Download Free Collected Tales From The Rio Grande Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Collected Tales From The Rio Grande and write the review.

The authors of COLLECTED TALES FROM THE RIO GRANDE are current or former residents of the Rio Grande Valley, who know the joys and tribulations of living along a contentious border with Mexico. From this wealth of talent and experience, the Valley Byliners Editorial Committee selected and edited the stories and poems that make up this volume. Don Cliff ord has written for and edited several prize winning military and civilian publications. Jack King once taught English and Art in the Texas State Technical College Upward Bound program. Marianna Nelson helped keep the project on track with pertinent insights from the Byliner membership. But in the long run, this book would not have been possible without the collective eff orts of all the talented writers presented here.
While preparing a book which highlights the people and traditions of the diverse culture found in Albuquerque, a group of seventh-graders discover interesting things about their city and families.
Tradition meets tragedy in the chilling local lore of the Rio Grande Valley. Hidden in the dense brush and around oxbow lakes wait sinister secrets, unnerving vestiges of the past and wraiths of those claimed by the winding river. The spirit of a murdered student in Brownsville paces the locker room where she met her end. Tortured souls of patients lost in the Harlingen Insane Asylum refuse to be forgotten. Guests at the LaBorde Hotel in Rio Grande City report visions of the Red Lady, who was spurned by the soldier she loved and driven to suicide. Author David Bowles explores these and more of the most harrowing ghost stories from Fort Brown to Fort Ringgold and all the haunted hotels, chapels and ruins in between.
“Filled with ghosts, devils, and tricksters . . . This appealing volume will add diversity to folklore collections.” —Library Journal Rich in the folklore of his ancestors, Rudolfo Anaya’s tales will delight young readers from across the globe. In stories both original and passed down, this bestselling and American Book Award–winning author incorporates powerful themes of family, faith, and choosing the right path in life. In “Lupe and la Llorona,” a seventh grader searches for the legendary Llorona; in “The Shepherd Who Knew the Language of Animals,” a shepherd named Abel saves a snake and gains the ability to understand the language of animals; In “Dulcinea,” a fifteen-year-old dances with the Devil. Other tales feature coyotes, ravens, a woodcutter who tries to cheat death, the Virgin Mary, a golden carp, and a young Latino who seeks immortality. Deeply rooted in ancient mythological beliefs and based on the folklore and traditions of Mexican and Native American cuentistas, these accounts of enchantment are as beautiful and mysterious as the Rio Grande itself—and serve as a testament to the lost art of oral storytelling. This ebook features illustrations by Amy Córdova.
This book is a virtual fireside chat with the great storytellers of the delta region of the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. It is appropriately named Jackass Flats, paralleling it with the vanished prairie herds of wild horses and jackasses that inhabited a thin range of land in the Lower Nueces Strip. Appropriate, in that just as these mythical beasts are now gone, so stands the feared endangerment of a species of "tellers of yarns" who kept the oral traditions alive, perpetuating a lifestyle that was colorfully filled with customs which were unique to South Texas colonization. Some of the little vignettes gathered their substance from countless conversations that were held in settings such as barbershops, bars, and back porches. Other, more elaborate treatises, take on the form of in-depth research papers that were compiled by reaching out to myriad sources in a manner that paints a perspective that would be difficult indeed, if one had not acquired a couple of centuries of "blood-ties" to this region. The connection relies heavily upon personally known the players who were involved with the writing of the original deeds. Four or five generations of close friendships, inter-marriages, business dealings, and even the occasional fights bring these accounts over the line, into being "personal stories". You know it's personal when you open up your family cedar chests and discover a whole cross-section of photographs of non-family, and recognize them for the impact that each one gave to the community at large.You close your eyes and you can still vividly recall the scenes where the old chats were carried out; the chiseled features of the "old folks", the smell of pipe tobacco, the salt spray of the gulf, mesquitewood campfires. You tried your darnedest to lap up all of the words of these tales. Even though your grandmother sometimes altered the details with each presentation, you wouldn't dare open your mouth to correct her - that was part of the flavor.There will always be something special about reflecting back to what it was like in a bygone era. It's like going to a costume party and dressing out your fantasies. The storytellers are a strong example of reincarnation. They left a verbal, oral legacy that will live for as long as there are those who will light a fire to rekindle the message.
The open country of Texas between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande was sparsely settled through the nineteenth century, and most of the settlers who did live there had Hispanic names that until recently were rarely admitted into the pages of Texas history. In 1935, however, a descendant of one of the old Spanish land-grant families in the region-a woman, no less-found an ingenious way to publish the history of her region at a time when neither Tejanos nor women had much voice. She told the story from the perspective of an ancient mesquite tree, under whose branches much South Texas history had passed. Her tale became an invaluable source of folk history but has long been out of print. Now, with important new introductions by Leticia M. Garza-Falcón and Andrés Tijerina, the history witnessed by El Mesquite can again inform readers of the way of life that first shaped Texas. Through the voice of the gnarled old tree, Elena Zamora O'Shea tells South Texas political and ethnographic history, filled with details of daily life such as songs, local plants and folk medicines, foods and recipes, peone/patron relations, and the Tejano ranch vocabulary. The work is an important example of the historical-folkloristic literary genre used by Mexican American writers of the period. Using the literary device of the tree's narration, O'Shea raises issues of culture, discrimination, and prejudice she could not have addressed in her own voice in that day and explicitly states the Mexican American ideology of 1930s Texas. The result is a literary and historic work of lasting value, which clearly articulates the Tejano claim to legitimacy in Texas history. ELENA ZAMORA O'SHEA (1880-1951) was born at Rancho La Noria Cardenena near Peñitas, Hidalgo County, Texas. A long-time schoolteacher, whose posts included one on the famous King Ranch, she wrote this book to help Tejano children know and claim their proud heritage.
In River of Hope, Omar S. Valerio-Jiménez examines state formation, cultural change, and the construction of identity in the lower Rio Grande region during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He chronicles a history of violence resulting from multiple conquests, of resistance and accommodation to state power, and of changing ethnic and political identities. The redrawing of borders neither began nor ended the region's long history of unequal power relations. Nor did it lead residents to adopt singular colonial or national identities. Instead, their regionalism, transnational cultural practices, and kinship ties subverted state attempts to control and divide the population. Diverse influences transformed the borderlands as Spain, Mexico, and the United States competed for control of the region. Indian slaves joined Spanish society; Mexicans allied with Indians to defend river communities; Anglo Americans and Mexicans intermarried and collaborated; and women sued to confront spousal abuse and to secure divorces. Drawn into multiple conflicts along the border, Mexican nationals and Mexican Texans (tejanos) took advantage of their transnational social relations and ambiguous citizenship to escape criminal prosecution, secure political refuge, and obtain economic opportunities. To confront the racialization of their cultural practices and their increasing criminalization, tejanos claimed citizenship rights within the United States and, in the process, created a new identity. Published in cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University.
Winner, Clotilde P. Garcia Tejano Book Prize The opening campaign of the US-Mexican War transformed the map of each nation and shaped the course of conflict. Armed with a broad range of Mexican military documents and previously unknown US sources, Douglas Murphy provides the first balanced view of early battles such as Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma. He reassesses previously covered territory and also poses new questions. Why did Mexico establish its defenses south of the Rio Grande while claiming territory north of the river? What was Mexico’s strategy in the campaign against the United States? What factors most affected Mexico’s defeat? In confronting these questions, Murphy shows that the campaign was a complex chess match with undercurrents of political intrigue, economic motivations, and personal animosities as much as military action. Two Armies on the Rio Grande will transform our understanding of the US-Mexican War.
"An indispensable addition to the canon of Texas letters." —Steve Bennett, San Antonio Express News A vast land combining the West, the South, and the Border, small dusty towns and gleaming modern cities, Texas has a history and identity all its own, and a mythology bigger than the Lone Star State itself. In this anthology, selected as a Southwest Book of the Year in 2003, Don Graham has rounded up a comprehensive collection of writings that provides an overview of the diversity and excellence of Texas literature and reveals its vital contribution to America's literary landscape. The result is a sometimes rowdy, always artful panorama of fable and truth, humor and pathos—all growing out of the state that continues to stimulate the collective imagination like no other.