Against the American Grain: A Borderlands History of Resistance

Against the American Grain: A Borderlands History of Resistance - Paperback

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Against the American Grain: A Borderlands History of Resistance
  • Against the American Grain: A Borderlands History of Resistance
Against the American Grain: A Borderlands History of Resistance - Paperback

Against the American Grain: A Borderlands History of Resistance - Paperback

by Gary Paul Nabhan
$28.73
$28.73

Book Overview

by Gary Paul Nabhan (Author)

New in paper, James Beard Award winning Nabhan (Agave Spirits) creative revolutionaries from the southwest border who change American culture in countless positive ways. A celebration of the artists, activists, and writers who are not Anglo-centric.

A century ago, William Carlos Williams's In the American Grain profiled Anglo, French, and Spanish conquistadors, tyrants, preachers, and thought leaders who first shaped American culture. Since then, waves of resistance and disruptive innovation have flooded into the rest of America from the arid, southwestern margins of the US-Mexico borderlands.

Now, in Against the American Grain, Gary Paul Nabhan--cultural ecologist, environmental historian, and lyric poet of the American Southwest--illuminates the outlines of a history too long in the shadows. Whether Indigenous, LatinX, priests, nuns, Quakers, or cross-cultural chameleons, it is the resisters, performers, grassroots organizers, nomads, and spiritual leaders from the desert margins who are constantly reshaping America. They have, against all odds, recolored and recovered the future of North America through outrageous acts of resistance.

After reading the stories of Estevanico el Moro, Maria de Ágreda, Teresita de Cábora, Coyote Iguana, Woody Guthrie, Tim X. Hernandez, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Reyes Lopez Tijerana, Arturo Sandoval, Lalo Guerrero, John Fife, Danny and Luis Valdez, John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts, and many more, we can never think about America the same way again. In Nabhan's magisterial, radical recounting, cross-cultural collaborations have changed the grain of American life to one that is many-colored, once again flourishing with fragrance, faith, and fecund ideas.

Author Biography

Gary Paul Nabhan is a Lebanese American ecologist, agrarian activist, Ecumenical Franciscan Brother, and bilingual essayist whose work focuses primarily on the arid binational Southwest. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and an Utne Reader's annual visionary award, and he is the author of thirty-two books, beginning with The Desert Smells Like Rain. His most recent book is Agave Spirits. He resides in Patagonia, Arizona, and Desemboque del Sur, Sonora.

Number of Pages: 256
Dimensions: 0.58 x 8.5 x 5.5 IN
Publication Date: September 01, 2025
ISBN9780826368966
Author Gary Paul Nabhan
PublisherUniversity of New Mexico Press
GenreBiography and History
FormatPaperback
PublishedSeptember 2025
LanguageENG- English
Pages256
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Biography & Autobiography History Nonfiction

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About Gary Paul Nabhan

Gary Paul Nabhan is a celebrated ethnobotanist and biocultural conservationist whose groundbreaking work has advanced ecological restoration, pollinator recovery, and Indigenous food revitalization. A MacArthur "Genius" Fellow, John Burroughs Medal recipient, and James Beard Award winner, he has been recognized nationally for his contributions to both conservation and food culture. He lives in Patagonia, Arizona, where he continues to work at the intersection of ecology and community.

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