The Road to Mexico (Southwest Center Series) - Softcover

Taylor, Lawrence

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0816517258 ISBN 13: 9780816517251

Publisher: University of Arizona Press, 1997

Synopsis

The road between Tucson, Arizona, and Magdalena de Kino, Sonora, runs straight and true. Slicing through miles of rolling desert and faraway blue mountains, it could be just another fast way to get from here to there. But if the traveler has a taste for adventure and time to spare, this road can be a rich and unforgettable ride.

Equipped with camera, pen, and a lively curiosity, photographer Maeve Hickey and writer Lawrence J. Taylor set out to capture whatever might come their way on the road to Mexico. They roamed and rambled, they stayed well off the beaten track, and they talked to nearly everyone they met, from wisecracking waitresses to landed gentry to street urchins dressed in rags. Their book brings to life the calf ropers and casinos, the saints and sinners, the mariachis and miracles in a no-man's-land that sometimes seems to belong neither to the United States nor to Mexico.

Following the footsteps of earlier travelers-traders, warriors, missionaries, and explorers-these modern pilgrims take a hands-on approach to their journey. Throughout, both writer and photographer convey the sizzle and spice of a land where Indian, Mexican, and Anglo worlds have collided, coexisted, and melted into each other for centuries. Their eye for the hidden telling detail carries the reader straight into the action, and their zest for excitement spurs any traveler to drop everything, grab a bag, and hit the road to Mexico.

About this title

About the Author

Lawrence J. Taylor is a writer and a professor of anthropology at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. A native New Yorker, he has lived and taught in Ireland and France, and has conducted fieldwork in Ireland, the Bahamas, and several parts of Europe and America. He is the author of several dozen articles on cultural and historical topics ranging from fishing to the political uses of death and of two books: Dutchmen on the Bay and Occasions of Faith: An Anthropology of Irish Catholics.
 
Maeve Hickey is an artist and photographer whose multimedia work has been shown in solo exhibitions in New York, London, Rome, and other cities. Her work is represented in North American and European collections, and she has been a guest artist in Berkeley, Dublin, and Paris.
 
Hickey and Taylor are at work on collaborative exhibitions and another book of photos and essays on the U.S.–Mexico border.

From Kirkus Reviews

Taylor, in the company of photographer Maeve Hickey, offers the vivid record of ``a series of encounters--amusing, painful, often strange, and nearly always unforeseen,'' along the road that crosses the Sonoran desert, linking Mexico and Arizona, a road much traveled, in both directions, through the centuries. Settled first by Indians, then by settlers pushing up from Mexico, then by Anglos, the border region has always nurtured a complex and colorful culture. Taylor (Anthropology/Lafayette Coll.) does a convincing job of catching that vigorous, distinctive culture in the voices and lives of a number of individuals. He interviews, among many others, a mural painter in Tucson (where some 200 murals have been painted on the walls of barrio buildings), a crusading Hispanic politician, an elder of the Tohono O'odham people (whose reservation is on the Mexican border), and an archaeologist fascinated by the densely interwoven cultures of the area. Through their words, and through Taylor's descriptions of the region (its ranches and missions, suburbs and reservations) and its many rituals (both Indian and Hispanic), a portrait of a vital, sun- scorched area, dense with history, emerges with great precision. (34 b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Arizona Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0816517258
• ISBN 13: 9780816517251
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 178