Faculty Books

FAT: The Story of My Life with My Body is a literary memoir recounting the intense physical and psychological pressures one teenage girl subjects herself to under the influence of the American weight-loss culture. The book is novel-like in structure and aims to entertain a general audience; however, it is also a cultural critique, and even makes implicit empirical arguments about appetite, "ideal weight," and health.  

Editor Jean Braithwaite compiles interviews displaying both Ware’s erudition and his quirky self-deprecation. They span Ware’s career from 1993 to 2015, creating a time-lapse portrait of the artist as he matures. Several of the earliest talks are reprinted from zines that are now extremely difficult to locate. 

"These moving stories of characters struggling with their own flaws, fighting to right their tilted lives or survive a loved one's loss, are richly imagined, admirably complex, and shine with the subtlety and sensitivity of truly fine writing. But Early Men is more than that. By bravely grappling with the political as well as the personal, Britt Haraway tackles one of literature's most difficult, yet vital, roles and, with this debut, offers us important insights not only about ourselves, but about the wider world in which we live." --Josh Weil, author of Great Glass Sea 

"Brash, hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking, Robert Paul Moreira's stories are exquisite mini-portraits of lives filled with sex, baseball, movies and small victories. A pure delight."  

--Daniel A. Olivas, author of The Book of Want and Things We Do Not Talk About: Exploring Latino/a Literature Through Essays and Interviews 

Emmy Pérez’s poetry collection, “With the River on Our Face”, flows through the Southwest and the Texas borderlands to the river’s mouth in the Rio Grande Valley/El Valle. The poems celebrate the land, communities, and ecology of the borderlands through lyric and narrative utterances, auditory and visual texture, chant, and litany that merge and diverge like the iconic river. 

In this powerful collection of free-verse poetry, immigrant, poet, and memoirist José Antonio Rodríguez encapsulates the experiences of an artist and citizen caught between two worlds. At once deeply personal and thematically expansive, these works offer a bracing look at the darker impulses of contemporary America.  

“The Magic of Mariachi/ La Magia del Mariachi” is a fascinating book that combines two disciplines – art and poetry – creating a treasure of lyrical poetry and strikingly beautiful paintings of mariachi musicians. The 24 poems, written in English and skillfully translated into Spanish, were created in response to each of the 24 works of art in the book.  

Novels about the blue-collar world are rare: Seldom does someone near the cellar of society escape to tell the tale. Eric Miles Williamson joined the Laborers Union when he graduated from high school in 1979 and spent seven years as a gunite construction worker, witnessing atrocities that don't make the evening news. Two-Up is Williamson's fictional account of a journey through the nightmare of the American labor inferno. 

“I relished DIG. A timeless collection of stories and plays that is also a piece of today. DIG is a fantastic read--moving and comic and tragic and infused with earned hope. Moreira’s memorable and recognizable characters grapple with issues that resonate across cultures and generations. Life is tough, and the characters, of different backgrounds, ages and sensibilities, meet it fully. This is a voice that needs to be heard. Robert Paul Moreira is at the forefront of Latinx writers, a fresh American voice. Dig it.” 

--Stephen D. Gutierrez, winner of the 2010 American Book Award 

Poignant and lyrical, “House Built on Ashes” contemplates the promises, limitations, and contradictions of the American dream. Even as it tells a deeply personal story, it evokes larger political, cultural, and social realities. It speaks to what America is and what it is not. It speaks to a world of hunger, prejudice, and far too many boundaries. But it speaks, as well, to the redemptive power of beauty and its life-sustaining gift of hope. 

Featuring 25 drawings in charcoal, conte crayons, and pastels, this handbook pairs portraits of people who live and work along the U.S.–Mexico border with bilingual poems that have been inspired by each of the drawings. A testimony to the people of the Rio Grande Valley, these drawings and poems capture their spirit, their quest for happiness, and their struggles to overcome economic hardship. 

Williamson’s now classic first novel has received worldwide acclaim as one of the great depictions of working-class America in the latter half of the 20th century. The story of T-Bird Murphy, born in the tumultuous 1960s and raised in the ghettoes of Oakland by his mother, who rides with the Hell’s Angels, his father, who is an ex-convict, and the father figures who range from musicians to construction workers, East Bay Grease is a novel of dignity, honor, and courage that has been compared to the works of John Steinbeck, Jack London, and Upton Sinclair.