Western American Literature 

About: Western American Literature is an academic journal published by University of Nebraska Press. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Poetry & Frontier. It has an ISSN identifier of 0043-3462. Over the lifetime, 1282 publications have been published receiving 3298 citations.

"Refusing to halt": Mobility and the Quest for Spatial Justice in Helena María Viramontes's Their Dogs Came with Them and Karen Tei Yamashita's Tropic of Orange

Abstract: Representations of Los Angeles’s freeways in Helena Maria Viramontes’s novel Their Dogs Came with Them (2007) and Karen Tei Yamashita’s novel Tropic of Orange (1997) expose the unevenness of contemporary mobility. The novels depict the power and possibility of mobility for some in the globalized economy alongside the violent consequences of socioeconomic immobility that these same venues of neoliberal economic development bring others. By representing the consequences of Los Angeles’s freeway system, the novels convey the unevenness of experiences of globalization, flows of migration, capital, goods and services across borders and within the unstated borders of specific communities. Through their focus on both displacement and mobility, the two works connect transportation geographies to older forms of conquest and colonization and to newer modes of neoliberal economic development. By emphasizing the ways these newer forms of economic control are haunted by violent colonial pasts, the texts attend to the relationship between older and newer forms of spatial control and the relations between both mundane and spectacular forms of oppression. They draw out the complexity and the consequences of transportation technologies by highlighting the physical and socioeconomic immobility that both shapes and produces the experiences of displaced Angelinos.

Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860 by Richard Slotkin (review)

Abstract: course of human events, it is sensible to place their conception of astrology at the center of any interpretation of their mental world. The astoundingly intricate and comprehensive tables of calculations in surviving codices strongly suggest the Mayans were motivated by more than a purely abstract interest in astronomical matters. Waters is quite astute and persuasive in revealing how Mayan astronomy comes to take on an astrological orienta­ tion. But since his overall scheme requires relating past to present, he feels the need to connect Mayan with contemporary astrological speculations. Thereupon he takes on the burden of justifying the latter’s claim to a special truth. But this is unnecessary either to understand or validate Mayan thinking. Many readers will find such association irrelevant or irritating, however important it is to the author. Despite its idiosyncratic approach, Mexico Mystique will be influential. Though no one could possibly synthesize and order the vast chaos of legiti­ mate and misleading evidence on Mexico’s ancient cultures, Frank Waters has cut a path deep into the heart of its mystery. The academic community likely will despair at his reliance upon unverifiable, or arbitrarily chosen, hypotheses and reject out-of-hand his faith in contemporary seers. But his provocative recreation of the Mesoamerican mind in its religious mode cannot be so easily dismissed. Himself a transcendentalist native to America, Waters reminds us that there are more paths to understanding our common evolutionary ascent than most of us care to admit. And readers who already sense the collapse of basic tenets of Western technology and materialism will find in Mexico Mystique no counsel of despair, but high hopes for a new order of consciousness. Waters’ place in Indian literature and studies is already assured. This latest volume ultimately cannot but add another cubit to the imposing stature of a man who too tardily is finally being recognized as our most distinguished living author of the American Southwest.