Southwest Books of the Year
Lesley Bailey's Picks
Lesley Bailey is coordinator of Experiential Education, Arizona International College, University of Arizona.
American Byzantium: Photographs of Las Vegas
by Virgil Hancock III. Essay by Greg McNamee (University of New Mexico Press)
The stunning photographs in this small coffee table book capture the sumptuousness, humor and desolation of the magical city the author calls "capitalism as a giant party!" Included are night images of the Strip; daytime images of signage and buildings; interior images of casinos, stores, museums and malls; and people: tourists and residents, real and unreal. (My favorite is a beckoning, bejeweled, seemingly alive and pancaked but actually waxen Liberace.) Greg McNamee's essay on the evolving phenomenon of Las Vegas rounds out the reader's appreciation for the "most spectacularly odd urban thing ever to happen on this planet."
Bone Walker
by Kathleen O'Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear (Forge)
This third and final mystery in the "Anasazi Novel" series offers an informed and imaginative rendering by well-known archeologist-authors of the lives of thirteenth-century Anasazi while their once-magnificent civilization crumbled under the pressures of draught, resource depletion and violent religious conflict. The book alternates a complex narrative set in pre-historic Chaco Canyon with one involving archeologists in the present-day Santa Fe area, but the effort required to get the characters and contexts straight is more than worthwhile. A fascinating, thought-provoking and wonderfully atmospheric tale, though hardly a welcome conclusion to the adventures of Browser, Catkin, Dusty Stewart, et al.
Breaking Through
by Francisco Jimenez (Houghton Mifflin)
In this sequel to The Circuit, the author simply and movingly recounts his teenage years in Southern California as a member of a Mexican family of undocumented farm workers. Although the family faced extreme hardship and prejudice, their love for each other and determination to succeed in the country they emigrated to for a better life gave Jimenez the strength and support he needed to "break through." This story is an important one, as it makes personal and immediate experiences shared to some extent by so many people in the Southwest and elsewhere in our country.
Don't Look at Me Different, Voices From the Projects /No Me Veas Diferente,Voces de los Proyectos, Tucson, Arizona, 1943-2000
edited by Regina Kelly (Tucson Voices Press)
The most recent effort by the group that did Snapped on the Street last year, this bilingual book combines an overview of the history of public housing in the U.S. in general and Tucson in particular with interviews with past and present residents of the city's La Reforma and Connie Chambers public housing projects. Teenagers from Tucson's greater Santa Rosa neighborhood collaborated with professional adults to do the research, conduct and transcribe the interviews, and compile the photographs and maps. The process and the result are commendable, and the book is an important addition to the documentation of Tucson's history.
Living Homes: Sustainable Architecture and Design
by Suzi Moore McGregor and Nora Burba Trulsson; photographs by Terrence Moore (Chronicle Books)
This beautifully illustrated coffee-table-style volume serves as an introduction and resource guide for people interested in building residences using environmentally sound materials. The book is arranged by building type and includes adobe, rammed earth, straw bale, and "reinvented, recycled, and high-tech materials." Photographs of custom-designed homes in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Texas and California that were built using these materials provide both illustration and inspiration.
Also selected:
- A Place to Stand:The Making of a Poet
- Southwest Inside Out: An Illustrated Guide to the Land and its History
- Tall Woman: The Life Story of Rose Mitchell, a Navajo Woman, c. 1874-1977
- Understanding the Arizona Constitution
- Women's Tales from the New Mexico WPA, La Diabla a Pie