Western Avenue And Other Fictions

A collection of short stories by Fred Arroyo.

In these engaging and often gripping short stories, Fred Arroyo takes us into the lives of working-class Hispanic migrants and immigrants, who are often invisible while they work in plain sight across America. As characters intertwine and evolve across stories, Arroyo creates a larger narrative that dramatizes the choices we make to create identity, make meaning, and deal with hardships and loss. His stories are linked by a concern with borders, both real and imagined, and the power that memory and imagination have to shape and structure our lives. Through his characters and their true-to-life situations, Arroyo makes visible both internal and external conflicts that are deeply rooted in—and affected by—place. A bodega, a university town, a factory, a Chicago street, some dusty potato fields: here is where we encounter ordinary people who work, dream, love, and persist in the face of violence, bereavement, disappointment, and loss—particularly the loss of mothers, fathers, and loved ones. Arroyo's characters experience a strange wonder as the midwestern United States increasingly appears to be a place created by the Latinas and Latinos who remain out of the sight and minds of Anglos. In lyrical language weighted by detail, exquisite imagery, and evocative story, Arroyo imagines characters who confront the tattered connections between memory and longing, generations and geographies, place and displacement, as they begin to feel their own longings, "breathing in whatever was offered, feeling, deep in the small and fragile borders of my heart," as one character puts it, "that it came with a sorrow I could never betray."

"A collection of autobiographical stories that honor the working, migratory, and often forgotten or silenced lives of men, stemming from Fred Arroyo's father"--

Latina/o/x places exist as both tangible physical phenomena and gatherings created and maintained by creative cultural practices. In this collection, an interdisciplinary group of contributors critically examines the many ways that varied Latina/o/x communities cohere through cultural expression. Authors consider how our embodied experiences of place, together with our histories and knowledge, inform our imagination and reimagination of our surroundings in acts of placemaking. This placemaking often considers environmental sustainability as it helps to sustain communities in the face of xenophobia and racism through cultural expression ranging from festivals to zines to sanctuary movements. It emerges not only in specific locations but as movement within and between sites; not only as part of a built environment, but also as an aesthetic practice; and not only because of efforts by cultural, political, and institutional leaders, but through mass media and countless human interactions. A rare and crucial perspective on Latina/o/x people in the Midwest, Building Sustainable Worlds reveals how expressive culture contributes to, and sustains, a sense of place in an uncertain era.

Drawing on critical and sociocultural frameworks, this volume presents narrative studies by or about Latinas in which they speak up about issues of identity and education. Using narratives, self-identification stories, and testimonios as theory, methodology, and advocacy, this volume brings together a wide range of Latinx perspectives on education identity, bilingualism, and belonging. The narratives illustrate the various ways erasure and human agency shape the lives and identities of Latinas in the United States from primary school to higher education and beyond, in their schools and communities. Contributors explore how schools and educational institutions can support student agency by adopting a transformative activist stance through curricula, learning contexts, and policies. Chapters contain implications for teaching and come together to showcase the importance of explicit activist efforts to combat erasure and engage in transformative and emancipatory education.

A compelling account of the life of Pennsylvanian writer Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958). Through the examination of the tension between her seemingly contradictory domestic and professional identities, Jan Cohn illuminates precisely why Rinehart's accomplishments are so remarkable.

What can we know of what's most profound? In these brief and lyrical fictions, Rob Davidson offers us glimpses of what remains out of reach. He writes, "There is inside of us dark music, the melody of expectation." Brilliant, his dark music--whether his words fulfill or expand or thwart our desires. His wise language assures us: "Disappointment has its benefits, nudging us toward joy." Tiny marvels, these flashes. Beautiful mystery, this book. --Peggy Shumaker, author of Just Breathe Normally Sometimes you command more attention by lowering your voice. Sometimes you say more by choosing to say less. Sometimes the essence of a situation, a character, even of an entire life presents itself, suspended like a specimen, in a single gesture, a spoken phrase, an image, a glance. Rob Davidson's stories in Spectators go straight for the metaphysical jugular, offering vividly sketched characters in whom you will surely recognize yourself, creating stealthily constructed miniature worlds in which you will surely recognize the big old world you and I walk through on a daily basis, dumbfounded and amazed and taking in the sights. --Troy Jollimore, author of Syllabus of Errors As the beautifully crafted stories of Spectators build, become brief steps and steles in a longer journey, the voices and visions, the flashes and glimpses lead us to new thresholds: that region of memory and desire, story and imagination, where we "eternally arrive." Even in all its brevity, fragmentation, and rendering of globalization's affects, Spectators is a big, bold, expansive, and heartfelt work that shines with Rob Davidson's masterly writing. --Fred Arroyo, author of Western Avenue and Other Fictions