Expressing New Mexico : Nuevomexicano creativity, ritual, and memory /

This text is a compilation of essays facilitated by a grant to promote student recruitment and retention, and presented as part of a symposium on expressive culture at the University of New Mexico. The collection includes essays on the fine arts, folklore, popular culture, and regional consciousness. It focuses on the distinctive space and character of the Nuevomexicano (New Mexican Spanish) experience as tied to the land and its history, an experience marked by intercultural coexistence among Indian, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo inhabitants and traditions. Authors use varieties of ethnomethodology to explore how Nuevomexicanos express their identity to both themselves and outsiders, focusing on examples of continuity and change, as in the chapters about the Moorish influences in contemporary water rights or the battle over a monument to Don Juan de Onate. Part 1 of the book focuses on folk traditions; part 2 on performance in stage and film; part 3 on art and the politics of gallery representations; part 4 on history and contestation; and part 5 on language and linguistic expression and variation. Of great utility outside the region due to its theoretical, methodological, and analytical strength on a diverse range of topics. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. S. M. Green California State University--Chico