Writing Arizona, 1912–2012
Subtitle
A Cultural and Environmental Chronicle
From the year of Arizona's statehood to its centennial in 2012, narratives of the state and its natural landscape have revealed — and reconfigured — the state's image. Through official state and federal publications, newspapers, novels, poetry and autobiographies, Kim Engel-Pearson examines narratives of Arizona that reflect both a century of Euro-American dominance and a diverse cultural landscape. Examining the written record at twenty-five-year intervals, "Writing Arizona, 1912–2012" shows how the state was created through the writings of its inhabitants and its visitors.
Bio
Kim Engel-Pearson holds a PhD in history from Arizona State University. She has worked as a researcher and writer of interpretive signs for central Arizona's national monuments, a freelance editor and a writing coach.
Praise for this book
Conceptualizations of Arizona as a place of beauty or hardship, scarcity or abundance, have shaped the state's attitudes and politics over the past century. Writing Arizona, 1912-2012 reminds us that stories of place can either reveal and elevate or demean and ignore the reality in which we live.
Leisl Carr Childers Author, "Size of the Risk: Histories of Multiple Use in the Great Basin"
Kim Engel-Pearson has listened carefully to the multiplicity of narratives around Arizona as a place created as much by words as by actions, from its incorporation as the forty-eighth state to its centennial.
Eduardo Pagán Author," Historic Photos of Phoenix"
