One spring morning Alison Lomez watches her daughter, Rachel, wait for the school bus in front of their house when she sees a coyote trot up to the seven-year-old and sit down. This encounter between species is the first of many in Lisa Lenard-Cook's novel of life in Valle Bosque, New Mexico. The village is only a short commute from Albuquerque, ......
Ol' Max Evans is a rollicking tale of a powerful, if unconventional, literary figure. From his childhood in West Texas to his adolescence as a cowboy in northeastern New Mexico, from D-Day in World War II to the wild world of Hollywood, Max Evans has truly lived many lifetimes. Peppered through all this mayhem were stints as a gold smuggler, ......
Ornamental tinwork folk art originated in the mid-1800s in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with a discarded sardine can. As an increasing number of food products shipped in tin cans arrived over the Santa Fe Trail, more materials were available to the area's tinsmiths. They used their skills on tins that once held sardines, lard, kerosene, and oysters. The ......
Film, Music, and Stories of Undocumented Immigrants
Book, DVD and CD. Robert M Young's critically acclaimed 110-minute film Alambrista (1977) depicts the harsh realities of Mexican life on both sides of the border. Following the birth of his first child, a young Mexican slips across the border into the United States in search of the American dream for himself and his family. He finds heartbreak, ......
This innovative work of cultural history examines the function of public rituals in colonial Mexico City. Festivals were a defining characteristic of life in the capital. For most of the colonial period, inhabitants could witness as many as 100 religious and civil celebrations in a year. The largest of these events, both civil and religious, were ......
The Final Testament of a Huichol Messiah from Northwest Mexico
This is the story of an anthropologist's encounter with a Huichol Indian known as 'Mad Jesus'. Jesus was an artisan, a shaman, a self-styled prophet, a mad messiah, and a murderous mystic. Timothy J Knab was a young anthropologist soliciting life histories from Huichols in Mexico City when they met. The life story of Jesus may have been the ......
Tony Hillerman discusses his craft, including his approach to plot, characterisation, and setting, and the wrinkles and twists that make his brand of fiction unique. These and other insights into how he writes emerge in an extended interview with his long-time friend and fellow author Ernie Bulow. An autobiographical piece by Hillerman details his ......
New Buffalo was one of the most successful of the collective farms that dotted the country in the 1960s and 1970s. Arthur Kopecky's journals take us back to that era as he and his comrades wend their way to the area near Taos, New Mexico, where they encounter magic, wisdom, a mix of people, the Peyote Church, planting, and hard winters. The ......
Mildred Clark Cusey was a prostitute, a madam, an entrepreneur, and above all, a survivor. The story of Silver City Millie, as she referred to herself, is the story of one woman's personal tragedies and triumphs as an orphan, a Harvey Girl waitress on the Santa Fe railroad, a prostitute with innumerable paramours, and a highly successful bordello ......
