Open Spaces City Places Contem. This item is unavailable.Open Spaces City Places Contem

Southwestern writers face a dilemma: their writing about the region's open spaces attracts new residents who "love the desert to death" by building homes and paving roads. While much of the region's literature bears a distinctly rural or anti-urban stamp, most of its residents--including its writers--live in cities. Only in today's Southwest do so many write that which they do not live.In Open Spaces, City Places, fourteen scholars and writers offer a wide diversity of geographic perspectives, writing styles, and opinions about the changes taking place in the region and its literature. They place the ostensible dilemma in the context of American literary history and explore some of the little-known literature and fresh voices that are emerging from today's Southwestern cities. Contributors
Rudolfo Anaya
Charles Bowden
Don Graham
Patricia Preciado Martin
Leo Marx
Tom Miller
Lawrence Clark Powell
C.L. Sonnichsen
Rolando Hinojosa Smith
Luci Tapahonso
Frederick Turner
Peter Wild
Stewart L. Udall
Ann H. Zwinger

"In this interesting and informative anthology, 14 Southwestern authors . . . provide an excellent review of the literature, and they tell of their own experiences in the new Southwest and why they love open spaces more than city places." —Journal of the West"There are a number of superbly written essays to read here, as well done as they are intellectually agile." —New York Times Book Review"Lying is one way of avoiding confrontation, and a searing indictment of such practice in the modern-day mythmaking of a nonexistent reality distinguishes more than one contribution." —American Literary Scholarship"An invaluable sampler of writerly attitudes at the end of the 20th century toward the enduring contradictions of 'regional' literatures." —Choice"While each essay is interesting, one stands out: Charles Bowden's 'Dead Minds from Live Places' is a refreshingly candid assessment and caustic indictment of much western writing, a field that 'is synonymous with fraud, sentimentality, and flim-flam.' . . . These writers and others have added their voices to a discourse that is of central concern for all westerners, city and country dwellers alike." —Western American Literature"[An] eclectic, enjoyable look at the Southwest." —Southwestern Historical Quarterly