The University of Arizona Press is the premier publisher of academic, regional, and literary works in the state of Arizona. They disseminate ideas and knowledge of lasting value that enrich understanding, inspire curiosity, and enlighten readers. They advance the University of Arizona’s mission by connecting scholarship and creative expression to readers worldwide.
American Indian Languages
Cultural and Social Contexts
Trails to Tiburón
The 1894 and 1895 Field Diaries of W J McGee
The Prehistoric Pueblo World, A.D. 1150-1350
Throwing Fire at the Sun, Water at the Moon
Perhaps you know them for their deer dances or for their rich Easter ceremonies, or perhaps only from the writings of anthropologists or of Carlos Castaneda. But now you can come to know the Yaqui Indians in a whole new way.
Anita Endrezze, born in California of a Yaqui father and a European mother, has written a multilayered work that interweaves personal, mythical, and historical views of the Yaqui people. Throwing Fire at the Sun, Water at the Moon is a blend of ancient myths, poetry, journal extracts, short stories, and essays that tell her people's story from the early 1500s to the present, and her family's story over the past five generations. Reproductions of Endrezze's paintings add an additional dimension to her story and illuminate it with striking visual imagery.
Endrezze has combed history and legend to gather stories of her immediate family and her mythical ancient family, the two converging in the spirit of storytelling. She tells Aztec and Yaqui creation stories, tales of witches and seductresses, with recurring motifs from both Yaqui and Chicano culture. She shows how Christianity has deeply infused Yaqui beliefs, sharing poems about the Flood and stories of a Yaqui Jesus. She re-creates the coming of the Spaniards through the works of such historical personages as Andrés Pérez de Ribas. And finally she tells of those individuals who carry the Yaqui spirit into the present day. People like the Esperanza sisters, her grandmothers, and others balance characters like Coyote Woman and the Virgin of Guadalupe to show that Yaqui women are especially important as carriers of their culture.
Greater than the sum of its parts, Endrezze's work is a new kind of family history that features a startling use of language to invoke a people and their past--a time capsule with a female soul. Written to enable her to understand more about her ancestors and to pass this understanding on to her own children, Throwing Fire at the Sun, Water at the Moon helps us gain insight not only into Yaqui culture but into ourselves as well.
Learning to Glow
Atomic energy is not only invisible, it has been cloaked in secrecy by government, industry, and the military. Yet for many Americans the effects of radiation have been less than secret. Just ask the radium workers in Ottawa, Illinois, the "downwinders" of Utah, or unsuspecting veterans of the Gulf War.
When told from the perspective of ordinary people, nuclear history takes on a much different tone from that of the tranquil voices of authority who always told us we had nothing to fear. In Learning to Glow, twenty-four essays testify to many of the unsuspected human and environmental costs of atomic science. They show that Americans have paid a terrible price for supposedly "winning" the Cold War--for although the nuclear nightmare may be over, we are still living with nuclear threats every day.
Writers such as Scott Russell Sanders, Terry Tempest Williams, and Barbara Kingsolver reveal the psychic and emotional fallout of the Cold War and of subsequent developments in nuclear science. The essays include personal testimonies of what it was like to grow up with family members in nuclear-related jobs; hard-hitting journalism on the health and environmental costs of our nuclear policies and practices; and poignant stories of coming to terms with nuclear power, including contributions by writers who revisit Hiroshima in an attempt to heal the wounds left by the Bomb.
These essays offer an alternative to the official version of nuclear history as told to us by school textbooks, government authorities, and nuclear industry officials. They are stories of and by ordinary people who have suffered the consequences of the decisions made by those in power-stories that have been largely ignored, dismissed, or suppressed. They will challenge readers to re-examine their preconceptions about the way we deal with issues of nuclear arms and radioactive waste because they show that nuclear history does not belong to experts but to us all.
Contributors:
Marilou Awiakta
John Bradley
Jim Carrier
Alison Hawthorne Deming
Mary Dickson
Edward Dougherty
Ray Gonzalez
Karl Grossman
Sonya Huber
Barbara Kingsolver
Valerie Kuletz
Mary Laufer
Kay Mack
Craig McGrath
Bill Mesler
Richard H. Minear
Randy Morris
Mayumi Oda
Catherine Quigg
Richard Rawles
Kenneth Robbins
Scott Russell Sanders
David Seaborg
Terry Tempest Williams
Bill Witherup
Phil Woods
Great House Communities across the Chacoan Landscape
Ceramic Production in the American Southwest
A Latina in the Land of Hollywood
and Other Essays on Media Culture
Up Close
A Lifetime Observing and Photographing Desert Animals
Up Close
George Olin has gained a wide reputation as a keen observer of nature. In books such as Mammals of the Southwestern Deserts and House in the Sun, his writing and photography have enchanted those who want to know more about the desert and its animalseven people who already live there.
In this charming memoir, Olin combines personal and natural history to recount his long fascination with animals. In addition to painting a vivid picture of his nomadic life, he describes the ingenious methods he devised to observe desert creatures and build their trustand the lessons they taught him in return.
Olin takes readers back to 1951, when he and his wife, Irene, were hired as fire lookouts in Arizona's Huachuca Mountains. There, where golden eagles soared and rock squirrels scampered, they befriended a wide variety of animals, from skunks to coatis, and knew they had found satisfaction. The following year they participated in the founding of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson and were in on its construction from the ground up. As a ranger and later the park naturalist at Saguaro National Monument, Olin became acquainted with more of the desert's creatures, sharpened his photographic skills, and even studied pollination of saguaro cactus by bats and other creatures.
Following eight years spent working for the Park Service in the East, the Olins returned to their beloved desert as retirees. There George embarked upon a night photography project, following foxes, skunks, raccoons, and ringtail cats on their nocturnal rounds, and later extending his study to kit foxes and kangaroo rats. Up Close contains a wealth of information about what he learned on those outings, and his engaging tales of personal encounters with these and other denizens of the desert will make even Gila monsters, wood rats, and scorpions seem less threatening for readers who flinch at the very thought of them.
Up Close is a warm and enjoyable book, chock full of Olin's charming photographs, that makes the desert and its creatures come alive. It will delight all who love the Southwest and instill a sense of wonder in anyone fascinated by the natural world.