Border Odyssey
Border Odyssey is a quixotic, modern-day, too-small-rental-car determined drive toward understanding the US-Mexico divide: all 1,969 miles. Though observation and meditation, Border Odyssey scopes like no other book the contradictory pulses of the people and towns on both sides.
Spirits of Just Men
Spirits of Just Men: Mountaineers, Liquor Bosses, and Lawmen in the Moonshine Capital of the World (2011) tells the story of moonshine in 1930s America, as seen through the remarkable location of Franklin County, Virginia, a place that many still refer to as the “moonshine capital of the world.”
The Old German Baptist Brethren
The Old German Baptist Brethren: Faith, Farming, and Change in the Virginia Blue Ridge (2006) combines oral history with ethnography and archival research–as well as his own family ties to the Franklin County community–to tell the story of the Brethren’s faith on the cusp of impending change.
Indigenous Diasporas and Dislocations
Indigenous Diasporas and Dislocations engages with examples of communities with different experiences, expectations and evaluations of diaspora life. It contributes significantly to debates about indigenous cultures and religions, and to understandings of identity and alterity in late or post-modernity. This book promises to enrich understanding of indigenity, and of the globalized world in which indigenous people play diverse roles.
The Human Cost of Food
Finding fresh fruits and vegetables is as easy as going to the grocery store for most Americans—which makes it all too easy to forget that our food is cultivated, harvested, and packaged by farmworkers who labor for less pay, fewer benefits, and under more dangerous conditions than workers in almost any other sector of the U.S. economy. Seeking to end the public’s ignorance and improve workers’ living and working conditions, this book addresses the major factors that affect farmworkers’ lives while offering practical strategies for action on farmworker issues.
Maya Identities and the Violence of Place
Maya Identities and the Violence of Place: Borders Bleed (2001) offers new perspectives on borderlands and identities, providing an important case study of people from Latin America on the move. Examining issues of indigeneity, diaspora, flights from physical violence and economic repression, and efforts to remain indigenous among a proud but beleaguered people, this book is replete with stories of movement and change that operate as means to maintain identity.