Southwest Books of the Year
Patricia A. Etter's Picks
Patricia Etter is the curator of the Labriola National American Indian Data Center research library, University Libraries at Arizona State University and the author of several books and prize-winning articles on western history. Her top picks for 2004 are listed in order of preference.
Native American Picture Books of Change: The Art of Historic Children's Editions
by Rebecca Benes. The Museum of New Mexico Press.
When Elizabeth De Huff arrived at the Santa Fe Indian School in 1918, she found a substandard educational system devoid of the arts and teaching material irrelevant to the lives of the Native children. She soon began collecting her students' folklore and songs, and compiled them into a reader-sized book, which Harcourt Brace published in 1922. Subsequently, Anglo and Native writers, teachers, and folklorists, desperate for books relating to the students' cultural traditions, began to collaborate and produce English and bilingual books featuring some of the soon-to-be leading Native artists of the 20th century. As a multi-cultural expression, these books were ahead of their time.
The Devil's Highway: A True Story
by Luis Alberto Urrea. Little, Brown.
Here is a powerful story. Though it deals with a group of Mexican immigrants, the Wellton 26, it mirrors the suffering and agony of those who put lives on the line to trudge across the desolate, waterless expanse of the Pinacate region of northwestern Mexico to seek work in the United States. If they didn't collapse and die in the searing heat, as did 12 of the Wellton 26, there was a good chance they would expire while hidden in crowded, sealed trucks. The human smugglers (coyotes) have not been left out of the saga, nor have the INS agents for whom protecting the border has become a dangerous job, and for the United States, a costly one.
¡Caramba! A Tale Told in Turns of the Card
by Nina Marie Martinez. Knopf.
The folks starring in this zany, wacky novel, live in the fictional Border town, Lava Landing. A potpourri of characters speak English spiced with Spanish for emphasis. Imagine Javier, a born-again Christian mariachi, who preaches Jesus, and falls for Lucha, recently out of jail. True-Dee, the beautiful blonde transvestite, vainly searches for love, while an over-the-hill matron, Lulubelle, puts a charm on herself so she will fall in love with the man who has adored her from afar some forty years. And, Consuelo needs to pray for her dead father to release him from purgatory. Behind all the antics, is a group of individuals searching for love, happiness, and success.
Don't Let the Sun Step Over You: A White Mountain Apache Family Life, 1860-1975
by Eva Tulene Watt with Keith Basso. University of Arizona Press.
Eva Tulene Watt , White Mountain Apache, is an Arizona Living Treasure. Now 91, she lives near Hon-Dah on the Fort Apache Reservation. Keith Basso, University of New Mexico, recorded this remarkable woman's biography, which tracks her family's history from the 1860s to the present time. Her interpretation of her people's past includes a diverse assemblage of events, biographical sketches, and cultural insights to Western Apache family life. "Western Apache men and women have found the will to carry on by ridding their minds of unpleasant thoughts," she said. "Even in desperate times, Apache families refuse to let the sun step over them."
Full Bloom: The Art And Life of Georgia O'Keeffe
by Hunter Dohojowska-Philp. W.W. Norton.
Here is a fine and detailed biography of one of America's notable artists. Resulting from prodigious research, the author reconstructs Georgia O'Keeffe's life, and her liaison with and later marriage to Alfred Stieglitz. Both individuals were complex characters with vivid personalities. One senses that many of O'Keeffe's paintings were created from particular emotional experiences and the author does a fine job of relating these events to O'Keeffe's works of art and how she went about painting them. Her early works resulted from her sojourn on the East Coast, while her later material was produced out of her Abiquiu residence in New Mexico.
After the Fire
by J.A. Jance. University of Arizona Press.
Jance penned this collection of poems over the years, while she battled life with an abusive, alcoholic husband. The characters and situations in her novels, in many respects, are created from her personal experiences. Her fictional characters, J. P. Beaumont, for example, is a recovering alcoholic, and Sheriff Joanna Brady seems to be created in a pattern and lifestyle Jance might have wished for herself. Though this small book may have helped Jance reach closure, there is much here for all women who have suffered abuse and continue to live in denial.
Assembling My Father: A Daughter's Detective Story
by Anna Cypra Oliver. Houghton Mifflin.
The author was five years old when her father put a gun to his head and killed himself. He was 35. He had been the son of a prominent New York Jewish family, who married her mother in the late sixties, then struck out for Taos to live as hippies. Her mother adopted a redneck Christian fundamentalist life style, and had two failed marriages to abusive men. Years later, curious about her real father, Anna began interviewing those who once knew him. Like a detective, she persisted, and along with meticulous research, discovered her real father.
Isabella Greenway: An Enterprising Woman
by Kristie Miller. University of Arizona Press.
As a New York debutante and close friend of Eleanor Roosevelt and with friends in the right places, it appeared that Isabella Selmes had it all when she married Bob Ferguson, a former Rough Rider. As it turned out, they settled on an isolated New Mexico ranch because of Ferguson's ill health. Following his death, she married copper magnate John Greenway, whom she had loved from afar for many, many years. His untimely death left her to manage his business in Arizona. Greenway's participation in politics began when Eleanor Roosevelt recruited her to work for the Democratic Convention. Later, she ran a successful campaign, and thus became the first woman and only Arizona Representative elected to Congress.
Into the Canyon: Seven Years in Navajo Country
by Lucy Moore. University of New Mexico Press.
Newly married, with degrees from Radcliffe and Harvard Law School, Lucy Moore and her husband, Bob Hilgendorf, set out for Chinle, Arizona, in the summer of 1968, where Bob would hone his law skills as attorney for DNA, the Navajo Legal Services Program. What follows is a delightful story of six years residence, where both eagerly learned to live and work within the constraints of a new culture. A good deal of the story covers the early years of DNA, and Lucy's election as Justice of the Peace. Some notable Navajos make an appearance, including Peterson Zah, a director of DNA, and later, first president of the Navajo Nation.
On the Bloody Road to Jesus: Christianity and the Chiricahua Apaches
by H. Henrietta Stockel. University of New Mexico Press.
Beginning with the Spanish frontier, Stockel discusses the history and conditions of the Chiricahua Apache and the efforts of various Christian religions to proselytize. As with other tribes, the Apache outwardly accepted many of these beliefs, while at the same time, keeping their own traditions alive, sometimes incorporating the two. An interesting example is a magnificent oil painting of Christ as an Apache, which hangs behind the altar at St. Joseph's Mission Church in Mescalero, New Mexico.