Her Texas

Multicultural, multiethnic, and multidisciplinary, Her Texas includes stories, essays, memoirs, poetry, song lyrics, paintings, and photographs by 60 Texas women. Texas, once a country unto itself, has engendered myths and legends that rival the magnetic force of national identity. At first, Texas writers looked toward the men who embodied the larger-than-life stories of cowboys and Indians, pioneers and outlaws, cattle barons and oil kings. Although the female writers, poets, songwriters, artists, and photographers of this collection know this heritage, they also illuminate a Texas that is large enough in landscape, history, and spirit to include a multitude of experiences and identities. Discover women who write with intelligence, humor, pain, and joy of experiences rooted in the far-flung landscapes and cityscapes of Texas, and who enlarge the definition of "Texan" to include multifaceted lives lived in fertile intersections where myths and realities meet: a teenage mother from San Antonio compares her dreams with her real life; a Tejana recalls her downtown childhood in terms of a magical-realist game of loteria; a cop from Houston takes her place in a historically male environment; a popular blues musician pays homage to the grounding influence of her mother; a photographer shares her vision of the beauties and environmental degradations of Texas landscapes; a woman helps her injured horse regain his health while she recovers from the wounds of unemployment; a young mother and professor faces breast cancer; a tent-revival organist's daughter manifests a spirituality of her own; a grandmother in an Iranian-American family struggles to survive in the isolation of suburbia; a nun ties herself in the midst of a hurricane to the orphans in her care; while at a Dallas flea market, an African-American woman comes to terms with her relationship with her African sister-in-law; a renowned poet illuminates her husband's struggle with Parkinson's disease; an anthropologist explores the haunting cave paintings of Palo Duro canyon; and a Tejana poet describes mid-life, her love for her mother, and her love for her son. Issues covered in this anthology include sexual abuse and recovery; struggles against disease, poverty, and isolation; ethnic identity and heritage; musical roots; environmental degradation of water, air, and landscape; family and relationships; political and intellectual struggles, and more.
About the Author: Donna Walker-Nixon, a recipient of the Minnie Stevens Piper Award, is the founding editor of Windhover: A Journal of Christian Literature and the cofounding editor of Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas. She is the author of the novel Canaan's Oothoon. Her short story "Tented Amusements" was published in the Journal of Texas Women Writers, and her fiction has appeared in Descant, Echoes, and Concho River Review, Red Boots and Attitude, Texas Short Stories, and Writing on the Wind. She lives in Temple, Texas. Cassy Burleson is a professor of English at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Rachel Crawford has worked as a high school English teacher, a university English professor, an editor, and a writer. Her poetry has appeared in various journals, and she is a recipient of the Beall Poetry Festival's Poetry in the Arts Award. They both live in Lorena, Texas. Ashley Palmer teaches sociology, sociology of religion, and gender studies courses at Baylor University, where she is a former assistant director of the Academy for Teaching and Learning. Her work has been published in the Review of Religious Research. She lives in Waco, Texas.