What That Pig Said to Jesus: On the Uneasy Permanence of Immigrant Life

ISBN-13: 9781607815495 / Angielski / Miękka / 2017 / 192 str.

Philip Garrison

Opis

Philip Garrison says his book of essays is "in praise of mixed feelings," particularly the mixed feelings he and his neighbors have toward the places they came from. His neighborhood is the Columbia Plateau, one of many North American nodes of immigration. Following a meandering, though purposeful trail, Garrison catches hillbillies and newer Mexican arrivals in ambiguous, wary encounters on a set four hundred years in the making, built on a foundation of Native American displacement. Garrison is the product of the earlier surge of new arrivals: from the 1930s to the 1970s, those he calls hillbillies left such mid-nation states as Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, and the Dakotas for the West. The more recent wave, from 1990 to 2010, came mostly from the central plateau of Mexico. These are folks with whom Garrison communes in multiple ways. Anecdotes from sources as varied as pioneer diaries, railroad promotions, family Bibles, Wikipedia, and local gossip "portray the region's immigration as a kind of identity makeover, one that takes the form first of breakdown, then of reassembly, and finally of renewal." Garrison's mix of slangy memoir and anthropological field notes shines light on the human condition in today's West.

Spis treści

Preface
 
PART ONE. Identity Theft
Life and Times
Testimonio 1
Before Long, in a While
Testimonio 2
Dear Tucker
Testimonio 3
Aguas
Testimonio 4
Somewhere Nobody Else Wanted to Live
Testimonio 5
 
PART TWO. What You Hear Secondhand
Testimonio 6
Hearsay
Testimonio 7
Anniversaries
Testimonio 8
Uncle Lou versus the Nineteenth Century
Testimonio 9
Fire and Elephants
Testimonio 10
 
PART THREE. What Emerges from the Husk
Testimonio 11
Letter from Manastash Creek
Testimonio 12
Casta
Testimonio 13
Everyone Agrees
Testimonio 14
Letter from Millpond Manor
Testimonio 15
El Chacuaco