Bücher veröffentlicht von The Raven Chronicles

A riveting novel from acclaimed author Kathleen Alcalá, this second edition of The Flower in the Skull, from Raven Chronicles Press, begins in the Sonoran Desert in the late 19th century, where an Ópata village is attacked by Mexican soldiers. Her family scattered, Concha makes her way to Tucson, where the stories she tells her daughter lead to Shelly-a troubled Latina in modern-day Los Angeles, increasingly fascinated by her ancestry. A powerful tale of heritage, loss, and acculturation, Alcalá spins her most lyrical and moving work yet. The Flower in the Skull stands perfectly apart even as it continues the epic begun with Spirits of the Ordinary. The second part of a planned trilogy that began with Spirits of the Ordinary (1997), The Flower in the Skull spans more than a century in offering a view of three women linked by Indian blood and their dreams, and seared by the violent transgressions of men. Childhood comforts in her Ópata village in Sonoran Mexico cease for Concha when her father is seized by Mexican soldiers and never seen again. First abandoning home with the remainder of her family, then herself abandoned by her mother, Concha walks in a daze across the desert to Tucson, where she's taken in as a nanny by a prospering Mexican family. A measure of peace returns to her. But when she's raped by an Anglo and bears his child, nothing can ever be the same. A brief marriage to the family doctor fails to produce more children, so her husband abandons her for someone else, leaving Concha and daughter Rosa to fend for themselves. ¿¿Over the years, Rosa picks up the burden when her mother grows too weak to continue the dawn-to-dusk housecleaning work that has sustained them, but then Rosa catches the eye of a young minister and receives Concha's blessing to marry him just before Concha dies. Busy starting her own family and keeping her own house, Rosa still wonders about her mother's past-Ópata and the father she never knew. Two generations forward, Shelly, an editorial assistant for an L.A. publisher, jumps at the chance to escape her stalking, harassing boss by going on a research trip to Tucson, where she finds not only a mystery involving her mother's family and her people in a broader sense, but also the will to survive the horror waiting for her when she returns to Los Angeles.¿Like her previous novel Spirits of the Ordinary, The Flower in the Skull is set along the Mexican/U.S. border and deals with three generations of Ópata Indian women--ranging from the turn of the century to the present day. All are based on members of Kathleen's family, the book recreating both the magic and hard work of survival. The story is heartbreaking in places, but the prose is even more gorgeous, and there is a richness to Alcalá's characterization and settings that invite re-reading passages, simply to re-experience their resonance.This book is not to be missed, especially by students of Native American Studies, border studies, and American history.

This Light Called Darkness, A Raven Chronicles Anthology, Selected Work 1997-2005-edited by Kathleen Alcalá, Phoebe Bosché, Paul Hunter, and Anna Odessa Linzer-is the second anthology in the Raven Chronicles Press series featuring some of the outstanding work that appeared in Raven Chronicles Magazine-a nonprofit, independent publishing and cultural organization, based in Seattle, that soared for twenty-seven years, 1991 to 2018. Through forty-eight issues in twenty-six magazine-format volumes, Raven brought together flocks of writers in the Pacific Northwest / Salish Sea region and beyond, for readings, workshops, cultural celebrations, and the occasional march or demonstration. This anthology includes poems, essays, fiction, interviews, and storytelling from 85 writers who were published in Raven Chronicles Magazine from Summer 1997-Winter, 2005, and the artwork of 34 mostly Northwest artists.Read poems by Pamela Moore Dionne, Peter Ludwin, Gail Tremblay, Glenna E. Cook, Murray Gordon, Robert Gregory, Marion Kimes, Jeanne Ruth Lohmann, Jo Nelson, Judith Roche, Joan Swift, David Lloyd Whited, Connie Walle, Kevin Miller, Deborah Miranda, Virgil Suárez, Mark Svenvold, Victor Hernández Cruz, Koon Woon, Lois J. Red Elk-Reed, Cat Ruiz, Cynthia Pratt, Janet Sekijima, Carletta Carrington Wilson, Peter Pereira, Margot F. Boyer, Mary Lou Sanelli, Bill Yake, Susan Landgraf, Maged Zaher, Martha Silano, Diane Westergaard, Danny Romero, James R. Lee, Paul r. Harding, Mercedes Lawry, Ronda Piszk Broatch, Anna Bálint, Joan Fitzgerald, Andrena Zawinski, Kathleen Walsh Spencer, Stephen Thomas, Jim Bodeen, Mario Susko, Natalie Pascale Boisseau, Qwo-Li Driskill, Martha Linehan, Lara Stortoni, and Camincha.Essays by Eric Lee Christensen, Lisa Purdy, Bobby Anderson, Paul Nelson, Doug Nufer, Suzanne A. Villegas, David W. Paul, Matt Briggs, Michael Daley, Larry Laurence, Mark Sargent, Whitney Pastorek, Suzannah Dalzell, Amontaine Aurore, John Olson, Ann Spiers, Waverly Fitzgerald, and Pat Duggan.Read fiction by Sharon Hashimoto, Nancy Redwine, Rebecca Brown, Anna Mockler, Deb Parks-Satterfield, Stacey Levine, Sue Pace, Taha Ebrahimi, Polly Buckingham, Avital Gad-Cykman, Jan Priddy, Keith Egawa, Priscilla Long, Anita Endrezze, Don Kunz, and Stephen D. Gutierrez.

Poem of Stone and Bone: The Iconography of James W. Washington Jr. in Fourteen Stanzas and Thirty-One Days documents four site-specific installations Carletta Carrington Wilson created in 2011 on the Seattle property of noted African American sculptor James W. Washington Jr. The book evolved out of Wilson's time as an artist-in-residence at the Dr. James and Janie Washington Studio and Cultural Center in the Central District of Seattle, Washington. This house, located at 1816 26th Avenue, honors the life and legacy of Washington, a celebrated African American painter and sculptor and a leading member of the Northwest School of artists. He and his wife, Janie R. Washington, lived there from 1945 to 2000 (they both died in 2000). We read of her discovery of the landscape around the house, the garden, the stones, the wood, the still unfinished stone sculptures, and, in the house itself, the slave chains, the slave galleon, and so much more. The books in the library, together with the stones in the garden and her installations in the house, created an intensely spiritual experience for those of us fortunate enough to have joined her there for the public exhibition. The installation included bones, as well as shoe soles, eggshells, photographs of Washington working, and quotes from some of his interviews.