"Narrative scholarship featuring the author's experiences among the people of the Tohono O'dham nation furnish a powerful context for criticism that illuminates the complex and contested terrain of American Indian literature. Discussions of such writers as Simon Ortiz, Louis Erdrich, Joy Harjo, and Leslie Marmon Silko take us beyond the stereotypes and into a richer understanding of the literature and its views of nature. [This book], with its original insights into environmental justice and American Indian literature, makes an important contribution to the expansion of ecocriticism." — Terrell F. Dixon

"This inspiring and enjoyable book provocatively integrates multiculturalism and environmentalism, environmental justice and Native American writing, and the power of literature with community-based education." — Patrick D. Murphy, author of Farther Afield in the Study of Nature-Oriented Literature

Although much contemporary American Indian literature examines the relationship between humans and the land, most Native authors do not set their work in the "pristine wilderness" celebrated by mainstream nature writers. Instead, they focus on settings such as reservations, open-pit mines, and contested borderlands. Drawing on her own teaching experience among Native Americans and on lessons learned from such recent scenes of confrontation as Chiapas and Black Mesa, Joni Adamson explores why what counts as "nature" is often very different for multicultural writers and activist groups than it is for mainstream environmentalists.

"Here is the very best of the documentary tradition-the lives, both told and shown, of children who seek a better life across a border that separates two nations and in so doing, prove themselves resourceful and knowing." — Robert Coles, author of Spiritual Life of Children

"Through words and images, Taylor and Hickey have created an honest and poignant portrait of life on the border. Hickey’s spare photographs allow the fear, the hope, the strength, and the vulnerability of the tunnel kids to seep into our consciousness." — photographer José Galvez, author of Vatos

Beneath the streets of the U.S.-Mexico border, children are coming of age. They have come from all over Mexico to find shelter and adventure in the drainage tunnels that connect the twin cities of Nogales, Sonora, and Nogales, Arizona. This book opens up the world of the tunnel kids and tells how in this murky underworld of struggling immigrants, drug dealers, and thieves, these kids have carved out a place of their own.

Although primitivism has received renewed attention in recent years, studies linking it with Latin America have been rare. This volume examines primitivism and its implications for contemporary debates on Latin American culture, literature, and arts, showing how Latin American subjects employ a Western construct to "return the gaze" of the outside world and redefine themselves in relation to modernity.

Examining such subjects as Julio Cortázar and Frida Kahlo and such topics as folk art and cinema, the volume brings together for the first time the views of scholars who are currently engaging the task of cultural studies from the standpoint of primitivism. These varied contributions include analyses of Latin American art in relation to social issues, popular culture, and official cultural policy; essays in cultural criticism touching on ethnic identity, racial politics, women's issues, and conflictive modernity; and analytical studies of primitivism's impact on narrative theory and practice, film, theater, and poetry.

This collection contributes offers a new perspective on a variety of significant debates in Latin American cultural studies and shows that the term primitive does not apply to these cultures as much as to our understanding of them.

"It provides the first monograph-length study of an important Spanish colonial mission system that has heretofore been neglected. Probably most importantly, it is an audacious attempt to redefine mission studies by focusing almost exclusively on the indigenous experience. It is richly documented, with a [vast] array of primary and secondary sources." — Erick D. Langer, coeditor of The New Latin American Mission History

Spanish missions in the New World usually pacified sedentary peoples accustomed to the agricultural mode of mission life, prompting many scholars to generalize about mission history. James Saeger now reconsiders the effectiveness of the missions by examining how Guaycuruan peoples of South America's Gran Chaco adapted to them during the eighteenth century. Because the Guaycuruans were hunter-gatherers less suited to an agricultural lifestyle, their attitudes and behaviors can provide new insight about the impact of missions on native peopl

Responding to recent syntheses of the mission system, Saeger proposes that missions in the Gran Chaco did not fit the usual pattern. Through research in colonial documents, he reveals the Guaycuruan perspective on the missions, thereby presenting an alternative view of Guaycuruan history and the development of the mission system. He investigates Guaycuruan social, economic, political, and religious life before the missions and analyzes subsequent changes; he then traces Guaycuruan history into the modern era and offers an assessment of what Catholic missions meant to these peoples.

"Refreshingly, Ellen McCracken focuses largely on the concrete--specifically narrative point of view and technique--to reveal just how much crossover U.S. Latina fiction signifies on the male dominated Euro-white canons and subjects. We come away not only convinced but also with tools we can then apply to our own analysis of Latino/a literature." --Aztlan

"This book is the most extensive and profound synthesis of this work to appear to date . . . a very special look at Latino Literature. . . . [McCracken] clearly has read virtually all recent significant Latina texts with the greatest of care and clarity." --Marc Zimmerman, University of Illinois

During the last two decades of the twentieth century, U.S. Latina writers have made a profound impact on American letters with fiction in both mainstream and regional venues. Following on the heels of this vibrant and growing body of work, New Latina Narrative offers the first in-depth synthesis and literary analysis of this transethnic genre.

Focusing on the dynamic writing published in the 1980s and 1990s by Mexican American, Puerto Rican, Cuban American, and Domincan American women, New Latina Narrative illustrates how these writers have redefined the concepts of multiculturalism and diversity in American society. As participants in both mainstream and grassroots forms of multiculturalism, these new Latina narrativists have created a feminine space within postmodern ethnicity, disrupting the idealistic veneer of diversity with which publishers often market this fiction.

"It is one of only a few studies that examine the significance of a very large and important subject. It is an excellent work."--Ralph H. Vigil

Draws on a wide variety of historical, ethnographic, demographic, and biological sources to analyze processes of intermarriage, assimilation, and acculturation that continue in Latin America to the present day. As one of only a few studies to examine this subject, it sheds new light on miscegenation and acculturation: their different levels and proportions in particular periods and in rural and urban areas; and the role of Spanish, Indian, and African women in the historical process of biological fusion.

"In the most revealing book on Hispanic culture since Earl Shorris's Latinos, Fox examines how Spanish-language television, radio, newspapers, books, and magazines create a common set of images that reinforce certain values such as family loyalty. . . . His incisive portrait surveys the web of political, community and voluntary associations through which Hispanics are gaining clout, and also scans memoirs, novels, paintings and music that are helping to forge a sense of shared identity."—Publishers Weekly

"Fox poignantly documents the decline of spirituality in the Hispanic movement as it mirrors the rightward shift in the larger society, marked by a rampant and often mean-spirited mercantilism. . . . Fox is most effective in reporting the important ways the barrios are altering the profile and coloration of our inner cities."—Washington Post

Hispanic Nation tracks "a key identity shift . . . with important consequences for all Americans because, in merging their separate national backgrounds into a new identity, Hispanic Americans are inevitably challenging rigid black-and-white definitions of what it means to be an American."—Booklist

A new ethnic identity is being constructed in the United States: the Hispanic nation. Overcoming age-old racial, regional, and political differences, Americans of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and other Spanish-language origins are beginning to imagine themselves as a single ethnic community-which by the turn of the century may become the United States' largest and most influential minority.

Art Under Duress
El Salvador 1980-Present
Marilyn Zeitlin, ed.
Arizona State University Art Museum

135 pp. / 12 color, 40 b/w plates / 9 x 12 / 1995
Paper (0964464608) $35.00

"The display of paintings, photographs, sculpture, and ceramics argues that art, expressing doubt and skepticism, is a voice of the voiceless in a society otherwise silenced by imprisonment, assassination, disappearances and intimidation."--Latin America Resource

Chile and the Great Depression
The Politics of Underdevelopment, 1927-1948
Michael Monteon.
Arizona State University Center for Latin American Studies Press

Monteón's work will enlighten scholars of Latin America specializing in history, political science, sociology, and economics.

No Short Journeys
The Interplay of Cultures in the History and Literature of the Borderlands
Cecil Robinson.

Using annotated lists organized by topic and region, this work directs readers to a vast array of humanistic resources pertaining to Hispanics in the Southwest. Includes four essays on the state of the humanities vis-à-vis Hispanics in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.

177 pp. / 7 x 10 / 1977
Paper (0-8165-0524-1) $13.95s

"A sensitive and precise translation in which the reform-minded Father Diego Bringas examines various missionary and secular policies for assimilation of Indian societies."--Mid-America