[Music]
Wow.
>> Lucas Fralick: Hello.
I'm Lucas Fralick,
Program Coordinator
for Wyoming Humanities
and of the Wyoming
Center for the Book.
The State Center is an
affiliate of the Library of
Congress Center for the
Book in Washington, D.C.
Our mission is to promote books,
reading, libraries and literacy
with a special emphasis on
promoting the unique
literary heritage
of our respective
states and territories.
The authors in
this video are from
Western Region two
of the United States.
That includes Arizona, Colorado,
Montana, Texas, Utah,
Wyoming, New Mexico, North
Dakota and South Dakota.
I want to give a special thanks
to the Arizona
Center for the Book,
for helping to coordinate
all the logistics behind this
video today and the Colorado
Center for the Book,
who will be producing
this video.
And of course, can't leave out
a special thanks to all of you,
the authors
and the Library of Congress.
These books were chosen
by the affiliate centers
to represent their state's
literary heritage.
This so called Great Reads from
Great Places are chosen every
year by the affiliate centers.
You can see the entire lists
from the year and from this year
and preceding years at
www.read.gov/greatreads.
So these authors are here today
to discuss their work and will
also address a bit
of this year's theme
of the National Book Festival.
"Everyone has a story."
I hope you enjoy this
conversation and consider
listening to all the authors
in these Great Read videos.
Together they are testament to
the richness and diversity of
our nation's
literary creativity.
So I'm going to start by
asking all of our authors
to introduce themselves briefly
and give us 2 or 3 sentences
about their work, and
maybe if they want to,
a fun fact about themselves.
I'm going to start with Tom.
>> Tom Zoellner:
Thank you, Lucas.
Thank you for the question.
My book, "Rim to River: Looking
into the Heart of Arizona,"
tells the story of a 790 mile
walk I took across my home state
to try and understand it better.
Arizona is the most recent of
the 48 lowest contiguous states
and one with a somewhat
baffling culture.
And this is a series of 17
essays that attempts to explain
it all linked together with
the scaffolding of this hike.
>> Lucas Fralick:
Thank you. Next up, Adrian.
>> Adrian Miller: Hi, I'm Adrian
Miller, the soul food scholar
who's dropping knowledge
like hot biscuits.
I am a James Beard award
winning food writer, a former
politico, a recovering
attorney, a certified barbecue
judge. And I'm also the
executive director of the
Colorado Council of Churches.
But I have the side hustle
writing about food.
So my book is "Black Smoke:
African Americans in the
United States of Barbecue."
And it's a celebration of
African American barbecue
culture. And fun fact about me
is I have a twin sister, April,
and we are not identical.
>> Lucas Fralick:
Nice fun fact. Thank you. Bryce.
>> Bryce Andrews:
Bryce Andrews.
I am, in addition to being the
author of "Holding Fire,"
which is the book
that got me here today.
I'm a rancher and an
environmentalist also here in
Montana. And I guess a
fun fact with me is that
I've bee in a culvert
trap with a grizzly bear.
>> Lucas Fralick:
And that's okay. Exciting.
I'm hoping to hear
about that later,
if not today, sometime.
Ramona, you're next.
>> Ramona Emerson: Hi,
everybody. I'm Ramona Emerson.
I am a Navajo filmmaker and
writer from Albuquerque,
New Mexico. My book, "Shutter,"
is a story about
Rita Todeschini,
a Navajo forensic photographer
who works for the Albuquerque
Police Department, but who also
has a special talent, and that
is that he's able
to speak to the dead.
So fun fact about me.
Well, I like to fish. I
like fish and tenants.
Those are my other
two things I enjoy.
So and my husband just got
a 20 inch trout last weekend,
and so that was super cool.
>> Lucas Fralick:
Very nice. Thank you.
Taylor.
>> Taylor Brorby:
Hi, everyone. I'm Taylor Brorby.
I'm the pint sized
Viking from the prairie.
My book is "Boys in Oil: Growing
Up Gay in a Fractured Land."
It's all about my
fossil fuel heritage.
I'm the fourth generation
fossil fuel baby.
And somehow my parents
produced a gay, crunchy granola
environmentalist
out of the deal.
So it sort of documents that
and getting arrested over the
Dakota Access pipeline.
And every place I move seems to
get fracked, which is my second
favorite F word.
But a fun fact about me is that
when I was six, I sliced my
upper lip open with a boomerang.
>> Lucas Fralick:
Sounds fun for sure.
Thank you. Sarah.
>> Sarah Hernandez:
Hi, my name is Sarah Hernandez.
I'm Sicangu Lakota and I'm
an assistant professor at the
University of New Mexico,
where I focus on contemporary
Native American literature.
My book is titled
"We Are the Stars:
Colonizing and Decolonizing
the Oceti Sakowin
Literary Tradition."
And I view my book as a
literary recovery project that
seeks to reclaim and decolonize
our literary tradition across
200 years and recenter women as
our traditional storytellers and
knowledge keepers.
And so I guess a fun fact about
me is I'm also an active member
of the Oceti Sakowin Writers
Society, which is a first of its
kind tribal group for Dakota
and Nakota Lakota writers.
And we've been around for 30
years, but a lot of people don't
know about us, so I wanted to
make sure and give them
a shout out today.
>> Lucas Fralick:
Very good. Lynda.
>> Lynda Rutledge:
Yes.
Oh, well, I was having too much
fun listening to everybody else.
Well, about me.
I found the-- And we'll
probably talk about this later.
I just wrote the history
of the San Diego Zoo
for their centennial in 2016.
And I found this story that
we'll be talking about there
with a whole bunch of
yellowed news clippings.
It was quite a thing, but I
used to be, a fun fact about me
is that I used to be a travel
writer, which works into this
too, not to mention a
lifelong animal lover.
So, you know, I've petted baby
rhinos and I've snorkeled with
endangered turtles. And
I've also walked with a
tower of giraffes at the zoo,
if not in Africa, which I did.
But a lot of people obviously
have and have told me all about
it, as you might imagine.
And I'm jealous, of course,
but that's pretty much it.
>> Lucas Fralick:
Thank you. Thank you.
Paisley.
>> Paisley Rekdal:
Hi, I'm Paisley Rekdal.
A fun fact about
me was I was Utah's
Poet laureate and I was asked
to write a poem about the 150th
commemoration of the
Transcontinental Railroad.
I'm also half-Chinese, so I was
really, really happy to write
that history. So I reframe,
I think the history of the
transcontinental railroads
through the Chinese
Exclusion Act
because I take a poem that
was carved into the walls of
Angel Island, and each one of
those characters becomes a
translation into a different
railroad workers history. So.
>> Lucas Fralick:
Thank you. And Chad.
>> Chad Hanson: Hi, I'm Chad
Hanson. I teach sociology
and world religions at
Casper College in Wyoming.
The book I wrote is called
"In a Land of Awe:
Finding Reverence in the
Search for Wild Horses."
And the book is
about the relationship
between people and nature.
And I talk about the
potential for our wild horse
herd areas to serve as liminal
places or places that blend the
everyday with the sacred.
And fun fact about me.
I live in Wyoming, and despite
what you might hear on the
Internet, Wyoming is real.
There was some news
to the contrary online,
but you can't believe all that.
>> Lucas Fralick:
Thank you. I would agree.
Wyoming is indeed real.
All right. Thank you all for
your fun facts and telling us
a bit about your work so far.
I'm really excited to
really bite into all this.
So I'm going to encourage once
again all of you to participate.
If someone's talking about
something really interesting,
feel free to raise your hand
and I'll do my best to call on
you and try to get
a discussion going.
But starting from the top.
Tom, you're back up.
I have a question for you.
Your book is a series of
essays, as you described.
Are there any
qualities that make
Arizona particularly distinct?
>> Tom Zoellner: Yeah.
Thank you for that question.
The name Arizona is the only
name among the 50 states in
which there's some scholarly
disagreement for its origins.
And the most credible theory is
that it comes from the Basque
language of northern Spain.
It means place of
the good oak tree.
And it was the site of a 1736
silver rush that lasted only for
a few weeks and then
disappeared into obscurity until
it was. The name was happened
upon by a promoter of Arizona,
a real estate promoter who
convinced Abraham Lincoln to
name the split off part of New
Mexico for the name of this
vanished silver rush.
And to me, that's an
instructive story.
It points out the historicity
of real estate hype when it
comes to thinking about
Arizona, the reaching for
fabulosity, where none may
exist and the quality of
dreaming that keeps
our state afloat.
If you like, even in a
time of extreme drought.
>> Lucas Fralick: Thank you.
Adrian, you describe
yourself as a,
correct me if I'm wrong,
a barbecue connoisseur.
Is that fair?
>> Adrian Miller:
Yeah. Yeah, I'll take that.
>> Lucas Fralick:
Your book captures a very
interesting culinary history,
and I'm curious why barbecue
as a lens into
culture in general
or as specific
as you want to go?
>> Adrian Miller:
Well. So it started
when I was writing a book
on the history of soul food.
And by the way, by telling
people I'm from Colorado,
I immediately lose all
street cred on the subject
of soul food and barbecue.
So the way that I win them back
is tell them that my parents are
from the South.
Great migration story.
Mom from Chattanooga,
Tennessee. Dad from Helena,
Arkansas. They met
in Denver and stayed.
And so I'm grateful
to my parents for a lot
of things, but one of the
things I'm grateful for is they
kept me steeped in black
culture, even in an unlikely
place like Denver
and its suburbs.
And so barbecue was one of our
big traditions, and it was
mainly a holiday thing.
So I grew up with barbecue as
part of black culture, and I
didn't think too deeply
about barbecue except like,
Oh, this tastes really good.
So then fast forward, I'm
writing my book on soul food and
I'm watching the Food Network.
And there was this
commercial for Paula Deen's
Southern Barbecue. Now, I
was going to include barbecue
in the Soul Food book, because
the way I wrote that book
is I have a chapter about
part of a representative meal.
But I found so much
stuff on barbecue,
I was like, You know what?
It needs its own treatment.
So in the back of my mind, I'm
going to write this book, but
I see this commercial.
I think, you know what?
Let me just watch and see
what are the big trends in
Southern barbecue right now?
Who are the leading lights?
An hour later, the credits are
rolling and not one black person
had been featured on that show.
So I thought, well,
how does this happen?
Because I know how important
barbecue is to black culture.
And, you know, it's 2004.
Why is this happening? And then
the second thing I thought is,
well, maybe I got a twisted
maybe I was actually seeing a
commercial for Paula Deen
Scandinavian barbecue.
And I just got it twisted.
So I started just looking
around at different aspects of
media on barbecue.
And it was the same thing.
African-americans had either
been completely vanished or
relegated to the margins.
And so I just said,
this is ridiculous.
So this book is really a big,
it's a love letter to
black barbecue cooks, but then
a thump on the head to say,
if you're going to write about
barbecue, you have to include
African-Americans. I mean to
not do that is just ridiculous.
>> Lucas Fralick: Thank you.
Yeah. I'm hungry already.
Really? I like good barbecue.
Bryce, you mentioned...
Perhaps not in your
introduction, but found out that
you grew up in Seattle.
Is that right?
>> Bryce Andrews: That is true.
>> Lucas Fralick: In Seattle.
So lots of questions there.
But the thing that really
highlighted for me
is that in your book
"Holding Fire," you write,
I think it is possible
to keep the best aspects
of a Western heart,
qualities like gumption, grit
and feral joy without embracing
the brutality that runs
rampant in our history.
So can you explain to us
what that means to you,
or why is that important?
>> Bryce Andrews: Well, I'd
like to first tell you that,
you're from Seattle. That
raises a lot of questions,
is something I've heard quite
often in my life as a ranch hand
and rancher in
Montana. Yeah.
I mean holding fire is really
about inheritance, about
wrestling with both the darker
aspects of Western
inheritance as the son of,
you know, European settlers.
It's also about looking at, you
know, looking critically at the
culture that I have lived in
my whole life as a rancher.
You know, this book centers
on this revolver that my
grandfather gave me and that I
used as a tool in the course of
ranching for decades.
And it's about the process
of beginning to realize how that
particular weapon and that
particular inheritance ties me
to a history of violence and
brutality, both against place
and indigenous people in
many directions in the West.
And really that line that
you're asking about comes from
the end of the book. And it's
after I've chosen to remake that
revolver by learning the
blacksmith into a different kind
of tool with
different affinities.
And I really do believe
what I said there.
I think we have agency in terms
of what we keep and what we
leave behind in terms of the
traditions that we inherit,
the biases we inherit
in the West, in terms of
how we view ourselves, and
particularly in terms of our
relationship with land. So,
you know, you asked me
about being from Seattle,
and I used to be
almost ashamed of that.
You know, I would be around all
these sort of born and bred
Montana cowboys and I would
hate to say where I was from,
but increasingly I'm proud of
it because it lets me see things
a little bit from the side
and lets me look at things
a little bit differently.
Then I think I would have
if I'd been raised out here.
So thanks for asking about that.
I appreciate it.
>> Lucas Fralick:
Oh, yeah, of course.
Thanks for writing the book.
Ramona. I really want to ask
you a fishing story, but
unfortunately, I don't think we
have the time right now.
The overall theme of this
year's festival is
"Everyone has a story."
In your memoir, you managed
to turn it into a novel.
Can you explain more about how
that happened and the process?
>> Ramona Emerson: It actually
turned into a lot of things
before it became
what it was. And
one of the things
was a screenplay.
I think I turned away from my
memoir pretty quick because
I didn't want
people to think that
everything I was writing
was about me and thought that
was just kind of strange
and I didn't want to do it.
So I decided I'm going to write
a screenplay and I'm going to
get into my MFA program and go
into the screenplay program and
do that. And I had a writing
mentor at the time named
Joan Tewkesbury, who told me,
Ramona, I think, you know
you are capable of writing a
screenplay, but I want you to
write more fiction because
that's what I've been writing in
her workshop. And I had, just
like the tips of this novel
in some of the stories there.
So I applied for my
MFA program at IAIA and
brought what little
things I had with me.
And they accepted me
in the fiction program.
And immediately I was like,
what did I get myself into?
Because I've been a filmmaker
for 25 years and this was
something that I never wanted
to do in a million years was to
write a book. And here I was
putting myself in that situation
unknowingly, and right
away my professors
just told me what I had and
said, You have so much here and
you need to write a book
and this is how it's going to
happen. And I think you can do
it and go on and try it and take
all those ideas you have and
put it in a book and let's see
what happens. And two years
later, I had my first draft.
So pretty crazy to go from
write a memoir or let's write a
screenplay to 350 page novel
within a couple of years.
So thank you. That's
a great question.
>> Lucas Fralick:
Oh, well, thank you.
Taylor. So there's a lot here.
Boys and all growing up,
gay in a fractured land.
Lots to dig into.
I do have a question for you.
There's very few books coming
out of the Great Plains region.
This is the nature of our
population, probably.
So what do you hope to achieve
with writing a book representing
in large part your home region
and maybe even your state?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but.
>> Taylor Brorby: Oh my God.
I just hope to write a book.
You know, that
was the first one.
My goodness. It was
like, can you do this?
Strap in, here we go.
But I think, you know, beyond
that, it's sort of my pop quiz
is always name a famous
North Dakota writer.
You might get Aunt Louise
Erdrich, you know, and then
after that, you might get my
look alike Big brother
Chuck Klosterman.
You might go to Denmark.
And then after that, on the
Great Plains, we have great
silences. You know, the
North Dakota bookshelf is a
very sparse. So one of the great
things when you're a writer from
North Dakota is you just have
carte blanche to fill that son
of a gun up with your books
as much as you can.
But part of it, you know,
during the times in which we
live, you might have heard
there's a huge amount of library
censorship going on related to
books, especially with content
such as mine, particularly
in states many of us
represent here today, you know.
So part of it was also to
remind people that queer people
don't live just in
coastal enclaves.
But it turns out some of us are
trying to make the Great Plains
gay again, you know, and sort
of reveal that story exists
there. And so part of that is I
wanted to have a book on a
bookshelf in a library to help
little, you know, queer youth
feel less alone because
I grew up in a world
where a book like
mine didn't exist.
And I thought I was some, you
know, circus animal or something
in the community
from whence I came.
And so part of it is kind of a
act of reclamation, like what
we're doing with
coal mining throughout
the West and different ways.
>> Lucas Fralick: Thank you.
Sarah.
Why is it important--
And please correct me
because I'm gonna
try my best not to
mispronounce this, but why is
it important to learn about the
Oceti Sakowin
literary tradition?
>> Sarah Hernandez: Yeah,
no, and I think it's very much
in alignment with what
Taylor was just saying.
You know, it's important for us
to see ourselves reflected in
the literature
and the curriculum.
And as Oceti Sakowin people,
we don't see that.
We never read about our people
and our communities in books.
And so when I was growing up,
I had never read a book by a
tribal writer, and I didn't
read a book by a writer from my
own community till
I was 25 years old.
And when I did finally read a
book by a writer from my own
community, it sparked
something in me.
You know, the
sense of this pride.
And I want to see that in other
Oceti Sakowin students,
especially in the
state of South Dakota,
where 1 in 9 citizens
are Oceti Sakowin, right.
Tribal member. They deserve to
see themselves in the book,
in the books, in the curriculum.
And honestly, I think every
state should be studying about
the tribes whose
land they occupy.
And so I no longer
live in South Dakota.
I now live in New Mexico, but I
make a conscious effort to learn
about the tribes in this area
and their literary tradition.
>> Lucas Fralick: Thank you.
Lynda.
With westward drafts,
I get the impression that it's
a lot of different kinds of
stories, all wrapped
into a nice little book
with little quotes I understand.
Tell us more about that.
Do you think that's
true or do you disagree?
>> Lynda Rutledge:
Okay.
So I'm a former-- I'm not
sure I said this earlier.
It's my fun fact or not,
I can't remember.
But I used to be a travel writer
and had a lot of fun with
that, as you might imagine.
So this road trip was
easy for me to get into.
But I think one reader
asked me a really fun question.
She said, How did you
manage to write a historical
novel, a social and
political commentary,
a coming of age story and a
love story, all in one book.
And my answer was, I had a lot
to work with and I had the time
of my life creating it,
as you might imagine.
So that's really my answer.
>> Lucas Fralick:
Okay. Thank you.
>> Ramona Emerson:
You have a you know,
I think that the
"West with Giraffes" itself
is a you know, again,
a whole other story.
It's not it's it's a road trip.
But it happens in 1938.
And it has a has a protagonist
who's 105 years old and she's
telling the story before it's
too late.
And in essence, that,
 of course goes along with
your everyone has a story a
theme, too, I think really
nicely because that's exactly
what he's doing and that's what
the whole and it's a big book,
you know, it's quite a long book
and full of all kinds of
adventures and we have a lot of
fun. I had a lot of fun, you
know, creating it, as I said.
>> Lucas Fralick:
Great. Thank you.
Paisley.
I'm a historian and I'd be
remiss if I didn't ask this,
but what is the
transcontinental railroads
history mean to Utah
and how did it help
shape Utah's history?
>> Paisley Rekdal:
Wow. Okay.
Just a small question.
So to a certain extent, the West
of translation, the book I was
writing was answering that
question, it's a big one.
There's pretty much no aspect
of American or Utah culture that
the train didn't touch, didn't
alter in some way, whether it
was our concept of physical
time, figuratively as well as
literally. We got into time
zones because of the train.
It changed gender
roles on trains.
The idea that women could
now travel long distances by
themselves. It was also a
technology that was meant to
break down kinds of racial
class ethnic barriers, but
in fact ended up sort
of reinforcing them.
So Native Americans ended up,
some of them getting free riding
passes if they were left the
train alone, but they would ride
on the tops of trains.
Obviously, African American
workers who came west, you know,
from the Great Migration,
they were there to service the
trains, but they got the most
dangerous, the most difficult
jobs. And many of the black
communities that settled around
the trains ended up
disappearing after the train
technology itself
sort of changed.
Obviously, Mormonism and
polygamy became a big thing as
well, weirdly, because the
train was bringing out people
from the East Coast who were
looking at Mormons as kind of
oddities, cultural oddities,
but also maybe potentially
martial foes in the future
and things like that.
And polygamy was a big
conversation and the train
facilitated that kind of
curiosity and fascination.
So, I mean, I just found myself
thinking more and more about all
the ways in which the train
became a kind of refraction of
American and then
Utah culture, too.
And we're still
dealing with that.
So I have to stop there because
otherwise I would just give you
another dissertation.
>> Lucas Fralick:
I totally understand.
Yeah, I've been there before.
Thank you. Okay. Chad.
Besides the fact that Wyoming
seems to be missing
on the Internet,
what's the most common
misperception about Wyoming?
>> Chad Hanson:
One common misperception.
I think Wyoming is often
thought of as a rural place,
and it is to a large degree.
Our largest city is Cheyenne
and it only has about 80,000
people. But I think one of the
secrets about Wyoming is that
we're mostly a
state of townspeople.
More than half the state of
Wyoming is public land.
So half of Wyoming is Wyoming
and the other half is federal,
state and county land that
belongs to you and me and
everyone we know.
So what you have in our state
are cities and mostly unpeopled
lands in between.
Of course there are ranches,
but they're quite large and
spread out. So by far, most
people in Wyoming live in
neighborhoods and we have
a culture that's rich.
Of course, we have national
parks, we have wildlife, we have
wild horses, for
crying out loud.
But we also have music, art
and literature and cuisine.
And I'm happy to say a growing
number of microbreweries.
When I first moved to Wyoming,
we didn't have that, but we have
them now. So I think when
people imagine Wyoming,
they imagine mountains
and rivers and wildlife.
And of course, we
have all those things.
But I think we're much more.
We're a rich set of communities
right alongside this great
wildlife and landscapes.
>> Lucas Fralick:
Thank you. Thank you.
Great introductions, everybody.
Thank you. I think we do have
time for another round of
questions. But before we get
into that, I want to ask if
anyone has any questions for
one another or anything you want
to follow up on. Now is your
time to raise your hand and I'll
pick on you. Otherwise I'm just
going to keep going through
questions in that same
methodological fashion.
Adrian, go ahead, please.
>> Adrian Miller: All right.
This one's for Chad, because
you piqued my interest
about cuisine and Wyoming.
So if there's a representative
Wyoming dish, lay it on me,
brother. I want
to know what it is.
>> Chad Hanson: Well, this is
steak and potatoes
country for sure,
but we've got a
really wide variety.
Our Mexican food is fantastic.
You can get a
surprisingly good pizza
in my hometown of
Casper, Wyoming.
No, especially in
the last few years.
The cities of Wyoming--
we've been through a kind of a
renaissance and restaurants,
live music venues, theater.
It's a different place than
I moved to 20 years ago,
So when Lucas asked the
question that some of the stuff
that came to mind.
>> Adrian Miller: Cool. Thanks.
>> Chad Hanson: Barbecue.
We got it.
>> Adrian Miller: All right.
I'm gonna be heading north.
>> Chad Hanson: All right.
>> Lucas Fralick: Tom, why
don't you go ahead, too,
with that question?
>> Tom Zoellner: Yeah.
Thank you. I think Adrian
asks a really salient question
that all of us are going to
have opinions on behalf of
our respective states.
My own book has an essay called
Enchiladas and Whiskey that
tries to get to the Arizona
bottom of that question.
And I'm going to put
it in one sentence.
If you want to understand
Arizona's distinct cuisines,
imagine a collision in between
southern cooking,
that is to say, lots of
biscuits, lots of grease,
lots of peach cobbler.
And you put that in
conversation with
the Norteno cuisine of
Sonora and Chihuahua.
And I think it's remarkable
that both of these methods of
eating were despised by the
elites of their respective
nations. People look down
on Southern food in the U.S.
Think of it as kind of,
you know, low class.
Mexico City had no respect for
the stuff that the Cowboys up in
Sonora were eating.
So out of this collision, I
think comes a really quite a
paradoxically
distinguished tradition.
>> Lucas Fralick: Great.
Good question, Adrian.
Thank you. A good move.
Any other questions?
Otherwise, I'm going to--
>> Adrian Miller: Sorry,
I had a quick follow up.
>> Lucas Fralick:
Please follow up.
>> Adrian Miller: Tom, I'm
just curious, how did you do
the research for that chapter?
>> Tom Zoellner:
Let me just say that
I enjoyed the research on that
chapter more than any other.
>> Adrian Miller:
Okay. All right.
Because I've got a lot
of my information from
historical newspapers.
They were covering their
communities so very rich.
I was just wondering
if you had the same.
>> Tom Zoellner: I did, yeah. I
drew from 19th century sources.
And the chapters also
gives some homage to those
places in Arizona that have
stood the test of time.
Some call outs to some
specific institutions.
>> Adrian Miller: Cool.
>> Lucas Fralick:
Great follow up.
>> Bryce Andrews: Sorry, Lucas.
Just want to add one thing to--
I just wanted to tell you,
Adrian, I just came from a
weekend long festival that
was on a ranch out in the
Blackfoot that was all about
whole animal open fire cooking.
And so they were doing, like,
you know, nine, you know, like
nine whole pigs.
And they did like every meal
was a different animal taken
from the ranches nearby.
And it was amazing. They were
feeding 1400 people, you know,
slow cooking and
barbecuing the stuff.
And it was just amazing.
It gave me yet a
new appreciation
for barbecue as a cuisine.
>> Adrian Miller: I'm definitely
following up with you.
Thanks for sharing that.
>> Bryce Andrews:
I'd love to talk about it.
>> Lucas Fralick:
Great. Thank you.
So any other questions
for one another?
So I have a question for Ramona
because I'm very curious.
May we look forward to an
ongoing series of crime fiction
by chance? Is there
anything in the works?
>> Ramona Emerson:
Well, yes, Lucas.
I did promise at least a
trilogy for Rita Todeschini.
Whether somebody will talk me
into doing more than that,
they'll really
have to wrestle me.
But I don't want
to write Rita Todeschini
for the rest of my life
as much as I love her.
But maybe sometime later
I might bring her back.
But I am 275 pages into the
first draft of book number two.
It's called "Exposure."
>> Lucas Fralick:
Okay. We heard to here, folks.
Remember when you hear
you got the preview.
Well, the expectations
right here.
Thank you.
>> Ramona Emerson:
Thank you.
>> Lucas Fralick: Lynda, can you
go into a little bit more detail
on what you mean by--
Nope, I said that wrong.
You said that you're
a travel writer, right?
>> Lynda Rutledge: Okay. I
am a travel writer. I was.
>> Lucas Fralick:
Excuse me. Right.
So you say that your story,
that this part is when it comes
to the drafts, is only a part
of the story, right?
>> Ramona Emerson:
You're talking about
the West with giraffe story?
No, the whole thing
is a road trip.
The first thing
they came up with--
I don't know if I said this a
minute ago, but I was writing
the history of the San Diego
Zoo and discovered this.
And I found a bunch of news
clippings, like from 1938 on
the drive across country.
And it all started
with a hurricane.
They actually lived through a
hurricane to get to New York.
And then they
would got on a--
little more than a tricked
out pickup truck.
And they put these young
giraffes and they before
interstates and they drove them
12 days to San Diego.
And so essentially that part of
it was, you know, exciting
for me because I knew I was
going to get into a whole lot of
research. And normally I'm a
real nervous researcher, but
that, my goodness, the stuff
that I was able to uncover was
just remarkable.
And but, you know, I realized
that I could use real people,
but I had to make up a whole
lot of stuff so I could use it
because all I had
was a news clipping.
So what I had to do, I could
use like a Belle Benchley, for
instance, who was the first
woman zoo director ever.
And she was the impetus
behind this entire thing.
I could also use the-- I had
some telegrams and postcards
and I had those clippings.
And that's all I had.
Found out that they were
only 30 of 500 that were,
you know, shown across that,
you know, they followed them.
And also, you know, I could use
Hitler, for instance, you know,
and I did just a small amount
because that's what he was--
At that point, World
War II was coming
and he was already invading
in Austria, for instance.
So the thing about it is
I had so much to work with,
but I had to make up
a lot of it because I didn't
have anything but just, what?
Just the basics.
So I created, you know, a Texan
who ends up in an odd situation
where a young kid who lives
through the Dust Bowl because
you can't talk about 1938
without talking about
the Dust Bowl.
And at that point,
he finds himself in New York and
he finds himself actually
watching, seeing the giraffes
come off that, you know,
after the hurricane.
And then essentially he
finds himself driving it across
country. And what you would
have is that also, of course,
had to talk about
what it was like to
live back then. So that had to
be a bunch of research, too.
And that was, again, quite fun.
And not just for what it was
like to be black during that
time, but also to how it
was like to be a woman.
And by the way, a lady
did not drive by herself
on any roads. We're talking
again, no interstates.
And I have a character,
a young one who
decides that she's going to do
that when she sees the giraffes.
So I had, again, lots of fun.
Creating it all.
>> Lucas Fralick: Thank
you for clarifying for me.
My notes were all over the
place. Really appreciate.
I'm sure our audiences do too.
Sarah, I have a
question for you.
What is the cultural and
historical significance behind
your title and the
cover of your book?
It's very interesting. Please.
>> Sarah Hernandez: Yeah.
I'm actually really
proud of both the title
and the cover of the book.
So the title is
"We Are the Stars."
And that was actually suggested
to me by Dakota scholar
Elizabeth Cook-lynn, who is
considered one of the founders
of Native American Studies.
And, you know, when I was
searching for a title for the
book, she said, call it We are
the Stars, because that's where
our origin stories come from.
We traditionally do believe,
you know, our people come from
the stars. And so that's
why I titled the book
"We Are the Stars."
And it was also a tribute
to Elizabeth Cook-lynn. Right.
She has done so much to
preserve our literary tradition,
which I'd been talking about
in my book, has been lost.
And then the cover of the book
is a piece of ledger art that my
brother actually created.
And so after I'd finished the
book, I had a very clear idea in
my head what I wanted the cover
to look like, and I wanted it to
be ledger art, because
traditionally ledger art is
viewed as an act of resistance.
But I also wanted it to in the
foreground is a mistranslated
treaty. The Treaty of Traverse
Des Sioux missionaries
mistranslated that treaty
to steal the Dakota land.
And so that treaty
is in the foreground.
And then atop that treaty are
three images of Oceti Sakowin
women representing the Dakota
Nakota and Lakota Nation.
And if you look closely at each
of their shawls, there's a star,
there's stars on each of their
shawls to, you know, connote
ancestral star knowledge.
And so I viewed that cover as a
piece of, like I said, an act of
resistance and
decolonization and healing.
And I saw it very
clearly in my mind.
And I just asked
my brother, I said,
can you create this for me?
And he created it exactly
as I saw it in my head.
And so I was really happy that
the publisher, you know, allowed
us to use that cover for the
book because I think it even
captures, you know, the entire
premise of the book, which is to
discuss both settler
colonialism and decolonization.
So.
>> Lucas Fralick:
Great. Thank you.
That's very telling.
I like that.
Okay. Taylor.
Living in Wyoming. That's
me in this case, landscapes,
everything. And so for North
Dakota, I would imagine.
Landscapes are kind of
interwoven in everyday life.
how does the landscape
speak to you?
How does that use of
the land speak to you?
>> Taylor Brorby: Well,
the great thing about grass,
other than it's a
burnable substance,
you know, if the wind
is blowing through it,
it whispers to you.
So there's this huge symphony
going on that, you know, speaks
if you listen attentively to
that landscape,
somehow North Dakota, if
you haven't recently made it
to the great shores
of the great state,
it's the least visited
state in the country.
But the Shortgrass Prairie is
one of the most biodiverse
regions we have on the planet.
It makes the Amazon look as
interesting as low fat ranch
dressing. You know, I mean,
100 acres of prairie can support
over 3000 species of
insect alone, you know?
And so I think by
studying that landscape,
it gets me into other
ways of thinking.
If nature models that
it thrives in diversity.
How is it that rural states,
particularly plains states, have
monocultures not only of
industry, but also in the
stories we tell and in the ways
we view who lives there,
and that part of that is looking
to nature and what it's
taught us to also remind us
of a varied and interesting
history. But I mean, my God,
the landscape of the prairie has
to be the most incredible thing.
You know, you can go to
southern North Dakota.
There's still wagon wheel
tracks because the landscape
doesn't heal where that
guy, George Armstrong Custer,
when he went west and
had the worst day of his life,
you can still go and see those
wagon wheel tracks in that
landscape. So there's also a
way where the landscape holds
history and memories of, you
know, settler colonialism, which
I think is a big theme a lot of
us are touching on in our work,
it seems, today. And also,
you know, other groups, for
instance, you know, black
people have been living in
North Dakota as long as
people that look like me.
And so that's also part of,
I think what staying that
landscape has reminded me
is that we're not all one
monoculture of grass, but we're
an interwoven tapestry of
different grasses.
>> Lucas Fralick: Thank
you. Really nice analogy.
I like that. Or
is that metaphor?
Don't answer that in front of a
bunch of writers.
Back and forth.
Paisley, you did a lot of
research into railroads.
Railroads are really cool.
And there was a lot of
discovery when you're
researching your railroads.
Believe me. So do you have a
particular discovery that you
found in your research that
you would like to share?
>> Paisley Rekdal:
Yeah, actually.
I guess maybe it's not
a fun fact, but it is sort of a
fact. I'd never, ever thought
about the railroad at all until
I was given this commission.
And then I was asked to write
these series of poems that
turned into West to Translation.
And it was through the writing
of this book that I actually
came to fall in love with
what the railroad is a sort of a
technology, a metaphor, a story
of all these different stories
that are woven together.
But one of the things that I
was really frustrated about when
I first started writing this
book was I wanted to tell the
stories of the many people who
were either displaced by or who
worked on the railroad.
And we didn't keep
a lot of those stories. We
didn't have those records.
And specifically for Chinese
workers, we have still not found
a piece of writing from any of
the transcontinental workers.
And so that means that at the
beginning of this project was
this incredible absence into
which I had to sort of imagine
and write. So I started getting
really creative with my research
in order to find voices in
order to find some of these
stories. And one of the things
that I started doing was going
into the Shoshone and Paiute
Oral Histories, because it turns
out that a number of
transcontinental workers,
the Chinese workers, either were
adopted by or intermarried into
some of these tribes.
And so you can get second, third
generation Shoshone
tribal people talking
about the fact that they
had these different
workers in their families.
And there was a story of one
man named Sam who memorized the
history of the Ute in Ute.
And when he died over 60, Ute
and Paiute elders went to
mourn him in Cheyenne.
And I found that like such a
beautiful and moving kind of
testimonial. I think right now
we're in a sort of the cultural
throes of people only telling
their own stories, only being,
you know, repositories of their
own histories and can understand
the reasons why
that is true.
But I think when we're thinking
of the broader way that history
unfolds over time, we all start
to carry each other's stories
forward into the future.
And that was something
I learned from the
Transcontinental and doing this
kind of research that people
carry each other's stories
forward, even if those that
looks like there's a dead
end and in one direction.
>> Lucas Fralick: Thank
you. Definitely a testament
to the turn every
page philosophy. Right.
You never know what's
around the next corner.
Thank you.
Bryce, you mentioned
in your opening conversation, or
at least in one of the
questions.
The idea of inheritance
and the meaning behind it.
Can you go into more detail
behind the cycle of inheritance
using and destroying
a little bit for us?
>> Bryce Andrews: Sure. I mean,
I'd be happy to talk about that,
particularly in regard to,
you know, things that
come to so many of us who,
you know, pursue
ranching in the West.
Things like weapons.
I mean, I remember as a kid
just being completely enthralled
by the myth of the West and
this idea of, you know, vastness
and being part standing in a
line of people who were
strong and hard working and who
changed the natural world into
shapes that fit them.
And I always felt like one
of the things I had inherited in
the form of this revolver that
came from my grandfather was
a place in that line,
in that history.
And really what my book has
been about and really the
thought process of the last ten
years of my life has been about
questioning whether or not
I want to stand in that line
without really thinking it over
and thinking about which parts
of it are worth
carrying forward.
You know, one of the
amazing things about being out
in these landscapes where
I've been fortunate enough to
work is I see things that
people don't really see anymore.
You know, if you're
running a 20,000 acre ranch for
somebody, you will see the
natural world in ways that are
lost to most people now.
And one of the things, if a
person is open minded and
thoughtful about it, that you
begin to realize is that
tremendous amount has been lost.
There's been cultural loss,
there's been ecological loss.
There's been this tremendous
amount of violence.
And we're at this real point of
inflection, I think, where we're
beginning to tackle some of
those issues and also tackle our
relationship to the tools that
we've used to bring ourselves to
this point. Tools of
violence like guns.
So yeah, I mean, I think,
you know, it is a book about
inheritance, but it's also
about the ways our tools shape
us and what that means for
how we act in the world.
>> Lucas Fralick:
Great. Thank you.
Our tools shape us.
I like that phrase.
It's a nice quote.
Probably belongs somewhere
like a welcome mat or something.
Sort of like one of
those sort of things.
Very nice. Thank you.
Adrian, you touched on this
briefly, but do you mind going
into a little bit more just a
little bit more detail, because
I know this is a huge piece of
your work, but why is it that
barbecue, from your estimation,
that barbecue tended towards
African-American communities
the way it did?
Give us a little bit on that.
>> Adrian Miller: So one of
it is a legacy of slavery.
So old school barbecue
is very labor intensive.
Somebody has to find a field,
clear it, and then dig a trench
a couple feet deep,
a couple feet wide.
Somebody has to chop the wood
up, put it in that trench, set
it afire, let it burn down the
coals, then kill all the
animals, butcher them and then
butterfly them, stick poles in
them, and then continuously
flip those animals so they
evenly cook. Somebody else had
to maintain a separate fire,
walk up and down the pit to
find cold spots and replenish
the coals. Somebody else had
a bucket full of vinegar and
spices to kind of swab the meat
to moisten it, and then somebody
else had to cook
the side dishes.
Somebody served it, and then
somebody also provided the after
barbecue entertainment, and
that was enslaved Africans and
enslaved African-Americans.
And barbecue was scalable.
So we have reports from the
early 1800s where
you had barbecues
for 20,000 people.
Now, we didn't have Google
satellite technology, so those
numbers are probably fudged.
But the idea is that there was a
huge crowd for these barbecues.
And so the racial dynamic of
our country is if you wanted to
have somebody do a lot of work
and not compensate them,
you may black people do it.
So by the time we get to the
1820s and '30s, blackness and
barbecue are wedded.
In the public imagination,
if you want the real deal,
you have an
African-American cook it.
And so that's how it starts.
And then barbecue is delicious.
And it's a way to build
community because it was whole
animal cooking. So
then it spills over into
African-American culture and
with churches especially and
other social gatherings. So it
was a way to bond people.
And then after emancipation,
African-American Barbecue took
its own kind of spin,
in addition to doing it for
majority culture. So it's
just really ingrained.
>> Lucas Fralick:
Thank you. Thank you.
That helps fill in the
picture a bit better.
Chad.
Your book, "Spoiler Alert,"
it's about horses, right?
>> Chad Hanson: It is.
>> Lucas Fralick: Can you
go in a little bit into
one of your major themes
that you try to like a
message you're trying to
get across throughout your book?
Just one of them?
>> Chad Hanson: Yeah,
the subtitle has to do
with reverence and awe.
And so at the beginning of the
book, I talk about some of the
new science on
those two subjects.
Scientists kind of shied away
from those topics for a long
time because they're closely
related to spirituality.
People thought
that was subject--
Those were subjects for
theologians as opposed to
psychologists or
social scientists.
So I talk about some of the new
research, and we have good data
today to show how--
When you experience something
vast and beautiful, when you
experience awe, your cortisol
levels decline,
that's your stress hormone.
Your oxytocin levels, we call
that the love hormone.
Those levels rise and there's
a social purpose for that.
It makes us kinder and more
cooperative and generous.
And I'm a sociologist by
training, so I take a little
different point of view on
horses and nature than others
might. My work begins
and ends with people.
So toward the end of the book,
my point is that
we stand to lose a lot
if we lose wild horses.
And there's a move to eliminate
wild horses from public land.
There's a beautiful law
that protects them.
Written in 1971, and when the
bill passed, Wyoming had 44
wild horse herds. Today we have
16 left, and there's a strong
chance that we'll lose
two more in the year ahead.
So we'll have 14 of those
places left out of the original
44. And that's been the story
in most Western states.
So to return to your theme of
everyone has a story, part of
the reason I wrote the book is
because I wanted people to see
how the experience of wild
horses running across a rugged
landscape in the West can be
an important part of anybody's
life story. What a chapter
to include in a life story.
Part of my motivation
for the book.
>> Lucas Fralick: Thank you.
All right, Tom, you're the
last one on my list here today.
We did talk briefly about
Arizona food cuisine,
that sort of thing
from a side question.
So I'm curious about the
other half of that equation.
About music. I'm going a
little bit about music for us.
>> Tom Zoellner: Yeah. There's
also a section in the book
about Arizona music,
which is not a genre
that's widely recognized as
having made contributions,
but I argue that it does.
And just like with food, you
can sort of see the cultural
collisions going on in between
the militaristic brass sound of
northern Sonora with some of the
surf music of the '70s and '80s,
particularly in the Phoenix
scene that came together
to produce bands like Calexico,
the Meat Puppets,
Mr. Mister. Also the country
scene that emerged out of a
Texas swing form of music
around the unlikely town of
Coolidge, Arizona, which
gave to the rest of the world
Buck Owens and Waylon
Jennings and all the songs of
Western dreaming and heartbreak
that make an important part of
the country music tradition.
So I'd argue that Arizona's in
that particular Hall of Fame.
[Music]