You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Grace & Gumption: The Women of El Paso explores women's history in El Paso. From the earliest settlers to modern-day lawyers, journalists, social activists, and entrepreneurs, the women of El Paso influenced the vibrant community that thrives in the shadow of the Franklin Mountains.
Foreword / Yolanda Chavez-Leyva -- "The blue I loved" / by Benjamin Alire Saenz -- Introduction -- Bienvenidos -- Making our homes -- In and out of the kitchen -- Hard times -- Food for the spirit -- Adios -- Afterword / Howard Campbell -- Photographs: Carol Eastman
The Texas of vast open spaces inhabited by independent, self-reliant men and women may be more of a dream than a reality for the state’s largely urban population, but it still exists in the Big Bend. One of the most sparsely settled areas of the United States, the Big Bend attracts people who are willing to forego many modern conveniences for a lifestyle that proclaims “don’t fence me in.” Marcia Hatfield Daudistel and Bill Wright believe that the character traits exemplified by folks in the Big Bend—including self-sufficiency, friendliness, and neighborliness—go back to the founding of the state. In this book, they introduce us to several dozen Big Bend residents—old and young...
A powerful indictment of America's abandonment of human beings, and children in particular, in favor of corporations, this account exposes the child labor, indentured servitude, and child slavery that are undeniable parts of American history. Arguing that following the election of Ronald Reagan legislations began support corporations at the expense of the American people, this book demonstrates how this nation's intellectual capital was squandered. Deregulation and lax enforcement caused unnecessary deaths to workers in many fields, but far greater are the numbers of deaths and disabilities to.
In 2006, Texas historian and photographer Bill Wright traveled to Afghanistan to teach a course—sponsored by the Afghan NGO ASCHIANA, which seeks to support working children and their families—on digital photography to young Afghans living in Kabul. In this illuminating, visually captivating book, Wright records his personal journey and experiences with a group of students ranging from ages 12 to the early 20s. The students’ photographs capture daily life in the Afghan capital, from traditional street markets to a modern shipping center, from shepherds to musicians to laborers, from infants to the elderly. As they record their world, these junior photographers provide a poignant portrait of what life is like for young people in a war zone, and demonstrate an unquenchable talent and spirit.
"From bestselling author Jeff Guinn, the dramatic story of how U.S.-Mexico border tensions erupted into open warfare in 1916, as a U.S. military expedition crossed the border to try to capture Mexican guerrilla Pancho Villa -- a military incursion whose effects still haunt the border region to this day"--
In The Art of Touch: Prose and Poetry from the Pandemic and Beyond, the unique voices of thirty-nine of some of the most creative thinkers of our times have been brought together to consider the profound impact of one of our five main senses: touch. Psychologists, healers, massage therapists, academics, creative writers, and others reflect on or tell personal stories about what it means to be able to touch or experience touch, or to have to go without it-as so many did and still do because of the COVID-19 pandemic. They explore how transmissions such as texting may impede opportunities for touch, while those like Zoom may make it possible for people who otherwise might be left behind to stay "in touch." From the experience of touching beloved animals to the life-changing ways in which books and performances can touch us, virtually all aspects of touch are acknowledged in these pages.
Searing verses set on the Mexican border about war and addiction, love and sexual violence, grief and loss, from an American Book Award–winning author. Selected by Gregory Pardlo as winner of the National Poetry Series. El Paso is one of the safest cities in the United States, while across the river, Ciudad Juárez suffers a history of femicides and a horrific drug war. Witnessing this, a Filipina’s life unravels as she tries to love an addict, the murders growing just a city—but the breadth of a country—away. This collection weaves the personal with recent history, the domestic with the tragic, asking how much “a body will hold,” reaching from the border to the poet’s own Philippines. These poems thirst in the desert, want for water, searching the brutal and tender territories between bodies, families, and nations.
2022 Americo Paredes Award, Center for Mexican American Studies at South Texas College A historical exploration of the worlds and healing practices of two curanderos (faith healers) who attracted thousands, rallied their communities, and challenged institutional powers. Santa Teresa Urrea and Don Pedrito Jaramillo were curanderos—faith healers—who, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, worked outside the realm of "professional medicine," seemingly beyond the reach of the church, state, or certified health practitioners whose profession was still in its infancy. Urrea healed Mexicans, Indigenous people, and Anglos in northwestern Mexico and cities throughout the US Southwe...
“The convertors would spew it out,” employee Arturo Hernandez recalled, referring to molten metal. “You’d see the ground, the dirt, catch on fire. . . . If you slip, you’d be like a little pat of butter, melting away.” Hernandez was describing work at ASARCO El Paso, a smelter and onetime economic powerhouse situated in the city’s heart just a few yards north of the Mexican border. For more than a century the smelter produced vast quantities of copper—along with millions of tons of toxins. During six of those years, the smelter also burned highly toxic industrial waste under the guise of processing copper, with dire consequences for worker and community health. Copper Stain i...