Joaquín Ortega


Book Description

In this important work Russ Davidson presents the first biography of Joaquín Ortega, introducing readers to Ortega's life and work at the University of New Mexico as well as his close relationship with then UNM president James Zimmerman and other major figures. More than biography, Davidson's study closely examines the complex relationship UNM has had with Latin America as well as with the Hispanic community in New Mexico and that community's struggles to have equal representation of culture and education within an Anglo-dominated university and state in the first half of the twentieth century. Ortega's efforts played a significant role in UNM's evolution into a culturally diverse place of learning, and his story overlays the history of how ethnic groups began to work together to incorporate Latin American, Pan-American, New Mexican, and borderland studies into the educational fabric of the university at a pivotal time. This long-overdue volume is an illuminating look at the rich and complex history of the university and the communities it serves.




CLOSE ENCOUNTERS Down Home


Book Description

"Everything abandoned comes alive" Pamela Yenser writes in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS Down Home, which becomes an invocation for resilience in a world filled with disaster at every turn: whether it's the wreckage of flying saucers in Roswell, or a brother and a mother who are irrevocably changed after a complicated birth, or an abusive father who is always in the driver's seat-whether it's by plane or car. Yenser does the difficult work of reckoning with trauma and the "family / history slamming the lid on truth." And though there's comfort in escape, and beauty to be found in the landscapes these poems traverse in a wide range of traditional and open poetic forms, Yenser reminds us "As long as you live / you won't forget," and there's danger everywhere. Lucky for us, we have a wonderful guide who knows her way around language and line, and is cunning enough to "have razor blades sewn / into the hem of every poem." -Gary Jackson Pamela Yenser is a learned poet who knows the context, history, and texts of literature. Here she uses her supple and strict prosody to tell a family story about an abusive, daredevil father, a denying-praying mother, her "little retarded brother" ("She is her brother's keeper") and more. In airplanes and Airstream trailers "one catastrophe after another" happens to mark a childhood where "Visions of the devil / made you tithe, trade in the family silver." This astonishing chapbook delivers one revelation after another in poems exquisitely structured: "The past is a trap the Jaws of Life / can't break," she writes, "... but isn't this the work a poet is meant to do?" One poem in exact rhyming couplets is called "In the Garden of Demented Parents." Another, also in couplets, ends: "Look! I have razor blades sewn / into the hem of every poem." Read this brilliant and triumphant chapbook by a poet who limns the tragedy and triumph of her life. -Hilda Raz Pamela Yenser's brave and tender poems spin together family history, personal resilience, and imaginative perseverance "sharp as that wreckage/ strewn like tinsel on glitter-/fields of tumbled rock" (as she writes in the title poem). Encompassing everything from a "bad weather balloon made of Kryptonite" to "a pineapple/ ruffled doily," Yenser juxtaposes the images and dreams of the otherworldly and the day-to-day life while also writing deeply of love and survival, monsters and angels, magic tricks and memories. This is a captivating and sparkling collection. -Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg Pamela Yenser's CLOSE ENCOUNTERS refers to, yes, the Roswell UFO, as well as family relationships that are a parallel encounter. The poems' narrator sees the flying saucer wreckage as a four-year-old. She writes about this iconic disruption of the skies as a way to reveal the workings of memory itself. This is an exciting personal fable that blends journalism, verse, and narration. -Denise Lowe




The U.S. War with Mexico


Book Description

The U.S. war with Mexico was a pivotal event in American history, it set crucial wartime precedents and served as a precursor for the impending Civil War. With a powerful introduction and rich collection of documents, Ernesto Ch‡vez makes a convincing case that as an expansionist war, the U.S.-Mexico conflict set a new standard for the acquisition of foreign territory through war. Equally important, the war racialized the enemy, and in so doing accentuated the nature of whiteness and white male citizenship in the U.S., especially as it related to conquered Mexicans, Indians, slaves, and even women. The war, along with ongoing westward expansion, heightened public debates in the North and South about slavery and its place in newly-acquired territories. In addition, Ch‡vez shows how the political, economic and social development of each nation played a critical role in the path to war and its ultimate outcome. Both official and popular documents offer the events leading up to the war, the politics surrounding it, popular sentiment in both countries about it, and the war’s long-term impact on the future development and direction of these two nations. Headnotes, a chronology, maps and a selected bibliography enrich student understanding of this important historical moment.




Querencia


Book Description

New Mexico cultural envoy Juan Estevan Arellano, to whom this work is dedicated, writes that querencia “is that which gives us a sense of place, that which anchors us to the land, that which makes us a unique people, for it implies a deeply rooted knowledge of place, and for that reason we respect it as our home.” This sentiment is echoed in the foreword by Rudolfo Anaya, in which he writes that “querencia is love of home, love of place.” This collection of both deeply personal reflections and carefully researched studies explores the New Mexico homeland through the experiences and perspectives of Chicanx and indigenous/Genízaro writers and scholars from across the state. The importance of querencia for each contributor is apparent in their work and their ongoing studies, which have roots in the culture, history, literature, and popular media of New Mexico. Be inspired and enlightened by these essays and discover the history and belonging that is querencia.




Catalog of Copyright Entries


Book Description




The Hispano Homeland


Book Description

Richard L. Nostrand interprets the Hispanos’ experience in geographical terms. He demonstrates that their unique intermixture with Pueblo Indians, nomad Indians, Anglos, and Mexican Americans, combined with isolation in their particular natural and cultural environments, have given them a unique sense of place - a sense of homeland. Several processes shaped and reshaped the Hispano Homeland. Initial colonization left the Hispanos relatively isolated from cultural changes in the rest of New Spain, and gradual intermarriage with Pueblo and nomad Indians gave them new cultural features. As their numbers increased in the eighteenth century, they began to expand their Stronghold outward from the original colonies.




Historical Outlook


Book Description




New Buffalo


Book Description

Kopecky's journals take us back to the beginnings of New Buffalo, one of the most successful of the communes that dotted the country in the 1960s and 1970s, where he and his comrades encountered magic, wisdom, a mix of people, the Peyote Church, planting, and hard winters.




A Civil War History of the New Mexico Volunteers and Militia


Book Description

Thompson draws on service records and numerous other archival sources that few earlier scholars have seen in this comprehensive work.