Special Collections added the following 12 titles to ASC's holdings during the fourth quarter of 2024. The list is a sample of purchased and donated publications and while not exhaustive, is meant to highlight recent acquisitions. For a full list of Special Collections titles, please search PRIMO, the library’s catalog.
Billy the Kid: The War for Lincoln County by
Call Number: Branson Library, Special Collections - Non-circulating PS3603.O43278 B55 2024
ISBN: 9781094102702
Publication Date: 2024-10-15
Age 14: Orphan Age 15: Inmate Age 16: Outlaw Age 17: Killer In 1870s New Mexico, the territory is at a crossroads. The indigenous population is being driven out--and driven down--by the white settlers migrating west after the Civil War. The center of power isn't the governor but rather the Santa Fe Ring, a group of wealthy politicians, businessman, and landowners who exercise power through organized crime, theft, graft, and murder. Their main source of income is a mercantile store in Lincoln known as the House. After escaping jail, William Bonney--a.k.a. Billy the Kid--is a seventeen-year-old orphan who's been on the run for the better part of two years. All he wants is to belong--to find a place he can call home and people he can call family. He'd have been better off alone. Billy falls in with a gang of ruthless rustlers and murderers who work as muscle for the House. But when Billy crosses one of the members, the gang sets out to kill him. Billy narrowly escapes, finding refuge under the tutelage of John Tunstall, an English immigrant new to the territory who has his sights set on opening a business in Lincoln--and he's intent on competing directly with the House. But when Tunstall is murdered, any positive effect the mentor had on Billy is eradicated, leaving the Kid with only one thing on his mind ... Revenge. From orphan to outlaw to killer, this is the untold story behind the legend of Billy the Kid.
The Border Simulator = El Simulador de Fronteras Poems, Poemas by
Call Number: Branson Library, Special Collections - Non-circulating PS3604.O97 B67 2023
ISBN: 9780593447291
Publication Date: 2023-08-15
A world-bending, lyrically rich poetry collection that reimagines the U.S.-Mexico border as both a real place and a living simulation-and tells the story of a pair of siblings trapped between the two "Word coyote Gabriel Dozal is crossing borders with this story. It's his job- narrative poetry discovering a new language."-Sandra Cisneros, author of Woman Without Shame "This crosser is a possession that someone wants but we're not sure who and the crosser must often possess themselves. In perpetuity" In Gabriel Dozal's debut collection, the U.S.-Mexico border is redefined as a place of invention; crossing it becomes a matter of simulation. The poems accompany Primitivo, who attempts to cross the border, an imaginary boundary that becomes more real and challenging as his journey progresses; and his sister, Primitiva, who lives an alternate, static life as an exploited migrant worker in la fabrica. The tech world and bureaucracy collide, with humanity falling by the wayside, as Primitiva endures drudgery in la fabrica. "In the past our ID cards were decorative. Now we switch off with someone else, another worker who will wipe the serenade from our eyes." With no way to escape the simulation, Primitivo and Primitiva must participate in it, scheming to gain its favor. To win, you must be the best performer in the factory, the best imitation of a citizen, the best machine. Featuring a bilingual format for English and Spanish readers, The Border Simulator explores physical and metaphysical borders, as well as the digital divide of our modern era. With inventive imagery, spirited wordplay, and thrilling movement, these energetic poems oscillate between the harrowing and the joyful, interrogating, innovating, and ultimately redefining binaries and divisions.
Cactus Country: A Boyhood Memoir by
Call Number: Branson Library, Special Collections - Non-circulating HQ77.8.B67 A3 2024
ISBN: 9781419773181
Publication Date: 2024-05-21
Named one of the Best Books of the Year by Shelf Awareness; named one of the Best Memoirs of the Year by Esquire A striking literary memoir of genderfluidity, class, masculinity, and the American Southwest that captures the author's experience coming of age in a Tucson, Arizona, trailer park. Newly arrived in the Sonoran Desert, eleven-year-old Zoë's world is one of giant beetles, thundering javelinas, and gnarled paloverde trees. With the family's move to Cactus Country RV Park, Zoë has been given a fresh start and a new, shorter haircut. Although Zoë doesn't have the words to express it, he experiences life as a trans boy--and in Cactus Country, others begin to see him as a boy, too. Here, Zoë spends hot days chasing shade and freight trains with an ever-rotating pack of sunburned desert kids, and nights fending off his own questions about the body underneath his baggy clothes. As Zoë enters adolescence, he must reckon with the sexism, racism, substance abuse, and violence endemic to the working class Cactus Country men he's grown close to, whose hard masculinity seems as embedded in the desert landscape as the cacti sprouting from parched earth. In response, Zoë adopts an androgynous style and new pronouns, but still cannot escape what it means to live in a gendered body, particularly when a fraught first love destabilizes their sense of self. But beauty flowers in this desert, too. Zoë persists in searching for answers that can't be found in Cactus Country, dreaming of a day they might leave the park behind to embrace whatever awaits beyond. Equal parts harsh and tender, Cactus Country is an invitation for readers to consider how we find our place in a world that insists on stark binaries, and a precisely rendered journey of self-determination that will resonate with anyone who's ever had to fight to be themself.
Call Number: Branson Library, Special Collections - Non-circulating F804.G36 A54 2023
ISBN: 9780262047715
Publication Date: 2023-06-06
A poignant artistic collaboration, showing how history and mythology converge in the Navajo communities in and around Gallup, New Mexico. Taking a fresh approach to personal documentary, Gallup combines Roswell Angier's photographs, Susan Hawley's watercolor paintings, and both of their journal entries, as they explore the time they spent in Gallup, New Mexico in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Gallup is a place where histories and myths meet, and Angier and Hawley work through diverse media to portray a place where many versions of Native and American life have flowed together. They show that Gallup is both beautiful and difficult to know, in a way that reflects the long shadow of Native American disenfranchisement. Sober about social realities, Angier and Hawley nevertheless find lighthearted humor in the daily life of Gallup. They take us from the Navajo creation story to motels, from a rodeo to an inherited suitcase of Plains Indian artifacts. Through images, we travel from Canyon de Chelly to Chaco Canyon, from fast food joints to bars. Beyond the picturesque cliches offered by the desert, full of Airstream trailers and sunsets, we find struggles over personal and group identity at one of America's crossroads, where a billboard once read "Welcome to the Indian Capital of the World."
Call Number: Branson Library, Special Collections - Non-circulating PZ7.1.B3843 Ha 2024
ISBN: 9798891380004
Publication Date: 2024-06-04
Farmer Pablo closes his eyes to rest in his rocking chair after working all day in his special Hatch Chile Greenhouse. Suddenly, he is startled by beautiful Spanish music and a reddish-green light! What will happen next? A Literary Titan Five-Star Book Award winner, Hatch Chile Willie takes readers on a wonderful, magic-filled adventure.
In Our Hands: Native Photography, 1890 to Now by
Call Number: Branson Library, Special Collections - Non-circulating TR681.I58 I5 2023
ISBN: 9780300272161
Publication Date: 2023-10-24
A groundbreaking exhibition catalogue of Native, First Nations, Metis, and Inuit photography from the nineteenth century to the present day Photographs of and by Native people have long been exhibited in museums. All too often, however, such exhibitions have misrepresented vital cultural and historical contexts, neglecting the depth of practice, supporting scholarship, and Native perspectives relevant to the work. By developing a broadly representative curatorial council of prominent academics and artists, more than half of whom represent Native communities in the United States and Canada, this book significantly expands the traditional discourses of photographic history. With incisive contributions by individual curatorial council members, In Our Hands presents Native photography in three thematic sections that underscore the following: Native people are present in all facets of American life; their role is transformative in the larger society; and their view of, and connections to, the land and all living things is holistic and fundamental. The publication features 130 photographic works by Native photographers from the late nineteenth century to the present, ranging from documentary photographs to family snapshots to conceptual works. Illustrated in full color, the photographs in this book offer diverse perspectives spanning geographic, chronological, and artistic experience, and shed new light on the extraordinary contributions of Native, First Nations, Metis, and Inuit artists to the art of the Americas.
La Voz De M.A.Y.O.: Tata Rambo. Vol. 1 by
Call Number: Branson Library, Special Collections - Non-circulating PN6727.B353 V69 2019
ISBN: 9781534313637
Publication Date: 2019-11-12
La Voz De M.A.Y.O: Tata Rambo is based on theoral history of Ramon Jaurigue, an orphan and WWII veteran who co-founded the Mexican, American, Yaqui, and Others (M.A.Y.O.) organization, which successfully lobbied the Tucson City Council to improve living and working conditions formembers of the Pascua Yaqui tribe. Thanks to this period of activism, the Yaquis were federally recognized as one of the remaining Native American tribes.Meanwhile Ramon's home life suffered as his focus was pulled from family to wider community, and from domesticity to the adrenaline of thecampaign. A resonant, neglected slice of American history is told for the first time with art by J. GONZO, letter art by BERNARDO BRICE, edited by CLAIRE NAPIER, and LA VOZ DEM.A.Y.O boasts a script by HENRY BARAJAS the great-grandson of Ramon Jaurigue, a.k.a. Tata Rambo.
The Lost Journals of Sacajewea: A Novel by
Call Number: Branson Library, Special Collections - Non-circulating PS3605.A765 L68 2023
ISBN: 9781571311450
Publication Date: 2023-05-23
Winner of the Montana Book Award From the award-winning author of Perma Red comes a devastatingly beautiful novel that challenges prevailing historical narratives of Sacajewea. "In my seventh winter, when my head only reached my Appe's rib, a White Man came into camp. Bare trees scratched sky. Cold was endless. He moved through trees like strikes of sunlight. My Bia said he came with bad intentions, like a Water Baby's cry." Among the most memorialized women in American history, Sacajewea served as interpreter and guide for Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery. In this visionary novel, acclaimed Indigenous author Debra Magpie Earling brings this mythologized figure vividly to life, casting unsparing light on the men who brutalized her and recentering Sacajewea as the arbiter of her own history. Raised among the Lemhi Shoshone, in this telling the young Sacajewea is bright and bold, growing strong from the hard work of "learning all ways to survive": gathering berries, water, roots, and wood; butchering buffalo, antelope, and deer; catching salmon and snaring rabbits; weaving baskets and listening to the stories of her elders. When her village is raided and her beloved Appe and Bia are killed, Sacajewea is kidnapped and then gambled away to Charbonneau, a French Canadian trapper. Heavy with grief, Sacajewea learns how to survive at the edge of a strange new world teeming with fur trappers and traders. When Lewis and Clark's expedition party arrives, Sacajewea knows she must cross a vast and brutal terrain with her newborn son, the white man who owns her, and a company of men who wish to conquer and commodify the world she loves. Written in lyrical, dreamlike prose, The Lost Journals of Sacajewea is an astonishing work of art and a powerful tale of perseverance--the Indigenous woman's story that hasn't been told.
The Missing Morningstar: and Other Stories by
Call Number: Branson Library, Special Collections - Non-circulating PS3604.E64 M7 2023
ISBN: 9781948814850
Publication Date: 2023-09-12
A 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Award winner "Propulsive and complex, this is agorgeously written debut." --KIRKUS REVIEWS (starred review) In The Missing Morningstar and Other Stories, Stacie Shannon Denetsosie confronts long-reaching effects of settler-colonialism on Native lives in a series of gritty, wildly imaginative stories. A young Navajo man catches a ride home alongside a casket he's sure contains his dead grandfather. A gas station clerk witnesses the kidnapping of the newly crowned Miss Northwestern Arizona. A young couple's search for a sperm donor raises questions of blood quantum. This debut collection grapples with a complex and painful history alongside an inheritance of beauty, ceremony, and storytelling.
A Passing West: Essays from the Borderlands by
Call Number: Branson Library, Special Collections - Non-circulating PS3557.I296 P37 2024
ISBN: 9780826366825
Publication Date: 2024-10-01
A unique, unmistakable voice in American fiction, Dagoberto Gilb is also a singular writer of personal and journalistic essays. In A Passing West he casts a penetrating gaze upon the culture and history of the Southwest, Mexican American identity, and his own family. Gilb has a forceful message for readers: there is a Mexican America, and its culture is the lifeblood of the Southwest United States, which was Mexican land until the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The rest of the country, Gilb declares, does not want to know or respect the long history of Mexican America. His mission is to defend and proclaim its beauty and importance. Ranging from accounts of research in Spain's Archivo General de Indias and the culture of farming corn in Iowa to meditations on Mexican and Mexican American writers, deconstructions of Mexican American food, and the experience of teaching students confused about their own culture and identity, these sharply observed portraits are both thought provoking and entertaining. His parent, his youth and manhood, his new disabled life, and snapshots of Mexico City and Guatemala, California, and Texas--all are unforgettable thanks to Gilb's brilliant vision and style.
Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith, and Migration by
Call Number: Branson Library, Special Collections - Non-circulating JV6475 .O45 2023
ISBN: 9781662601699
Publication Date: 2023-06-20
Best Nonfiction of 2023 - Kirkus "One of the most thoughtful meditations on our nation's immigration policy in recent memory." -The Boston Globe A chronicle of translation, storytelling, and borders as understood through the United States' "immigration crisis." In this powerful and deeply felt memoir of translation, storytelling, and borders, Alejandra Oliva, a Mexican-American translator and immigrant justice activist, offers a powerful chronical of her experience interpreting at the US-Mexico border. Having worked with asylum seekers since 2016, she knows all too well the gravity of taking someone's trauma and delivering it to the warped demands of the U.S. immigration system. As Oliva's stunning prose recounts the stories of the people she's met through her work, she also traces her family's long and fluid relationship to the border-each generation born on opposite sides of the Rio Grande. In Rivermouth, Oliva focuses on the physical spaces that make up different phases of immigration, looking at how language and opportunity move through each of them- from the river as the waterway that separates the U.S. and Mexico, to the table as the place over which Oliva prepares asylum seekers for their Credible Fear Interviews, and finally, to the wall as the behemoth imposition that runs along America's southernmost border. With lush prose and perceptive insight, Oliva encourages readers to approach the painful questions that this crisis poses with equal parts critique and compassion. By which metrics are we measuring who "deserves" American citizenship? What is the point of humanitarian systems that distribute aid conditionally? What do we owe to our most disenfranchised? As investigative and analytical as she is meditative and introspective, sharp as she is lyrical, and incisive as she is compassionate, seasoned interpreter Alejandra Oliva argues for a better world while guiding us through the suffering that makes the fight necessary and the joy that makes it worth fighting for.
Call Number: Branson Library, Special Collections - Non-circulating PS3610.A737 W58 2024
ISBN: 9781668033210
Publication Date: 2024-10-08
"Luis Jaramillo weaves a captivating tale of family, tradition, and the enduring power of love." --Reyna Grande, author of A Ballad of Love and Glory A lawyer and her elderly great-aunt use their supernatural gifts to find a lost child in this "wild, wondrous novel about the magic that is singing all around us" (Julia Phillips, author of Disappearing Earth)--in the vein of The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina and La Hacienda. If you call to the witches, they will come. 1943, El Paso, Texas: teenager Nena spends her days caring for the small children of her older sisters and longing for a life of adventure. The premonitions and fainting spells she has endured since childhood are getting worse, and Nena worries she'll end up like the scary old curandera down the street. Nena prays for help, and when the mysterious Sister Benedicta arrives late one night, Nena follows her across the borders of space and time. In colonial Mexico, Nena grows into her power, finding love and learning that magic always comes with a price. In the present day, Nena's grandniece, Marta, balances a struggling legal aid practice with motherhood and the care of the now ninety-three-year-old Nena. When Marta agrees to help search for a daughter Nena left in the past, the two forge a fierce connection. Marta's own supernatural powers emerge, awakening her to new possibilities that threaten the life she has constructed. "Sexy, smart, and soulful, Luis Jaramillo's The Witches of El Paso pulls us across borders and time to get to the essence of what it means for families to survive this beautiful, fractured world" (Mira Jacob, author of Good Talk).