Southwest Books of the Year
David Laird's Picks
From 1972-1990, Laird was the librarian of the University of Arizona. He now owns a mail order, online/Internet bookstore, Books West Southwest.
The Other Face of America
by Jorge Ramos, translated from Spanish by Patricia L. Duncan
Journalism at its best and well-translated besides. Ramos looks at the many aspects of Mexicans in the U.S., from the Mexican senate denying them the right to vote to stories of individuals, some just scraping along trying to earn a better life, some successful and moving up the social ladder. Not often a happy book, but a clear-eyed view.
Operation Gatekeeper
by Joseph Nevins
Taking its title from the Federal Government's latest effort to control immigration, especially across our southwestern border, Nevins' book first tells us how we came to our current state of sometimes border chaos, with a minimum of jargon and a maximum of clarity. Not by any means "easy" or "popular" reading this is, nonetheless, an important book to help us understand what we are up to when it comes to building a wall between us and Mexico.
Blues for Cannibals
by Charles Bowden
I have been a fan of Bowden since Larry Powell introduced me to his Killing the Hidden Watersand have always considered hisFrog Mountain Blues to be his best, but this semi-autobiographical account of the bad, the worse and the ugly is powerful stuff. Not for the squeamish or the sexually intimidated.
The Sound of the Trees
by Robert Gatewood
This is Gatewood's first novel but I hope he will reward us with many more. Filled with the kind of challenging language and graphic imagery we have come to expect from such superb writers as Cormac McCarthy, this is the tale of Trude Mason who sets out on horseback with his battered mother to escape his abusive father. The times are tough in 1930s New Mexico and getting from the border country to that wild and free place up north called Colorado seems to Trude his only possible salvation.
Top Ten Picks:
- Red Water: A Novel by Judith Freeman
- The Desert Cries: A Season of Flash Floods in a Dry Land by Craig Childs
- The Other Face of America: Chronicles of the Immigrants Shaping Our Future by Jorge Ramos, translated from Spanish by Patricia L. Duncan
- Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the "Illegal Alien" and the Making of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary by Joseph Nevins
- Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows by Will Bagley
- Blues for Cannibals: The Notes From Underground by Charles Bowden
- The Sound of the Trees by Robert Gatewood
- Madam Millie: Bordellos from Silver City to Ketchikan by Max Evans
- Down By the River: Drugs, Money, Murder, and Family by Charles Bowden
- The Underground Heart: A Return to a Hidden Landscape by Ray Gonzalez