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A stunning bilingual, illustrated, and photographic account of a celebrated Mexican tradition The lively Mexican holiday of Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) brings together sorrow and laughter, drawing from indigenous traditions of celebrating one's ancestors and loved ones who have been lost. It's a day of serenity, family, and exuberant creativity, where sugar and skulls can exist side by side. In this bilingual book, beloved Mexican art and culture magazine Artes de México creates a stunning written, illustrated, and photographic account that takes readers through the tradition's origins, its history and evolution, and the many ways it is celebrated today. Alongside the visually stunning displays of altars, cemeteries, costumes, and festivities, a group of renowned Mexican writers has contributed essays that cover topics including the holiday's rural and urban distinctions, occult ancestry, and indigenous rituals. Their words are imbued with spectacular personal significance--and impressive academic rigor--as they recount local legends, family traditions, and tales of life, death, and wandering souls.
Political instability, poverty, climate change, and the insatiable appetite for cheap labour all fuel clandestine movement across borders. As those borders harden, the demand for smugglers who aid migrants across them increases every year. Yet the real lives and work of smugglers - or coyotes, or guides, as they are often known by the migrants who hire their services - are only ever reported on from a distance, using tired tropes and stereotypes, often depicted as boogie men and violent warlords. In an effort to better understand this essential yet extralegal billion dollar global industry, internationally recognised anthropologist and expert Jason De Leon embedded with a group of smugglers moving migrants across Mexico over the course of seven years. The result of this unique and extraordinary access is SOLDIERS AND KINGS: the first ever in-depth, character-driven look at human smuggling. It is a heart-wrenching and intimate narrative that revolves around the life and death of one coyote who falls in love and tries to leave smuggling behind. In a powerful, original voice, De Leon expertly chronicles the lives of low-level foot soldiers breaking into the smuggling game, and morally conflicted gang leaders who oversee rag-tag crews of guides and informants along the migrant trail. SOLDIERS AND KINGS is not only a ground-breaking up-close glimpse of a difficult-to-access world, it is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction.
Ancient South America, 2nd edition features the full panorama of the South American past from the first inhabitants to the European invasions Isolated for all of prehistory and much of history, the continent witnessed the rise of cultures and advanced civilizations rivalling those of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Independently of developments elsewhere, South American peoples invented agriculture, domesticated animals, and created pottery, elaborate architecture, and the arts of working metals. Tribes, chiefdoms, and immense conquest states rose, flourished, and disappeared, leaving only their ruined monuments and broken artifacts as testimonials to past greatness. This new edition is completely revised and updated to reflect archaeological discoveries and insights made in the past three decades. Incorporating new findings on northern and eastern lowlands, and discussions of the first civilizations, it also examines the first inhabitants of Brazil and Patagonia as well as the Andes. Accessibly written and abundantly illustration, the volume also includes chronological charts and new examples.
From the legendary producer of Nick Drake, R.E.M., Toots and the Maytals, and Pink Floyd and author of White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s comes a riveting, world-spanning tour de force illuminating the artists, histories, controversies, and collaborations that shaped global music. Paul Simon told Joe Boyd that when he first heard the accordion flourish that would open his multi-platinum album Graceland, it seemed to proclaim, "You haven't heard this before!" Yet the 1980s "world music" boom that Simon's album helped usher in had roots that extended back through the decades and across continents: tango on the eve of World War I, Latin dance across the '30s, '40s and '50s, reggae in the '70s, pre-War samba and pre-Beatles bossa nova, Eastern European ensembles filling capitalist concert halls during the Cold War, Indian ragas changing rock and roll in the 1960s, the folk music-inspired classical composers of the 19th and 20th centuries. In this sweeping history compiled from more than a decade of travel, research, interviews, and deep listening, Boyd sets out to explore centuries of fascinating backstories to these sounds. He shows how personalities, events, and politics in places such as Havana, Lagos, Budapest, Kingston, and Rio are as colorful and momentous as anything that took place in New Orleans, Harlem, Laurel Canyon, or Liverpool. And, moreover, how jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock 'n' roll would never have happened if it weren't for the notes and rhythms emanating from over the horizon. The one-of-a-kind result is And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: a glorious, symphonic celebration of the music that shapes our world.
We now live in the Anthropocene, the first epoch of our own making. We have altered the Earth's atmosphere, landscapes, and bodies of water. The burning of fossil fuels has warmed the planet enough to change weather patterns, melt glaciers, and raise sea levels, a situation made worse by rampant deforestation and resource depletion. Many look to governments to confront these existential challenges. In Maya Wisdom and the Survival of Our Planet, Lisa Lucero looks to the Maya, past and present. Through the lens of the traditional Maya inclusive worldview--one in which humans are part of the world, not separate from it, and where everything is connected--Lucero provides a practical roadmap on how to sustainably address climate change and environmental degradation. She shows how the Maya collaborate with rather than try to subjugate forests, animals, soils, water, and other nonhuman entities. The Maya sustainably farmed for millennia and provided goods, labor, and services to their kings in cities. In return, kings performed vital ceremonies to the Rain God Chahk, other gods, and ancestors to replenish urban reservoirs that lasted throughout the long dry season--a balancing act that worked for over 1,000 years. Lucero shows how approaches to tackle climate change from the bottom-up, beginning with the family or household, are just as important as top-down governmental mitigation, and how learning from traditional knowledge is vital for the survival of us all. She brings to life the tropical jungles of Central America and reveals the valuable solutions its ancient and contemporary inhabitants offer us to save our planet.
Bestselling author Julissa Arce calls for a celebration of our uniqueness, our origins, our heritage, and the beauty of the differences that make us Americans in this powerful polemic against the myth that assimilation leads to happiness and belonging for immigrants. "You sound like a white girl." These were the words spoken to Julissa by a high school crush as she struggled to find her place in America. As a brown immigrant from Mexico, assimilation had been demanded of her since the moment she set foot in San Antonio, Texas, in 1994. She'd spent so much time getting rid of her accent so no one could tell English was her second language that in that moment she felt those words--you sound like a white girl?--were a compliment. As a child, she didn't yet understand that assimilating to "American" culture really meant imitating "white" America--that sounding like a white girl was a racist idea meant to tame her, change her, and make her small. She ran the race, completing each stage, but never quite fit in, until she stopped running altogether. In this dual polemic and manifesto, Julissa dives into and tears apart the lie that assimilation leads to belonging. She combs through history and her own story to break down this myth, arguing that assimilation is a moving finish line designed to keep Black and brown Americans and immigrants chasing racist American ideals. She talks about the Lie of Success, the Lie of Legality, the Lie of Whiteness, and the Lie of English--each promising that if you obtain these things, you will reach acceptance and won't be an outsider anymore. Julissa deftly argues that these demands leave her and those like her in a purgatory--neither able to secure the power and belonging within whiteness nor find it in the community and cultures whiteness demands immigrants and people of color leave behind. In You Sound Like a White Girl, Julissa offers a bold new promise: Belonging only comes through celebrating yourself, your history, your culture, and everything that makes you uniquely you. Only in turning away from the white gaze can we truly make America beautiful. An America where difference is celebrated, heritage is shared and embraced, and belonging is for everyone. Through unearthing veiled history and reclaiming her own identity, Julissa shows us how to do this.