Synopses & Reviews
The storybook history of the American West is a male-dominated narrative of drifters, dreamers, hucksters, and heroesand#151;a tale that relegates women, assuming they appear at all, to the distant background.
Home Lands: How Women Made the West upends this view to remember the West as a place of homes and habitations brought into being by the women who lived there. Virginia Scharff and Carolyn Brucken consider historyand#8217;s long span as they explore the ways in which women encountered and transformed three different archetypal Western landscapes: the Rio Arriba of northern New Mexico, the Front Range of Colorado, and the Puget Sound waterscape. This beautiful book, companion volume to the Autry National Centerand#8217;s pathbreaking exhibit, is a brilliant aggregate of womenand#8217;s history, the history of the American West, and studies in material culture. While linking each of these placesand#8217; peoples to one another over hundreds, even thousands, of years,
Home Lands vividly reimagines the West as a setting in which home has been created out of differing notions of dwelling and family and differing concepts of property, community, and history.
Copub: Autry National Center of the American West
Review
and#8220;This discussion of culture, community, familial linkage, and landscape puts women in the well-deserved forefront.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Home Lands is [an] accessible and engaging look at the history of the West, an at Womenand#8217;s roles in shaping its present.and#8221;
Review
"Recommended."--Choice
Review
"Beautifully produced book."--Western American Literature
Review
and#8220;The broad overview, readability, and extensive images make this a useful book.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Readers will see how central the history of western women is to the history of the West.and#8221;
Review
“Recommended.” Pacific Northwest Quarterly
Review
“Beautifully produced book.” Choice
Review
“The broad overview, readability, and extensive images make this a useful book.” Sue Armitage - Western American Literature
Review
and#8220;Recommended.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Beautifully produced book.and#8221;
Synopsis
"A sweeping, nicely written, briskly paced, accessible history of women in the West.
Home Lands is guaranteed to draw readers into its narrative."and#151;Ramand#243;n Gutiand#233;rrez, author of
When Jesus Came the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846"Change the vantage point, and a place changes. Things appear in one view that are hidden in another. This book's vantage point is home, and from it the West does look different."and#151;Richard White, author of It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A New History of the American West
Synopsis
"A sweeping, nicely written, briskly paced, accessible history of women in the West. Home Lands is guaranteed to draw readers into its narrative."--Ramón Gutiérrez, author of When Jesus Came the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846
About the Author
Virginia Scharff is Professor of History at the University of New Mexico, Women of the West Chair at the Autry National Center's Institute for the Study of the American West, and President of the Western History Association. Her many books include Taking the Wheel, Twenty Thousand Roads, and Seeing Nature through Gender. Carolyn Brucken is Curator of Western Women's History at the Autry National Center.
Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction
1. Home on Earth: Women and Land in the Rio Arriba
Wedding Chest, by Marand#237;a E. Montand#243;ya
2. Women in Motion along the Front Range
Front Range Landscapes, by Elliott West
3. Waterscapes of Puget Sound
Japanese American Women in the Pacific Northwest, by Gail Dubrow
Postscript: How Will We Make the West?
Notes
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Index