“Children and adults alike will enjoy Nasario’s brilliant telling of the events that were part of his growing up. As I read the stories I heard Nasario’s voice and I could see clearly the people and places he describes. I was reminded that the stories our grandparents told not only entertained us, they taught us valuable lessons. “The magic of storytelling is still with us. At home or in the classroom, stories such as these will spark the imagination and encourage reading.”—Rudolfo Anaya, author of Bless Me, Ultima The popular cuentos that parents and grandparents in rural New Mexico once upon a time told their children are a rich source of the folklore of the region and offer satisfying entertainment. In this collection of bilingual stories about the Río Puerco Valley, where Nasario García grew up, he shares the traditions, myths, and stories of his homeland. He recounts stories of the evil eye and rooster racing, the Wailing Woman and the punishing of the santos. Preceding each tale is García’s brief explanation of the history and culture behind the story.

Nasario García grew up in Ojo del Padre, a village in the Río Puerco Valley northwest of Albuquerque, the way rural New Mexicans had for generations. His parents built their own adobe house, raised their own food, hauled their water, and brought up their children to respect the old ways. When he was young, García's mother taught him to mend his clothes and enlisted his aid in slaughtering chickens. Here he offers detailed accounts of these and other mundane tasks, explaining that doing laundry in tin tubs with a washboard represented progress for people accustomed to washing their clothes in the Río Puerco and scrubbing them with stones. Life is an adventure, from hauling wood down from the mountains to getting a haircut to family dinners and celebration. Story after story, with details such as the P & G soap that his mother used, the menu at his uncle's wedding, the use of both Spanish and English when he started school, tell the story of a vanished way of life.

A recognized classic in the literature on African Brazilian religions, Nag Grandma and White Papa is an important case study of social identity formation as a relational process involving the 'political' mobilization of cultural markers to define group differences. Dantas's book remains surprisingly relevant to current theoretical debates on these questions as well as to the area of African diaspora studies.'' - Robert Slenes, Universidad Estadual de Campinas, Brazil ''Dantas brings together the practices of everyday believers, religious authorities, intellectuals, and elites to explore what Africa means in Brazil and how that meaning has changed over time. The depth, care, and sophistication of her research and analysis have made this book a model for a generation of scholarship in Brazil. Translation into English brings this imaginative work the broad audience it fully deserves.''

2019 Paterson Prize winner Skipping Stones Book Award Kirkus Reviews' Best YA Historical Fiction of 2018 A river runs through young Manny Maldonado Jr.’s life, heart and imagination. Sometimes at night it even shoots through his brain like a bullet. But this river isn’t water, it’s iron—the tracks and trains of the Southern Pacific railroad that pass along his tight-knit neighborhood in the San Gabriel valley just ten miles east of L.A. The iron river is everything to Man-on-Fire, Man for short to his friends, Little Man to his uncles and cousins. He watches it, he waits for it, he plays nears its tracks, he listens for the weight of its currents (strong currents flowing east pulling two hundred boxcars, light current going west with less than fifty cars), he whiles away long summer days throwing rocks and bricks at it with his friends Danny, Marco and Little. They line up cans and bottles in mock battles to try to throw it off track. But nothing derails the iron river, and nothing stops the stinking cop Turk from trying to pin a hobo’s murder on the four young boys.

In this anthology of poetry and fiction, ten Native Americans of California Indian ancestry illuminate aspects of their respective native cultures in works characterized by a profound love of place and people, as well as by anger over political oppression and social problems

Josey Wales was the most wanted man in Texas. His wife and child had been lost to pre-civil War destruction and, like Jesse James and other young farmers, he joined the guerrilla soldiers of Missouri--men with no cause but survival and no purpose but revenge. Josey Wales and his Cherokee friend, Lone Watie, set out for the West through the dangerous Camanchero territory. Hiding by day, traveling by night, they are joined by an Indian woman named Little Moonlight, and rescue an old woman and her granddaughter from their besieged wagon. The five of them travel toward Texas and win through brash and honest violence, a chance for a new way of life.

In these reflections on the dichos of the Chimayó Valley in northern New Mexico native son Don J. Usner has written a memoir that is also a valuable source of information on the rich language and culture of the region.