Albuquerque: Coming Back to the U.S.A

by Margaret Randall

'On 1/18/1984, I left Managua & came home. I had been away for 23 years...this book is about my home-coming, that re-entry. It is a book about coming back to the United States, & it consists of journal entries, poems, dreams, photographic images, medititations. Its fragmentary character is intentional, conveying, I hope, the texture of this experience, ongoing of course in many ways but it is also a pattern of strangeness-become-familiarity once more--as my senses undergo changes. My eyes are growing old for a second time as I settle back into a remembered, but different, space.'--from the introduction.
'Yesterday was raw with the death in El Salvador of Newsweek photographer John Hoagland. Floyce saw it on TV early in the afternoon. A CBS crewman who had been near Hoagland (Nickelsberg from Time, & a few others who were also there) said the tragedy had taken place during corssfire between the army & the guerrillas. From the testimony it seemed likely that it had been the army that hit Hoagland--in fact, it seemed purposeful--& that the guierrillas had brought the body out & laid it on the road. The CBS crewman clearly said he thought the soldiers were firing at the journalists.'--from 3/18.

350 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Margaret Randall is a feminist poet, writer, photographer and social activist. She has lived for extended periods in Albuquerque, New York, Seville, Mexico City, Havana, and Managua. Shorter stays in Peru and North Vietnam were also formative. In the turbulent 1960s she co-founded and co-edited EL CORNO EMPLUMADO / THE PLUMED HORN, a bilingual literary journal which for eight years published some of the most dynamic and meaningful writing of an era. From 1984 through 1994 she taught at a number of U.S. universities.

Margaret was privileged to live among New York’s abstract expressionists in the 1950s and early ’60s, participate in the Mexican student movement of 1968, share important years of the Cuban revolution (1969-1980), the first four years of Nicaragua’s Sandinista project (1980-1984), and visit North Vietnam during the heroic last months of the U.S. American war in that country (1974). Her four children—Gregory, Sarah, Ximena and Ana—have given her ten grandchildren: Lia, Martin, Daniel, Richi, Sebastian, Juan, Luis Rodrigo, Mariana, Eli, and Tolo. She has lived with her life companion, the painter and teacher Barbara Byers, for almost a quarter century.