Open Spaces, City Places: Contemporary Writers on the Changing Southwest

by Judy Nolte Temple (Editor)

Southwestern writers face a 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

144 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1994

Reviews

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This scholarly book addresses the intersection between urban and open spaces for writers in the American Southwest. Various writers offer short explorations of different aspects of this intersection and its literal, emotional, and psychological impacts. The premise is intriguing although I found the overall collection of essays to be somewhat disjointed. Still, many of the ideas were fresh and still relevant although being published in 1994 and I found myself wondering about how the last 20-some years would impact this topic. My favorite pieces were by Judy Nolte Temple (the introduction), Luci Tapahonso, and Patricia Preciado Martin.