inclusion of poetry, visual art, testimonios, and essays.

What made you want write a book about the Mujeres de Maiz movement?

Nadia: We all saw the importance of documenting the work of Mujeres de Maiz. All three of us were working with Mujeres de Maiz in some capacity as well as finishing our thesis and dissertations about the work. We also wanted to highlight other folk who were writing about Mujeres de Maiz in academic spaces. It made sense to weave together this collective history and also highlight and elevate the art and writing that has been produced. The task of documenting Mujeres de Maiz was a big one because we wanted to encompass as many elements of the collective as possible. This meant highlighting the work of early members through testimonies, featuring the work in the zines that have been part of the collective since its inception, and incorporating the art and performances that make Mujeres de Maiz. 

Fe: From the very beginning of Mujeres de Maiz we knew we were doing something special. There was an energy, a spark, a connection, emotions, love, and what felt like a change in our DNA. We knew that we had to document it, whether it was through video, writing, or telling our stories in the same traditions that our women of color predecessors had. The book is our story, our documentation of our herstory, and the femmifestation of our prayer and of prophecy. We see it as our own codex. 

How do the people of Mujeres de Maiz bring Indigenous systems of communalism and spirituality to today’s urban spaces?
Amber: Mujeres de Maiz is an Indigenous Xicana/x-led organization and movement with many of the individuals belonging to/having heritage within different nations that span the continent. As feminists, cultural bearers, artists, activists, teachers, parents, etc., we bring many overlapping worldviews, spiritual practices, and ways of being, teaching, and learning into the spaces we create. Spirituality is a part of everything we do!

Why does the book include visual art as well as text?
Amber: Mujeres de Maiz is a multidisciplinary, multimedia spiritual artivist collective. Many of the artivists cross artistic genres, whether written or visual. The written work in the book includes testimonios or life writing, academic essays, and poetry, with many authors blending prose, theory, and poetic expression. This hybrid approach that breaks with dominant writing conventions (borders), is part of a long tradition of feminist of color writing. Visual art is equally important in the documentation of MdM’s herstory. The combination of the written and the visual to tell an epic story is also part of a centuries-old Mesoamerican tradition. This book is our present-day Xicana/x amoxtli, our codex.

Why is maiz important to Chicanas?
Fe: Maiz is our sacred mother—it is our creation story, our sustenance, our prayer, our lineage, and our direct connection to the land.

What is your next project?
Amber: We plan to create a suite of teacher resources to accompany the book that will be free and available on our website. We’ve discussed a possible second book that will feature some of the cultural production of MdM artivists and additional essays and testimonios that we either didn’t have space for or were otherwise unable to secure for the first project. We’ve also talked about an MdM archive project. We look forward to translating the book into Spanish. 
***

Amber Rose González is a queer Apachicana born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley, California, and ancestrally rooted in New Mexico and Jalisco. She is a professor of ethnic studies at Fullerton College, a writer-researcher-organizer with Mujeres de Maiz, and a co-author and editor of the open-access textbook New Directions in Chicanx and Latinx Studies.

Felicia “Fe” Montes is a Chicana Indigenous artist based in Los Angeles. Montes is a multimedia artist, poet, performer, educator, professor, and emcee.

Nadia Zepeda is an assistant professor in the Department of Chicana/o Studies at California State University, Fullerton. Through collaborative and community-based research, she traces the genealogy of healing justice in Chicana/x feminist organizing.

March 13, 2024

Thank you to everyone who made the 2024 Tucson Festival of Books another spectacular celebration of literacy, books, and authors! We are grateful to the authors who shared their time and work, our staff who made our booth so special, the volunteers who work behind the scenes to make it all happen, and our community who showed up to support the Press and our authors.

We’re continuing the celebration for just a few more days by offering a 35% discount off all books when you use code AZTFB24 on our website.

Here are just a few highlights from the weekend:

Bennu 3-D author Carina A. Bennett, Catherine W.V. Wolner, and Dante S. Lauretta signing copies of their book.
University of Arizona Press staff Elizabeth Wilder, Cameron Louie, Leigh McDonald, and Anissa Suazo get ready for the day.
Melissa L. Sevigny, Shelby Tisdale, and Marie Buck before their panel on the National Parks stage.
Carolyn Niethammer and staff member Leigh McDonald visit in our booth.
Daisy Ocampo and Simon Ortiz sign books in our booth.
Reyes Ramirez and Tim Z. Hernandez signing books before their panels.
Ricardo Báez, Diego Báez, and Sara Báez during Diego’s signing in our tent.
William L. Bird Jr. and staff member Kristen Buckles near our booth.
Diane Dittemore and staff member Alana Enriquez during Diane’s signing in our booth.
A. Thomas Cole and Shelby Tisdale sign copies of their books in our booth.
Stephen J. Pyne and Tom Zoellner in our booth.

Excerpt from “Central American Counterpoetics”

March 12, 2024

Connecting past and present, Central American Counterpoetics proposes the concepts of rememory and counterpoetics as decolonial tools for studying the art, popular culture, literature music, and healing practices of Central America and the diaspora in the United States.

Author Karina Alma offers a systemic method and artistic mode for unpacking social and political memory formation that resists dominant histories. Central American Counterpoetics responds to political repression through acts of creativity that prioritize the well-being of anticolonial communities. Building on Toni Morrison’s theory of rememory, the volume examines the concept as an embodied experience of a sensory place and time lived in the here and now. By employing primary sources of image and word, interviews of creatives, and a critical self-reflection as a Salvadoran immigrant woman in academia, Alma’s research breaks ground in subject matter and methods by considering cultural and historical ties across countries, regions, and traditions. The diverse creatives included explore critical perspectives on topics such as immigration, forced assimilation, maternal love, gender violence, community arts, and decolonization. Read an excerpt from the book’s first chapter below.

This story is necessary to understand the dimension of exploitation and epistemic violence enacted by United Statesian men who gazed upon Central America as an opportunity to amass wealth. This is also a difficult story to tell because it means processing how people from the Global North exploited a pair of Salvadoran siblings at the close of the nineteenth century. There are no counterpoetics in their story. The fiction of intellectual, moral, racial, and cultural superiority of Euro/Americans plays into my research of another fabrication, that of the microcephalic Salvadoran “Aztec” siblings, Maximo and Bartola. The guardian/owner exhibited the siblings throughout the United States and Europe in the mid- to late 1800s. Their compelling story, fictitious and real, resonates with the Central American humanish as a (neo)colonial construction. Societies influenced by eugenics enslaved, trafficked, legally violated, measured, probed, and categorized the children between human and animal. I posit that their origin story as Indigenous Central American, their small stature, and microcephaly enabled the moral ease of Euro/American owners, men of medicine, science, and visitors to take part in the children’s exploitation. What matters in telling their story is the question of honoring Maximo and Bartola’s lives and asking whether U.S. Central Americans can welcome them as one of the earliest examples of Salvadoran immigrants in the U.S. diaspora.

Viewing Central America/ns within the economic realm rather than the epistemological, social, and cultural has justified historical violences on them. Such is the example of the famed expeditions of John Lloyd Stephens, driven to travel throughout the isthmus by anthropological and economic interests. Stephens states: “The reader is perhaps curious to know how old cities sell in Central America. . . . I was to pay fifty dollars for Copán. There was never any difficulty about price.” The quote shows the historical treatment of Central America/ns as sites of zero internal valuation. If American and European travelers could buy objects, artifacts, and sacred sites at a pittance according to the dominating culture, it is because of the elitist and racist idea that rural, Indigenous, and so-called common people lack knowledge and self-worth.

The Global North racial capitalists see material cultures within the logics of commodities. Even academic and trained professionals that critique American, British, and other (neo)colonial ventures underpin supposed Central American ignorance and American cunning encapsulated in the perspective that the “negative view of ‘primitive’ Hondurans was . . . echoed by nearly every visitor to Honduras. Visitors derided the people’s ignorance, although many arrived precisely to take advantage of that ignorance.” This claim by Alison Acker aims to condemn the exploitative practices of Global North tourists, anthropologists, and so forth. However, the statement ends up affirming the idea that Hondurans are ignorant. Neoliberal critiques rarely account for the internal stratifications by which the neocolonial Criollo governs through a hierarchical social order that sells out its rural, Indigenous, Black, and economically impoverished populations—their lands, bodies, labor, wares, resources, and cultural arts—to American and European investors. Transborder elites hold an attitude of entitlement, of the right to own everything, shown for example by a visiting British foreign secretary speaking on Honduras in 1854. He recommended: “Be careful . . . that you do not lead the people of the country to attach any imaginary value to things they consider at the present as having no value at all.”

Excerpt from “Resistance and Abolition in the Borderlands”

March 7, 2024

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. Resistance and Abolition in the Borderlands, edited by Arturo J. Aldama and Jessica Ordaz, is an essential reader for those wishing to understand the extent of the damage caused by the Trump era and its impact on Latinx people.

This volume provides a well-argued look at the Trump era. 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 chapter authors document a long list in what the book calls “Trump’s Reign of Terror.”

Organized thematically, the book has four sections: The first gathers histories about the Trump years’ roots in a longer history of anti-migration; the second includes essays on artistic and activist responses on the border during the Trump years; the third critiques the normalization of Trump’s rhetoric and actions in popular media and culture; and the fourth envisions the future. Read an excerpt from the book’s Introduction below.

We write from the traditional territories of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Ute Nations and start by calling out the cruelty of U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers (over 50 percent of whom are Hispanic identified). They mocked and humiliated the children, many Indigenous and Afro-Indigenous identified, who cried from pain and trauma and terror when they were taken from their parents as part of Trump’s family separation policy, a zero tolerance policy that stole more than 2,500 children from their parents as they attempted to seek asylum in the United States. The 2018 ProPublica article “Listen to Children Who’ve Just Been Separated from Their Parents at the Border” provides leaked audio of ten children sobbing, screaming, and crying out for their “mami and papa.” The children were estimated to be between four and ten years old. It is gut wrenching to listen to the “live trauma” of the children trying to process the terror and fear they felt because of Trump’s zero tolerance policy. Their feelings were violated further by the border patrol officers who mocked their pain and humiliated them. The audio reveals the baritone voice of an officer yelling above the crying of the children. He says, “Well, we have an orchestra here.” “What’s missing is a conductor.”

It might be easy to dismiss the border patrol officer’s traumatizing “humor” as that of a stressed-out officer with poor taste. However, this added cruelty, which makes children into literal abjects, underscores Trump’s presidency, rhetoric, political theater, and policies. His callousness inspired others to enunciate their white supremacist views and actions. To augment further this view of Trump and those who feel “liberated” by his white supremacism, we ask readers to engage with the staff report titled The Trump Administration’s Family Separation Policy: Trauma, Destruction, and Chaos. The report concludes that the family separation policy—which was piloted in El Paso, Texas, in 2017 and was prepared within weeks of President Trump’s inauguration—was “driven by an Administration that was willfully blind to its cruelty” and “determined to go to unthinkable extremes to deliver on political promises,” such as stopping migrants from entering the United States.

As editors of this collection, we also recognize, remember, and mourn the countless queer and trans migrants who were incarcerated, deported, or murdered during the Trump era. As the world learned in December 2020, a transgender asylum seeker from Ecuador named C.O. was held in solitary confinement at the Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia for six months due to his gender identity. Immigration authorities held C.O. and denied him hormone treatment as well as other medical resources. Honduran migrant Roxsana Hernandez died due to medical neglect and the traumatizing experience of the detention center or “icebox,” so named for its cold temperatures and lack of warm bedding. News reports suggest that when Roxsana was transferred to a private prison, she presented with severe symptoms of “dehydration and pneumonia.” Roxsana passed away shortly afterward in a hospital. Johana Medina
León, like Roxsana, died due to medical neglect and the depraved indifference shown to her medical needs. May we remember their names and lives, and may they rest in power.

Contributors:
Arturo J. Aldama
Rebecca Avalos
Cynthia Bejarano
Tria Blu Wakpa
Renata Carvalho Barreto
Karma R. Chávez
Leo R. Chavez
Jennifer Cullison
Jasmin Lilian Diab
Allison Glover
Jamila Hammami
Alexandria Herrera
Diana J. Lopez
Sergio A. Macías
Cinthya Martinez
Alexis N. Meza
Roberto A. Mónico
José Enrique Navarro
Jessica Ordaz
Eliseo Ortiz
Kiara Padilla
Leslie Quintanilla
J-M Rivera
Heidy Sarabia
Tina Shull
Nishant Upadhyay
Maria Vargas
Antonio Vásquez

Excerpt from “The Space Age Generation”

March 5, 2024

In 1957 Sputnik launched toward the stars. President Kennedy then announced that the United States would send men to the Moon and then return them to Earth. These pivotal moments sparked an unequaled bound forward in human innovation and scientific exploration.

At the heart of this momentous time were the men and women working behind the scenes. Scientists, historians, and astronomers share their memories and contributions from this unparalleled era in essays told in their own words. They are the remarkable generation who witnessed and contributed to some of space science’s most stunning achievements. In The Space Age Generation: Lives and Lessons from the Golden Age of Solar System Exploration, edited by William Sheehan and Klaus R. Brasch, this generation has recorded their memories—their childhood inspirations, their challenges, failures, and triumphs—for future generations. Read an excerpt from the book’s Introduction below.

It’s not always clear that one has lived in a golden age until after the fact.

In retrospect, the period from the early fifties until the late eighties was a one-off , a golden age of planetary science. Those like us who lived through it were fortunate in belonging to the generation that was the first to explore the solar system and thereby experienced what can never be experienced again. In our childhood the planets were “distant and indistinct discs moving through the night sky, and . . . in old age, . . . places, diverse new worlds in the course of exploration.”

In the fifties, though full of hope, we actually knew very little. Now we know a great deal but—perhaps—are not so full of hope. In the fifties, the far side of the Moon was terra incognita, and speculation as to what might be found there was rife. The surface of Venus, cloaked under perpetually overcast skies, might be steaming jungles like those on Earth during the Carboniferous period. Mercury was believed to rotate in the same period as it revolved around the Sun, and so it was more or less half-baked and half-frozen—except, perhaps, in the “twilit” zone, which alternately enjoyed day and night and where life might have gotten a foothold. Mars of course was more evocative than any of the others. Percival Lowell’s whims of intelligent beings and canals to pump water from the polar ice caps were still remembered, and though they were no longer viewed as likely, it seemed possible, even probable, that lower life forms, like lichens, might exist on the planet. Jupiter’s Great Red Spot was possibly a large solid body floating in the planet’s atmosphere like an egg in a solution of salt and water. Saturn’s main rings—A, B, and C—were well defined, but the finer structure sometimes glimpsed through large telescopes in excellent seeing conditions was largely unknown, as were the forces controlling that structure. Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto were virtually inscrutable, as were the satellites of all the planets except Earth and the asteroids. The Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud were mere theoretical speculations. Theories of the origin of the solar system and of the Earth-Moon system were primitive. Even the origin of lunar craters was hotly debated, as it had been for centuries, with keen adherents to both the meteoritic and the volcanic schools. Whether the solar system we knew was rare or commonplace in the galaxy was unclear, and we had no firm knowledge, one way or the other, of extra-solar planets. Also unknown was whether life might be rare or commonplace, though as a matter of mere statistics (with an estimated one hundred billion suns in the galaxy), it appeared exceedingly unlikely that ours was the only technologically sophisticated civilization. UFOs were all the rage, and at least a few professional astronomers believed that representatives of the planets of other stars (and perhaps even Venus or Mars) might have visited (or be visiting) our planet. The first SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) programs got under way in 1960, dedicated to picking up extraterrestrial communications with radio telescopes, and though if successful, we could undoubtedly learn a great deal from civilizations more advanced than ours, the prospect of disclosing our whereabouts was not entirely without danger.

The fifties—and on into the sixties and beyond—was certainly a golden age for young people interested in science. There was unprecedented support for science education, and funding for scientific research, especially at the new space agency, NASA, shot upward. Blending astronomy, geology, physics, chemistry and biology, the new discipline of planetary science emerged to interpret the enormous amounts of data spacecraft were returning from other worlds, and within planetary science, subspecialities became more and more complex and particularized. Before long, no one person could possibly comprehend the big picture.

It was a golden age, and yet, living through it, it did not always seem like one. The period that saw the culmination of some of our oldest dreams, in which we ventured beyond the Earth, “the cradle of humanity,” in Russian space visionary Konstantin Tsiolkovsky’s words, came hard on the heels of a singularly horrific period of human history, which included the hideous stalemate of trench warfare in World War I; Stalin’s collectivization of farming, resulting in the starvation of millions; the gulags; the Nanjing Massacre; Hitler’s war; the Holocaust; and atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ironically, the drive for more deadly weapons of warfare (modified ballistic missiles) became the very means that would allow voyages to the Moon and planets. It was the best and the worst of times, no different from any other except possibly more extreme.

Though the space age had many antecedents, it is usually said to have begun with the launch of Sputnik (i.e., “satellite”) on October 4, 1957. Early achievements include the discovery of Van Allen radiation belts by the U.S. satellite Explorer 1 in 1958 and the three Soviet Lunas of 1959, which were, respectively, the first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of the Moon, the first human object to reach its surface, and the first spacecraft to photograph the hitherto unseen far side of the Moon. The sixties saw the first weather satellite (Tiros), communication satellites (e.g., Telstar 1), men and women in Earth orbit, more probes to the Moon as well as to Venus and Mars, and finally, in President John F. Kennedy’s words, “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

The backdrop to all this was the Cold War, in which two quasi empires, the democratic and capitalist United States and the autocratic and communist Soviet Union, struggled for global dominance. Politically, space was vital not so much in itself than in the prestige it offered whoever achieved mastery of it first. Each launch was a chance to demonstrate the awesome power of rocket systems to deliver payloads into space, whether these were probes sent to explore the Moon and planets or nuclear warheads intended
for nothing less than the destruction of the Earth. Regardless of these mixed motives, the result was to be a golden age of space exploration, in which humanity first extended its reach into the solar system.

The authors of the present collection of essays are among those who lived during that remarkable era and witnessed, or directly contributed to, its achievements, and now in late middle or old age, they are eager to set down their memories before those fade and are lost to recall forever.

Contributors:
Leo Aerts
Alexander Basilevsky
Klaus Brasch
Clark R. Chapman
Dale P. Cruikshank
William K. Hartmann
William Leatherbarrow
Baerbel Koesters Lucchitta
Yvonne Pendleton
Peter H. Schultz
William Sheehan
Paolo Tanga
Charles A. Wood

TFOB 2024: See you this week at booth #242!

March 4, 2024

Book lovers rejoice: the 2024 Tucson Festival of Books is happening this weekend, March 9th and 10th! As white tents start to pop up on the mall and bibliophiles begin to arrive from all over the world, the University of Arizona Press team is busy getting ready to welcome you to booth #242!

We are thrilled to have a wide variety of authors presenting on panels and signing books at our tent this year. Stop by our booth to browse hundreds of amazing titles and get them signed by the authors. All books will be 25% off during the festival with code AZTFB24, and as always, we’ll have our ever-popular $5 book shelf.

Take a look at the full Tucson Festival of Books schedule to find out where and when you can meet our authors, and come visit them during our booth signings. The lineup is below. We look forward to seeing you this weekend!

Saturday, March 9

10:00 AM: Judith X. Becerra and David Yetman, authors of Elephant Trees, Copales, and Cuajiotes

11:00 AM: Daisy Ocampo, author of Where We Belong

12:00 PM: Simon J. Ortiz, author of Light as Light

12:30 PM: Dante S. Lauretta, Catherine W. V. Wolner & Carina A. Bennett, authors of Bennu 3-D

1:00 PM: Shelby Tisdale & A. Thomas Cole, authors of No Place for a Lady & Restoring the Pitchfork Ranch

2:00 PM: Tim Z. Hernandez & Reyes Ramirez , authors of All They Will Call You & Book of Wanderers

Sunday, March 10

10:00 AM: Diego Báez, author of Yaguareté White

11:00 AM: Diane D. Dittemore, author of Woven from the Center

1:00 PM: Tom Zoellner, author of Rim to River

2:00 PM: Stephen J. Pyne, author of Pyrocene Park

For the full festival schedule, click here.

Author Ken Lamberton Wins Fellowship

March 1, 2024

Ken Lamberton is one of the first recipients of the new Writing Freedom Fellowship. He is the author of several works, including Chasing Arizona, Dry River, and Time of Grace.

Haymarket Books and the Mellon Foundation jointly announced the inaugural cohort for the newly established Writing Freedom Fellowship—a program to support writers of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction impacted by the criminal legal system. Writing Freedom was envisioned and funded by the Mellon Foundation and the Art for Justice Fund, and developed and administered by Haymarket Books.

“This exceptional group of Fellows further reveals the profound literary achievement and vital perspectives of those who have been touched by our country’s carceral system,” said Mellon Foundation President Elizabeth Alexander. “We at Mellon are honored to join Haymarket in driving connection among these voices, galvanizing them in their advocacy, craft, and future work.”

Congratulations Ken!

Read more about the program and see the complete list of 2024 Fellows here.

About the books:

Chasing Arizona takes readers on a yearlong, twenty-thousand-mile joy ride across Arizona during its centennial, racking up more than two hundred points of interest along the way. This book is an adventure story, a tale of Arizona, and a celebration of what makes the state a great place to visit and live. In Dry River, Lamberton takes us on a trek across the land of three nations—the United States, Mexico, and the Tohono O’odham Nation—as he hikes the river’s path from its source and introduces us to people who draw identity from the river—dedicated professionals, hardworking locals, and the author’s own family. Far more than a “prison memoir,” Time of Grace is an intimate and revealing look at relationships—with fellow humans and with the surprising wildlife of the Sonoran Desert, both inside and beyond prison walls.

William L. Bird, Jr. on New Books Network

February 29, 2024

New Books Network “American West” podcast host Daniel Moran interviewed William L. Bird, Jr., author of In the Arms of Saguaros. An essential—and monumental—member of the Sonoran Desert ecosystem, the saguaro cactus has become the quintessential icon of the American West. Bird talks about the “social saguaro.” He explains how, from the botanical explorers of the nineteenth century to the tourism boosters in our own time, saguaros and their images have fulfilled attention-getting needs and expectations. Listen to the podcast on New Books Network, or find on Apple or Spotify.

About the book:

Through text and lavish images, this work explores the saguaro’s growth into a western icon from the early days of the American railroad to the years bracketing World War II, when Sun Belt boosterism hit its zenith and proponents of tourism succeed in moving the saguaro to the center of the promotional frame. This book explores how the growth of tourism brought the saguaro to ever-larger audiences through the proliferation of western-themed imagery on the American roadside. The history of the saguaro’s popular and highly imaginative range points to the current moment in which the saguaro touches us as a global icon in art, fashion, and entertainment.

De Los Angeles Features “When Language Broke Open”

February 28, 2024

De Los Angeles by The Los Angeles Times features When Language Broke Open, An Anthology of Queer and Trans Black Writers of Latin American Descent , edited by Alan Pelaez Lopez, in “6 books to shake off colonialism and rethink our Latino stories.”

Reviewer Roxsy Lin says, “This anthology reflects on the lives of 45 contributors who generously share their experiences of pain, rejection and humiliation while highlighting their strength, pride and beauty.” The article praises specific contributors to the volume including Álida, a Dominican queer writer and educator, and Louie Ortiz-Fonseca, an Afro-Puerto Rican queer storyteller.

Read the full article here.

About the book:

By exploring themes of memory, care, and futurity, these contributions expand understandings of Blackness in Latin America, the Caribbean, and their U.S.-based diasporas. The volume offers up three central questions: How do queer and/or trans Black writers of Latin American descent address memory? What are the textures of caring, being cared for, and accepting care as Black queer and/or trans people of Latin American descent? And how do queer and trans embodiments help us understand and/or question the past and the present, and construct a Black, queer, and trans future?

Diego Báez Interview in Chicago Review of Books

February 26, 2024

Mananda Chaffa recently interviewed poet Diego Báez, author of Yaguareté White, in an article titled, “A Welcome Displacement: Diego Báez On Memory, Language and Belonging,” in the Chicago Review of Books. The interview delves into his poetry’s complex issues of colonialism, language, culture and identity, as well as familial intimacies related to his young daughter.

In the interview, Báez talks about getting comfortable with unfamiliar language:

The speaker of “Yaguareté White” surely knows more Guaraní than most readers (an admittedly low bar to clear). I thought it would be interesting to open with a speaker who seeks to reassure readers, or who positions himself as sympathetic to readerly frustrations with pronunciation and interpretation, only to subvert that originally accommodating tone in later poems, almost to the point of sharpness or hostility. I’m interested in the ways poetic speakers contradict, undermine, or unsettle their own positions. That aspect of the human condition is just so much more relatable to me.

Read the complete interview here.

About the book:

In Diego Báez’s debut collection, Yaguareté White, English, Spanish, and Guaraní encounter each other through the elusive yet potent figure of the jaguar.

The son of a Paraguayan father and a mother from Pennsylvania, Báez grew up in central Illinois as one of the only brown kids on the block—but that didn’t keep him from feeling like a gringo on family visits to Paraguay. Exploring this contradiction as it weaves through experiences of language, self, and place, Báez revels in showing up the absurdities of empire and chafes at the limits of patrimony, but he always reserves his most trenchant irony for the gaze he turns on himself.

February 23, 2024

The Wall Street Journal featured Woven from the Center: Native Basketry in the Southwest, by Diane Dittemore. Reporter Peter Saenger wrote about how the book relates to the Arizona State Museum’s permanent exhibit, Woven Through Time: American Treasures of Native Basketry and Fiber Art: “Diane D. Dittemore uses the baskets to illustrate an encyclopedic survey of Native American basketry in the U.S. Southwest. The earliest North American baskets are almost 10,000 years old, and basketry often features in Native lore.” Dittemore is the Associate Curator of Ethnological Collections at the Arizona State Museum, located at the University of Arizona. 

About the book:
Woven from the Center presents breathtaking basketry from some of the greatest weavers in the Southwest. Each sandal and mat fragment, each bowl and jar, every water bottle and whimsy is infused with layers of aesthetic, cultural, and historical meanings. This book offers stunning photos and descriptions of woven works from Tohono O’odham, Akimel O’odham, Hopi, Western Apache, Yavapai, Navajo, Pai, Paiute, New Mexico Pueblo, Eastern Apache, Seri, Yaqui, Mayo, and Tarahumara communities.

This richly illustrated volume stands on its own as a definitive look at basketry of the Greater Southwest, including northern Mexico.

“Yaguareté White” Playlist

February 21, 2024

What do Raffi and Pharrell Williams have in common? They’re both on Poet Diego Báez’s Spotify playlist for his collection Yaguareté White!

Báez introduces his musical influences:

Growing up in Bnorm, IL, two genres dominated our household boombox: Christian rock and Paraguayan folk. Also, Kenny G. (Mom was a fan.) The arpa and accordion of polka paraguaya spun almost exclusively on bootleg CDs burned and returned undeclared on flights back from Asunción. Occasionally, cassettes.

Yaguareté White came together, slowly, over the course of 15 years. But the book’s narratives, images, and fables stretch back to my earliest memories: Curled up on the floor of a jet over the Amazon, en route to São Paulo or Buenos Aires, before that fourth and final airborne leg to my father’s home country.

Go to the Largehearted Boy Book Notes series to read more; listen to the music here.

About the book:

In Diego Báez’s debut collection, Yaguareté White, English, Spanish, and Guaraní encounter each other through the elusive yet potent figure of the jaguar.

The son of a Paraguayan father and a mother from Pennsylvania, Báez grew up in central Illinois as one of the only brown kids on the block—but that didn’t keep him from feeling like a gringo on family visits to Paraguay. Exploring this contradiction as it weaves through experiences of language, self, and place, Báez revels in showing up the absurdities of empire and chafes at the limits of patrimony, but he always reserves his most trenchant irony for the gaze he turns on himself.

Five Questions for A. Thomas Cole

February 20, 2024

Restoring the Pitchfork Ranch tells the story of a decades-long habitat restoration project in southwestern New Mexico. Author A. Thomas Cole explains what inspired him and wife Lucinda to turn their retirement into years dedicated to hard work and renewal. The book shares the past and present history of a special ranch south of Silver City. The ranch is home to a rare type of regional wetland, a carbon-capturing sweet spot, a fragile desert grassland ecosystem, archaeological sites, and a critical wildlife corridor in a drought-stricken landscape.

Why did you write this book?

George Orwell identified four reasons for writing a book, one of which is the political purpose of wanting to push the world in a certain direction. We bought the ranch to restore the land and improve it for wildlife and at-risk species to breed, birth and raise their young. Along the way we realized our restoration of the ranch’s near-extinct watercourse, the ciénaga, can help address the climate crisis.

The book uses the captivating history of the ranch as a platform to describe our multiple planetary crises: climate, species extinction, soil depletion and loss, among others, who caused these crises, how they knowingly created it, our government’s complicity and how long this civilization-threatening crisis, the biggest crime in human history, has been known, and the corruption to conceal it.

Why did you and Lucinda decided to retire to the ranch, off-grid, 6 miles from neighbors and an hour from town?

Cinda’s interest is based on her fondness for nature, mine comes from the summer of my eleventh year when my parents took our family to harvest an apple orchard in Oak Creek Canyon, Arizona, and run a fruit market near Slide Rock. I roamed wild-like in the mountains. Running free through the woods set a hook in me I’ve never spit out. During our marriage, we helped out with a number of two-week volunteer restoration trips that were gratifying and offered a template for retirement.

What do you want to accomplish with the book?

The land restoration we’re doing here can be done by anyone, anywhere, on any size property. We all need to team up and take the myriad crises overwhelming the planet seriously, adopt the well-established solutions and take part in fixing the mess we’re in. Congress ignored science when the West was re-settled by Americans and that mistake is being repeated today, caused by the same greed that led to thousands of failed western homesteaders. Despite terrifying weather, fire, and bad environmental news, there is much to be hopeful for because there is so much individuals can do. Solutions are well established. The only thing missing is the political will.

What is your biggest worry?

The rich one percent have many billions invested in fossil fuels that need to remain in the ground, yet they are insisting the Congress they bought and paid for: drill, drill, drill. And we’ve all become so accustomed to convenience that we might not be able to adapt to a different lifestyle: consume less, fly less, eat less meat and a number of “must-do” adjustments. Despite having entered a permanent era of boiling, cauldron-like weather, our preoccupation with fortune, fame, and fashion may cause us to ignore these ecological and biological threats, forestall the pivot from consumption and so-called progress to saving our wounded world.

What is the most important sentence in the book?

This quote:
“By far the most fundamental driver of environmental destruction is the excessive consumption by the wealthy.”
***
A. Thomas Cole spent thirty-two years as a small-town lawyer in Casa Grande, Arizona—in which A.T. Cole successfully defended a dozen murder cases, two of which risked the death penalty, and co-counsel in the largest personal injury jury verdict in Arizona history. For his so-called “retirement,” Cole and his wife Lucinda have been rehabilitating a ranch in southwestern New Mexico, where they focus on protecting wildlife and wildlife habitats, wetland restoration, and carbon sequestration. Their aim is to draw down their carbon use and to encourage others to do the same. Cole once Chaired the Arizona Humanities Council. Restoring the Pitchfork Ranch is A.T. Cole’s first book.

Natasha Varner on Tucson’s Settler History in “Electric Literature”

February 19, 2024

In an essay for Electric Literature, Natasha Varner explores her ancestral ties and Tucson’s settler history from The Castle Apartments, a landmark developed in 1906. Varner’s research sends her to a time when the city was riddled with disease, shedding light on the role the building had in Indigenous dispossession:

“None of the ads mentioned that this health-seeker haven was being built atop Tohono O’odham land, atop Yoeme land. That while Tucson signified a chance at survival to some, its original inhabitants were being forced into ever-dwindling reservations bordering its city limits.”

Read the Essay

About La Raza Cosmética: Beauty, Identity, and Settler Colonialism in Postrevolutionary Mexico:

In the decades following the Mexican Revolution, nation builders, artists, and intellectuals manufactured ideologies that continue to give shape to popular understandings of indigeneity and mestizaje today. Postrevolutionary identity tropes emerged as part of broader efforts to reunify the nation and solve pressing social concerns, including what was posited in the racist rhetoric of the time as the “Indian problem.” Through a complex alchemy of appropriation and erasure, indigeneity was idealized as a relic of the past while mestizaje was positioned as the race of the future. This period of identity formation coincided with a boom in technology that introduced a sudden proliferation of images on the streets and in homes: there were more photographs in newspapers, movie houses cropped up across the country, and printing houses mass-produced calendar art and postcards. La Raza Cosmética traces postrevolutionary identity ideals and debates as they were dispersed to the greater public through emerging visual culture.

***

Natasha Varner is a writer and historian whose work focuses on race, identity, and settler colonialism in Mexico and the United States. She is the recipient of the 2017 Lewis Hanke postdoctoral research award presented by the Conference on Latin American History. In addition to traditional academic pursuits, she is a public scholar who has written for Public Radio International and Jacobin, among other outlets.

February 16, 2024

As everyone returns to their routines after the 2024 Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference, we want to take a moment to express our sincere gratitude to the many authors, editors, contributors, and new friends who spent time at our booth.

If you weren’t able to visit us at the bookfair, there’s still time to order the books we had on display. Get 35% off with discount code AZAWP24 at checkout until 3/10/24.

Check out the photos of the event below!

Inside the Kansas City Convention Center, attendees gather on their way up to the bookfair.
Our booth at the bookfair was a perfect spot to host authors, meet new friends, and share our books.
Juan Martinez signs copies of Extended Stay.
Juan Martinez draws customized creatures as he signs books for AWP attendees.
Assistant Editor, Elizabeth Wilder (left) and Kim Blaeser (right) with her book, Ancient Light, at the Indigenous Nations Poets booth.
Author Diego Báez shows off Yaguareté White, his debut collection of poems.
Author Margarita Pintado Burgos signs copies of Ojo en Celo / Eye in Heat, winner of the 2023 Ambroggio Prize of the Academy of American Poets.
Authors Sergio Troncoso (left) and Alma García (right) display their books.
Author Alma García signs copies of her debut novel, All That Rises.
Author Reyes Ramirez signs copies of The Book of Wanderers.
Authors Reyes Ramirez (left) and Diego Báez (right) swap books!

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 Elizabeth Wilder.

See you all next year in Los Angeles for AWP 2025!

Excerpt from “Border Economies”

The border between the United States and Mexico is one of the most unique and complex regions of the world. The asymmetry of the border region, together with the profound cultural differences of the two countries, create national controversies around migration, security, and illegal flows of drugs and weapons. The national narratives miss the fact that the 15 million or more people living in the border regions of Mexico and the United States are highly interactive and responsive to conditions on the other side.

Enormous legal cross-border flows of people, goods, and finance are embedded in the region’s history and prompted by the need to respond to new opportunities and challenges that originate on the other side. In Border Economies by James Gerber examines how the interactivity and sensitivity of communities to conditions across the border differentiates them from communities in the interiors of Mexico and the United States. Gerber explains what makes the region not only unique but uniquely interesting. Read an excerpt from the book below.

Permeability is an important feature of the U.S.-Mexico border. It enables the interactions of communities on opposite sides, regardless of migration policies, trade agreements, border walls, or frictions between Washington and Mexico City. Permeability refers to the authorized, constant, bidirectional movement of people, goods, and money across the international boundary. It is what allows the border region to be a unique hybrid space where Mexico’s culture and economy spill into the United States and those of the United States into Mexico. Many residents and businesses on both sides need to cross frequently, if not daily, and their normal routines require them to send and receive goods as well as to provide money and financial assets to the other side. Taken together, the enormous bidirectional flows of people, goods, and finance create a border economy that extends into both countries.

The idea of a peaceful border defined by the interactions of Mexican and U.S. citizens, businesses, and government officials is one part of the story, but an exclusive focus on the positive interactions of residents along the border elides other realities. There are also walls, armed border police, families who lead precarious lives, drug wars, and disturbing acts of violence. Raw sewage periodically spills into shared waterways, while HIV, asthma, diabetes, and other diseases pose public health challenges. It is not hard to paint a distorted and one-sided picture, but the reality of the border is one of a complex mosaic of ethnicities, incomes, social classes, and living conditions. There are difficult problems and challenges but also dynamism, opportunity, and creativity. In addition to the darker elements, both sides offer museums and universities, shopping malls, elegant homes, middle-class suburbs, and gourmet restaurants. In some places, urban areas on the border are graceful examples of cultural hybridity and cooperation across the divides of history and language, but in other places and times, they become examples of misunderstanding, poverty, and threats of violence.

Many people on both sides of the border never cross to the other side. The