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A unique 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.
List of contents
- Preface
- A Passing West
- Hurray for Losers!
- A Little Bit of Fun before He Died
- Thou Shalt Not Steal Books
- Father Close, Father Far
- A Los Cielos de México
- Oily Hair con Slicked Back Notes on Greasy Literature
- The Hexagon of the Conquest
- The One Who Left
- Border Petroglyphs
- Las Milpas en Iowa
- The First Resident of Belken County
- We Have Been Here All Along
- Remembering the Alamo
- How Books Bounce
- Tomato Potatoe, Chalupa Shaloopa
- III
- Now You Don’t See Us, Still You Don’t
- Rivera and Rulfo
- Doors in Old Guate
- Hecho en Tejas
- Texas Lit
- La Próxima Parada Is Next
- Huizache
- Snow Angel
- Fights
- Publication Credits
About the author
Dagoberto Gilb is the author of two previous books with UNM Press,
The Magic of Blood, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the anthology
Hecho en Tejas, winner of the PEN/Southwest Book Award. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in both the
New Yorker and
Harper's, and his work has been featured in
Best American Essays and
O. Henry Prize Stories.
Summary
A unique 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. These sharply observed portraits are both thought provoking and entertaining.
