Results by title

The White Tattoo is a smart, always surprising collection of American stories. William J. Cobb knows and loves his character and places. His first collection of short stories, The White Tattoo, revels in the undeniable allure of the physical world even as it is juxtaposed with the twists and kinks of psychological and emotional pain. At one extreme is the tense, torturous psychology of “Motel Ice,” whose narrative voice emerges from the mind of a mentally disturbed Jehovah’s Witness gazing out on a world of temptation and redemption. Similarly hyperdramatic in its conclusion and its arc of betrayal and violent aftermath, “For All You Dorks, Blah Blah Blah” conjures up a sleepwalking, murderous father who is less culpable in the harm he causes but all the while most destructive.

Stylistically, the stories crackle, snap, and zing. Several of them, including “The Wishes,” “The Atmosphere of Vienna,” and “Dark Matter,” use an idiosyncratic, Tilt-O-Whirl narrative marked by a swirling, shifting focus and point of view, trying to create a multifaceted, complex vision of the world by dipping in and out of the consciousness of various characters.

For over 37 years, Margaret and Olaus Murie made their home in the mountainous wilderness of the Tetons, where Olaus Murie conducted his famous studies of the American elk: the wapiti. Through these years their home was almost a nature-conservation shrine to thousands of Americans interested in outdoors, animals, and nature. Wapiti Wilderness, begun by Mrs. Murie as a sequel to her book Two in the Far North, which told of the Muries' life and expeditions in Alaska, became a collaborative effort by both the Muries.

In alternate chapters, Olaus tells of his work as a field biologist for the old U.S. Bureau of Biological Survey and recounts stories of his studies of not only elk but also other great animals. And Mrs. Murie, from her side, describes their life together on the trail and in the various camps and nature adventures in that wilderness during all four seasons. The book is replete with stories of Jackson Hole residents, “pioneer poets,” and the wild creatures that made their way into the Murie household. Olaus Murie's evocative pen-and-ink drawings illuminate each chapter, and four pages of photographs help complete the picture of what life was like in the wapiti wilderness.

A collection of essays about Armenian identity and belonging in the diaspora.

In the century since the Armenian Genocide, Armenian survivors and their descendants have written of a vast range of experiences using storytelling and activism, two important aspects of Armenian culture. Wrestling with questions of home and self, diasporan Armenian writers bear the burden of repeatedly telling their history, as it remains widely erased and obfuscated. Telling this history requires a tangled balance of contextualizing the past and reporting on the present, of respecting a culture even while feeling lost within it.

We Are All Armenian brings together established and emerging Armenian authors to reflect on the complications of Armenian ethnic identity today. These personal essays elevate diasporic voices that have been historically silenced inside and outside of their communities, including queer, multiracial, and multiethnic writers. The eighteen contributors to this contemporary anthology explore issues of displacement, assimilation, inheritance, and broader definitions of home. Through engaging creative nonfiction, many of them question what it is to be Armenian enough inside an often unacknowledged community.

Traje, the brightly colored traditional dress of the highland Maya, is the principal visual expression of indigenous identity in Guatemala today. Whether worn in beauty pageants, made for religious celebrations, or sold in tourist markets, traje is more than "mere cloth"—it plays an active role in the construction and expression of ethnicity, gender, education, politics, wealth, and nationality for Maya and non-Maya alike.

Carol Hendrickson presents an ethnography of clothing focused on the traje—particularly women's traje—of Tecpán, Guatemala, a bi-ethnic community in the central highlands. She covers the period from 1980, when the recent round of violence began, to the early 1990s, when Maya revitalization efforts emerged.

Using a symbolic analysis informed by political concerns, Hendrickson seeks to increase the value accorded to a subject like weaving, which is sometimes disparaged as "craft" or "women's work." She examines traje in three dimensions—as part of the enduring images of the "Indian," as an indicator of change in the human life cycle and cloth production, and as a medium for innovation and creative expression.

From this study emerges a picture of highland life in which traje and the people who wear it are bound to tradition and place, yet are also actively changing and reflecting the wider world. The book will be important reading for all those interested in the contemporary Maya, the cultural analysis of material culture, and the role of women in culture preservation and change.

Although less well known than its much-admired counterparts in Peru and Bolivia, highland Ecuadorian weaving is an Andean tradition that has relationships with these more southern areas. A world away from the industrialized textile manufacturing of Euro-American society, these handmade pieces reflect the history and artistry of an ancient culture.

This comprehensive study, edited by Ann Pollard Rowe, is unrivaled in its detail and includes not only descriptions of the indigenous weaving and dyeing technology, but also an interpretation of its historical significance, as well as hundreds of photographs, drawings, and maps that inform the understanding of the process.

The principal focus is on backstrap-loom weaving, a major pre-Hispanic technology. Ecuadorian backstrap looms, which differ in various ways from those found elsewhere in the Andes, have previously only been treated in general terms. Here, the basic operation of this style of loom is covered, as are a variety of patterning techniques including warp-resist (ikat) dyeing, weaving belts with twill, and supplementary- and complementary-warp patterning. Spanish colonial treadle-loom weaving is also covered. The weaving techniques are explained in detail, so the reader can replicate them if desired.

Textiles have been an important art form among Andean peoples from remote prehistory up to the present. A greater understanding of their creation process can yield a more meaningful appreciation of the art itself.

Austin, Texas, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, is experiencing one of the most dynamic periods in its history. Wedged between homogenizing growth and a long tradition of rebellious nonconformity, many Austinites feel that they are in the midst of a battle for the city's soul.

From this struggle, a movement has emerged as a form of resistance to the rapid urban transformation brought about in recent years: "Keep Austin Weird" originated in 2000 as a grassroots expression of place attachment and anti-commercialization. Its popularity has led to its use as a rallying cry for local business, as a rhetorical tool by city governance, and now as the unofficial civic motto for a city experiencing rapid growth and transformation.

By using "Keep Austin Weird" as a central focus, Joshua Long explores the links between sense of place, consumption patterns, sustainable development, and urban politics in Austin. Research on this phenomenon considers the strong influence of the "Creative Class" thesis on Smart Growth strategies, gentrification, income inequality, and social polarization made popular by the works of Richard Florida. This study is highly applicable to several emerging "Creative Cities," but holds special significance for the city considered the greatest creative success story, Austin.

A vivid journey through a southern hip hop bastion, Welcome 2 Houston offers readers an inside look at a unique musical culture.

Mention "Apaches," and many Anglo-Americans picture the "marauding savages" of western movies or impoverished reservations beset by a host of social problems. But, like most stereotypes, these images distort the complex history and rich cultural heritage of the Apachean peoples, who include the Navajo, as well as the Western, Chiricahua, Mescalero, Jicarilla, Lipan, and Kiowa Apaches. In this pioneering study, Richard Perry synthesizes the findings of anthropology, ethnology, linguistics, archaeology, and ethnohistory to reconstruct the Apachean past and offer a fuller understanding of the forces that have shaped modern Apache culture.

While scholars generally agree that the Apacheans are part of a larger group of Athapaskan-speaking peoples who originated in the western Subarctic, there are few archaeological remains to prove when, where, and why those northern cold dwellers migrated to the hot deserts of the American Southwest. Using an innovative method of ethnographic reconstruction, however, Perry hypothesizes that these nomadic hunters were highly adaptable and used to exploiting the resources of a wide range of mountainous habitats. When changes in their surroundings forced the ancient Apacheans to expand their food quest, it was natural for them to migrate down the "mountain corridor" formed by the Rocky Mountain chain.

This reconstruction of Apachean history and culture sheds much light on the origins, dispersions, and relationships of Apache groups. Perry is the first researcher to attempt such an extensive reconstruction, and his study is the first to deal with the full range of Athapaskan-speaking peoples. His method will be instructive to students of other cultures who face a similar lack of historical and archaeological data.

Shonna Trinch and Edward Snajdr, a sociolinguist and an anthropologist respectively, show how the beliefs and ideas that people take as truths about language and its speakers are deployed in these different sign types. They also present in-depth ethnographic case studies that reveal how gentrification and corporate redevelopment in Brooklyn are intimately connected to public communication, literacy practices, the transformation of motherhood and gender roles, notions of historical preservation, urban planning, and systems of privilege. Far from peripheral or irrelevant, shop signs say loud and clear that language displayed in public always matters.

This book is the recipient of the 2021 Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Prize from Vanderbilt University Press for the best book in the area of art or medicine.

An alluring blend of remembering and reflection, When Grandpa Delivered Babies and Other Ozarks Vignettes provides a vivid portrait of a fading time.

Winner, Al Lowman Memorial Prize, Texas State Historical Association, 2014

In 1939, a team of short, scrappy kids from a vocational school established specifically for Mexican Americans became the high school basketball champions of San Antonio, Texas. Their win, and the ensuing riot it caused, took place against a backdrop of shifting and conflicted attitudes toward Mexican Americans and American nationalism in the WWII era. “Only when the Mexicans went from perennial runners-up to champs,” García writes, “did the emotions boil over.”

The first sports book to look at Mexican American basketball specifically, When Mexicans Could Play Ball is also a revealing study of racism and cultural identity formation in Texas. Using personal interviews, newspaper articles, and game statistics to create a compelling narrative, as well as drawing on his experience as a sports writer, García takes us into the world of San Antonio’s Sidney Lanier High School basketball team, the Voks, which became a two-time state championship team under head coach William Carson “Nemo” Herrera. An alumnus of the school himself, García investigates the school administrators’ project to Americanize the students, Herrera’s skillful coaching, and the team’s rise to victory despite discrimination and violence from other teams and the world outside of the school. Ultimately, García argues, through their participation and success in basketball at Lanier, the Voks players not only learned how to be American but also taught their white counterparts to question long-held assumptions about Mexican Americans.

A beloved, smart, and bold story collection surges back to life in a new print edition

Hailed as “revolutionary fiction,” When the Messenger Is Hot gleefully upends the short-story form, rendering the absurdities and possibilities of modern urban life with disarming humor and keen perception as Crane weaves through grief and womanhood. The women in Elizabeth Crane’s world are fierce and kind, damaged and optimistic. They are jilted lovers, absent daughters, twelve-steppers, and smart-asses, recovering from loss, addiction, or betrayal. From a woman who decides to live on the rooftop of her friend’s apartment (why not?), to a writer whose identity is compromised by the actress who portrays her, to a daughter who believes her deceased mother is still alive and living at the bus depot, these characters experience love and loss in a way that is both profoundly universal and uniquely theirs.
 

Recounts the hardships and joys the Kilgore family and their neighbors experienced in a close-knit southern rural community during the Great Depression

As the Great Depression tightened its grip on the world, six members of the Kilgore family were living in a cramped farmhouse in Brookwood, Alabama. Crops didn’t grow well, food was scarce, shoes were in short supply, and the few clothes they had were all hand-me-downs. The Kilgores struggled to make ends meet, cobbling together odd jobs and working the land by hand.

Despite all of this, young Aileen thought life was full of hope. She longed to hold on to it and scribbled down daily events on whatever odds and ends of paper she could find. In her new memoir, When the Wolf Camped at Our Door, Aileen Kilgore Henderson creates a vivid portrait of what life was like for so many living in the rural South during the Depression. The book begins when Aileen is ten years old and follows her into her teenage years over the course of twenty-seven episodic chapters. Drawing on her girlhood diaries and told through the charismatic voice of her younger self, Henderson’s nuanced storytelling sheds light on the common struggle for survival during a time when people were at their most vulnerable.

Against the backdrop of a world where hard work and harsh conditions like hunger, privation, sickness, and early death were everyday realities, Henderson’s stories are nevertheless tinged with young Aileen’s lively sense of humor and optimistic faith in people and in the promise of life despite trying circumstances. We follow her rambles in the woods, her visits with friends, a trip to a fortune teller, and a search for the Howton Horror, a mysterious monster rumored to live deep in the Alabama backwoods.
 

Tracing the configuration of the slapstick, destitute Peladita/Peladito and the Pachuca/Pachuco (depicted in flashy zoot suits) from 1928 to 2004, Wild Tongues is an ambitious, extensive examination of social order in Mexican and Chicana/o cultural productions in literature, theater, film, music, and performance art.

From the use of the Peladita and the Peladito as stock characters who criticized various aspects of the Mexican government in the 1920s and 1930s to contemporary performance art by María Elena Gaitán and Dan Guerrero, which yields a feminist and queer-studies interpretation, Rita Urquijo-Ruiz emphasizes the transnational capitalism at play in these comic voices. Her study encompasses both sides of the border, including the use of the Pachuca and the Pachuco as anti-establishment, marginal figures in the United States. The result is a historically grounded, interdisciplinary approach that reimagines the limitations of nation-centered thinking and reading.

Beginning with Daniel Venegas’s 1928 novel, Las aventuras de don Chipote o Cuando los pericos mamen, Rita Urquijo-Ruiz’s Wild Tongues demonstrates early uses of the Peladito to call attention to the brutal physical demands placed on the undocumented Mexican laborer. It explores Teatro de Carpa (tent theater) in-depth as well, bringing to light the experience of Mexican Peladita Amelia Wilhelmy, whose “La Willy” was famous for portraying a cross-dressing male soldier who criticizes the failed Revolution. In numerous other explorations such as these, the political, economic, and social power of creativity continually takes center stage.

    Highly entertaining and richly informative, Wisconsin Folklore offers the first comprehensive collection of writings about the surprisingly varied folklore of Wisconsin. Beginning with a historical introduction to Wisconsin's folklore and concluding with an up-to-date bibliography, this anthology offers more than fifty annotated and illustrated entries in five sections: "Terms and Talk," "Storytelling," "Music, Song, and Dance," "Beliefs and Customs," and "Material Traditions and Folklife."
    The various contributors, from 1884 to 1997, are anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, historians, journalists, museologists, ordinary citizens reminiscing, sociologists, students, writers of fiction, practitioners of folklore, and folklorists. Their interests cover an enormous range of topics: from Woodland Indian place names and German dialect expressions to Welsh nicknames and the jargon of apple-pickers, brewers, and farmers; from Ho-Chunk and Ojibwa mythological tricksters and Paul Bunyan legends to stories of Polish strongmen and Ole and Lena jokes; from Menominee dances and Norwegian fiddling and polka music to African-American gospel groups and Hmong musicians; from faith healers and wedding and funeral customs to seasonal ethnic festivities and tavern amusements; and from spearing decoys and needlework to church dinners, sacred shrines, and the traditional work practices of commercial fishers, tobacco growers, and pickle packers.
    For general readers, teachers, librarians, and scholars alike, Wisconsin Folklore exemplifies and illuminates Wisconsin's cultural traditions, and establishes the state's significant but long neglected contributions to American folklore.