by Patricia L. Price
University of Minnesota Press, 2004
Cloth: 978-0-8166-4305-9 | Paper: 978-0-8166-4306-6
Library of Congress Classification F787.P745 2004
Dewey Decimal Classification 972.1

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK

Gathers tales from the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico to understand the relationship between people and place in a borderland


Landscape is the space of negotiation between human beings and the physical world, and rarely are the negotiations more complex and subtle than those conducted through the desert landscape along the Mexico-U.S. border.


Patricia L. Price views the shaping of the landscape on and around the border through various narratives that have sought to establish claims to these dry lands. Most prominent are the accounts of Anglo-American expansionism and Manifest Destiny juxtaposed with the Chicano nationalist tale of Aztlán in the twentieth century, all constituting collective, contending claims to the U.S. Southwest. Demonstrating how stories can become vehicles for changing places and identities, Price considers characters old and new who inhabit the contemporary borderlands between Mexico and the United States—ranging from longstanding manifestations of good and evil in the figures of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Devil to a collection of lay saints embodying current concerns. Dry Place weaves together theoretical insights with field-based inquiry, autobiography, and creative writing to arrive at a textured understanding of the bordered landscape of late modern subjectivity.