A September Song
IN SEPTEMBER, my joy and sorrow begin. It is the month when I feel most alive, both fragile and indestructible. It also creates in me a discomforting nostalgia, a yearning for more that makes me a…
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Category: Books
What We're Reading: Legible Walls
IF YOU LOOK OUT THE WINDOWS during a trip on the Rail Runner Express between Santa Fe and Albuquerque, you’re rewarded with a trove of murals on city walls. In Darryl Lorenzo Wellington’s Legible…
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Books We Loved in 2023
MILES TO GO: AN AFRICAN FAMILY IN SEARCH OF AMERICA ALONG ROUTE 66 Brennen Matthews (UNM Press) Author Brennen Matthews chronicles an eye-opening road trip with his family from Chicago to California…
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What We're Reading: Thin Skin
MANY NEW MEXICANS critiqued Oppenheimer for omitting the local impact of nuclear development. The filmmakers should’ve read the title essay from Jenn Shapland’s deeply felt collection, Thin Skin…
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What We're Reading: New Mexico Fiestas
THE LONGEST-RUNNING FESTIVAL in the United States takes over the Santa Fe Plaza September 2–10. In New Mexico Fiestas: A History of Music, Dance & Fandango (The History Press), historian Ray John de…
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What We're Reading: Water for the People
IN OLIVIA ROMO’S “Bendición del Agua,” the poet fetches a ceremonial glass of water for her elder, then says a prayer of respect for both agua y abuelo. That poem (and rite) kicks off Water for the…
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What We're Reading: Doña Cleanwell Leaves Home
MY BEST FRIEND AND I traded Ana Castillo’s The Mixquiahuala Letters back and forth during high school, inspired by the novel’s clear-eyed depiction of a long friendship between two women artists. In…
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What We're Reading: The Half White Album
“SOME CRITICS SAY you should never start or even use a dream in a story,” writes Cynthia J. Sylvester (Diné) in The Half-White Album (UNM Press), “but I’m awake now and pretending that it wasn’t a…
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What We're Reading: Susto
AFTER POET TOMMY ARCHULETA’S mother died, he found a heavily marked-up homemade book on curanderismo among her things. That mixture of ancestral and herbal lore informs his sensorily elegiac new…
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What We're Reading: The Ballad of Plácida Romero
“I BEG GOD FOR MY MEMORY,” begins the Spanish ballad “Corrido de Plácida Romero.” On August 8, 1881, Romero was captured at her home near Grants, in one of the last Apache war raids into the…
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