The Santa Fe New Mexican from Santa Fe, New Mexico • 36

THE NEW MEXICAN Sunday August 20 1995 0UI1O0K ON BOOKS Singing to survive Anthology of Native American writers is fresh compelling BOOK NOTES By Ruth Lopez Books Editor f- Jt 1" Nina Otero-Warren In 1918 am drawn to words Maybe because language is so much more than I am" writes Diane Glancy "But words are not alone by themselves They carry meaning I must have something and must say it well: I want to represent life with respect I want to write about what I feel and think what I experience and come to believe I want to write about the dignity of the common man and the uniqueness of the ordinary moment" Poet Joy Harjo writes about this dignity and about her peoples' values myths and beliefs "Remember that you are all peo- 'Smoke Rising' is full of striking relevant writing some of it stark much of it painful and all of it rich with history tradition ceremony and beauty There was a celebration recently at EI Castillo retirement home Resident Courtney Reeder Jones' book Letters from Wupatki (University of Arizona Press) had just been released By the time the party was over 75 copies of the book were sold Letters from Wupatki is the story of Courtney and Davy Jones' time as caretakers (via the National Park Service) of the Wupatki National Monument a place they called home from 1938 to 1949 Courtney's correspondence to her family and friends often written in a room reached by a ladder in this northern Arizona Indian ruin tells the story of the new-lyweds' adventures Those let Nina Otero-Warren: A graceful non-conformist chili and muttondid not nourish me they said" Maria Campbell writes about life in a boarding school in Half-breed "I can recall little from that part of my life besides feeling lonely and frightened when I was left with the Sister at the school The place smelled unpleasantly of soap and old women I do recall most vividly a punishment I once received We weren't allowed to speak Cree only French or English and for disobeying this I was pushed into a small closet with no windows or light and locked in for what seemed like hours I was almost paralyzed with fright when they came to let me out" But in the face of immense struggle racism and hatred many of the Native American authors resort to humor for strength and hope "I think we look pretty flashy passing by in the gold Chevrolet with shining chrome and the bumper stickers saying Indian Affairs Are the Best and Pilgrim Go Home" writes Linda Hogan in Crow "Will this be a white convenience store clerk asks a character in Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven "in that company effort to make me do some impulse shopping Like adding a clause onto a treaty We'll take Washr ington and Oregon and you get six pine trees and a brand-new Chrysler Cordoba I knew how to make and break promises" Smoke Rising sends powerful signals about the import of Native North American literature which has existed for two centuries contrary to the common belief that American Indians only began writing recently These selections will entertain you 'on the one hand but they also will make you sit up and take note about what you're learning which may be markedly different from what you learned in American History Lynn Hunter dine SMOKE RISING: Native North American Literary Companion Edited by Joseph Bruchac Visible Ink Press 464 pages $1795 Finally someone has put together a comprehensive anthology of American Indian literature that includes rising young stars like Sherman Alexie and firmly established voices like Simon Ortiz and Leslie Mar-mon Silko to name just a few This is a thick book full of poetry prose essays and novel excerpts Its editor Joseph Bruchac has written more than 30 books and is a leader in the field of Native American Literature "The dual heritage of the Native American a heritage composed of Western literary tradition and literary forms on the one hand and the content and purpose of the oral tradition on the has produced a body of literature that is strikingly original and compellingly relevant" Bruchac writes in his foreword Indeed Smoke Rising is full of striking relevant writing some of it stark much of it painful and all of it rich with history tradition ceremony and beauty The book presents a brief biography of each author both in the contents and in each chapter devoted to each of the 37 Native American and Canadian writers represented here It also includes a list of each author's published works a comment in the author's own words and a critical evaluation complete with selections from the author's works What is startling about Smoke Rising is its messaget that Indians have survived the attack against their culture and have a strong spiritual balance The Native American authors essentially "sing" to insure survival and to keep alive the traditions and heritage of their culture "I wonder sometimes why I ters were read by a friend Lisa Rappoport a former St John's student "I thought they were surprisingly vivid said Rappoport "I was reading letters 1 Courtney Reeder Jones pie and that all peopleare you" she writes in her poem Remember "Remember that you are this universe and that thisuniverse is you Remember that all is in motion is growing is youVRemember that language comes from this Remember the dance that language is that life is Remember" Smoke Rising is jammed with themes of loneliness Anglo injustice alcoholism life as "a halfbreed" The stories deal with AIDS AIM (American Indian Movement) feminism -activism and the ungodly life in Catholic boarding schools "I came here because I was tired" writes Ortiz in his poem BIA taught me to cleanse myselfdaily to keep a careful account of my timeTEf iciency was learned in catechismthe nuns spelled me God in whiteAnd I came here to feed corn potatoes that had been written 50 years ago and they made me feel like I was in this time and place" She told Courtney that it would make a great book Then she decided to make it happen She wrote a proposal and submitted it to several publishers For Courtney it was especially wonderful that the University of Arizona Press accepted the idea She and Davy met in 1936 on an archeological expedition sponsored by the university where they were students Rappoport who is also a photographer began editing the letters She knew that the Jones had been friends with professional photographers many of whom had come to The memos of a movie mogul NINA OTERO-WARREN OF SANTA FE By Charlotte Whaley University of New Mexico Press 256 pages $2995 For those of us not native to northern New Mexico there can be an intense fascination with the history of our adopted home Nina Otero-Warren was a multi-talented highly resourceful woman whose life was inextricably linked with nearly seventy years of Santa Fe history In this biography by Charlotte Whaley Otero-Warren's story is given an engaging and even-handed treatment The daughter of bright beautiful well-educated and ultimately tragic parents Otero-Warren made a mark on New Mexican history much beyond what anyone might have guessed for a young girl born outside of Belen in 1881 Who was she? Her mother's family the Lunas counted among their ancestors a pope and the high constable of Castile Her father was murdered in a six-gun fight over the family land grant in 1883 Her second cousin Miguel A Otero was the first native born governor of the territory She was the youngest superintendent of Public Schools in Santa Fe County advocating bilingual education and the revival of Hispanic crafts In 1923 she spoke out against the Bureau of Indian Affair's boarding school system as one of its inspectors calling it a corrosive influence on family life and cultural stability She was one of New Mexico's first suffragists and the first New Mexican woman to run for Congress She was aunt or great-aunt to many of the town's most solid citizens including the Bergeres In her later years she took great pleasure in leading off the Fiesta's HystericalHistorical parade with her old friend Witter Bynner The second child of Eloisa Luna and Manuel Otero Nina was twenty months old -when her father was killed in a land grant dispute with Eastern millionaire James Whitney Anglo interests dominated the legal system of the time: not only was Whitney acquitted of the killing the Oteros ultimately lost more than a million acres in the episode "Of the more than 35 million acres disputed in the -1890s in New Mexico Ari- zona and Colorado only 2051526 acres were confirmed to Hispanics by the courts" SOUTHWEST CORNER After a time her mother remarried happily to AM Bergere The family moved to Santa Fe for their cousin's inauguration as territorial governor in 1897 Eloisa and Alfred Bergere began a new family and settled at 135 Grant Street in "La Casa Grande" with a brood which topped a dozen at its peak Nina Otero married Rawson Warren a cavalry officer at Fort Wingate This was a disaster she mitigated remarkably skillfully Leaving him less than two years into the marriage she declared herself "widowed" This enabled her to later campaign for suffrage run for public office homestead land and serve honorably as matriarch for her large extended family "Mrs Nina Otero-Warren" had all the respectability of marriage and a name in two cultures Yet she was an independent Hispanic woman and proud of it Otero-Warren was a person of paradoxes She held stiff standards of behavior for her younger siblings: "no profanity smoking or drinking until marriage" while she herself enjoyed her brandy cigarettes and bawdy jokes Large Catholic weddings for her nieces and nephews met with her deep approval yet she herself chose to homestead outside Santa Fe with companion Mamie Meadors a Protestant and Texan (heaven forbid) "Las Dos" Nina and Mamie were close friends of Mary Austin Will Shuster Peggy Pond Church the Hendersons and a slew of other Santa Fe literati She and the openly gay ter Bynner were a "regular annual apparition" at Fiesta's Hysterical parade according to her nephew Bergere Ken-ney MD Nina delighted in her broth- er-in-law conservationist Aldo Leopold and took his advice seriously in running an environmentally sound homestead Otero-Warren could easily be dismayed with the state of the environment and the state of education in New Mexico today if she were alive (She was a staunch supporter of fair wages for New Mexico teachers) I suspect she would be pleased with this new biography about her a fine blend of decorum and revelation Amadea Mornlngttar Wupatki complete with their large format cameras She collected 35 images for the book Rappoport first made friends with the Jones in 1981 after meeting Davy who walked his dog about the same time every day that Rappoport walked hers Courtney and Davy Jones had lived on Ace-quia Madre for nearly 40 years "That was the tacky part of town when we came" said Jones Davy worked for the National Park Service for many years eventually becoming the regional director When he died seven years ago Courtney moved to El Castillo They had been married within a month of 50 years Courtney Reeder Jones worked as an assistant editor for Landscape magazine for five years and did cataloging work for the Museum of New Mexico After 12 years of trying to survive in Santa Fe Rappoport moved to the Bay Area The letters project continued through the mail and many phone calls Rappoport also came back to take a special trip with Jones to Wupatki On this recent visit the two friends had much to celebrate Lisa came with her fiance Hugh and Courtney was soon to turn 80 "We've drunk a lot of champagne" said majority of the other letters clearly show him as an executive who was sympathetic to the writer's cause in almost every case A former screenwriter himself Zanuck could pinpoint a script's problems immediately and he let his writers know his feelings in a but manner On a Shirley Temple vehicle Zanuck stresses that the child star's dialogue should write itself if the writers give the little moppet lots of questions to ask On-Norwegian ice-skating champion Sonja Henie whom Zannuck turned into a major box office star he tells his screenwriters "Be sure she has as little and as simple dialogue as you can get by with Give her only questions and answers" Apparently he treated both Temple and' Henie as children Zanuck's suggestions regarding the scripts of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 1939 Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) and The Grapes of Wrath (1940) were all incorporated into the story making them better pictures One memo sent from Zanuck to his staff stating the importance of both script and subject matter in the making of a box of ice success still carries weight "Star power is valueless no matter how big the the subject matter in the story stands the test" he' writes It's a lesson that today's movie makers could heed Zanuck's castirig suggestions are fascinating too He wanted Gene Tierney for the role of Angharad in How Green Was My Valley (1942) He got Maureen O' Hara For the 1946 film version of Anna and the King of Siam he suggested Dorothy McGuire or Jean Arthur for Anna and William Powell for the King Needless to say he ended up with Irenne Dunne and Rex Harrison both of whom seemed perfect for the parts Also included are extensive memos regarding the making of Wilson (1944) the critically acclaimed film biography of Woodrow Wilson It was a project that Zanuck calls "the nearest to my heart" The film's box office failure depressed the studio head Memo From Darryl Zanuck makes for good reading especially for film fans It also reveals the creative side of a man who cared more about movie making than anything else in the world On the periphery you'll catch glimpses of John Ford Loretta Young Marilyn Monroe Carmen Miranda and others But Twentieth Century Fox was first and foremost Zanuck's world Robert Nott Nott just completed an authO' rized biography of film actor John Garfield MEMO ROM DARRYL ZANUCK: The Golden Years at Twentieth Century Fox Edited by Rudy Behlmer Grove Press 276 pages $14 In choosing to publish a selection of letters from 20th-Centu-4J ry Fox's vice-president Darryl Zanuck film historian Rudy Behlmer has once again offered an intimate peek at the behind-the-scenes machinations of movie making during Hollywood's golden era 1935 through 1956 The result for those who love to know all about the making of films (from pre-production notes to casting decisions and budget) is delightful As with his compilation of letters from Warner Brothers (Inside Warner Brothers) Behlmar reveals just how each film was made and how the studio in this case Dafryi played a hand in the production One of the neat things about Memo From Darryl Zanuck is how it portrays the movie mogul as a relatively liberal hands-off type of producer who trusted his directors enough to let them make the picture And while the first letter in this volume (dated April 28 1936) deals with Zanuck's antagonism over the formation of the Screen Writer's Guild the An academic's wittywicked tale of ancient Rome ual politics his antennae pick up the vibrations between men and women men and men women and women their purposes and their cross-purposes He has acquired the information of a historian but he enjoys the gifts of a born novelist Th Boston CJobe Robert Nott whose review appears on this page recently completed his biography on film actor John Garfield After months of stating that Nott "was at work on a biography" at the bottom of his reviews (of mostly books about the movies of course) we can now say he is the author of a biography Copy editor and science fiction writer Terry England has been a contributor to Outlook on Books from the beginning England tackled books on science with the wit and Insight that only a lover of science who is also a writer can bring He too was at work on a book Recently he signed a contract with Avon Books Congratulations Robert and Terry among them the Alexandrian philosopher Dio the poet Catullus and of course Clodla herself the portrait of Catullus drunk edgy and not as out-of- control he appears Is particularly compelling Saylor's best surprises come not from plot but from Clodla Is everything Cicero says she is but also something more Cicero is hardly the noblest of them all Saylor is above pointing out how the cruelty Immorality dissolution and lofty ideals of the Roman world parallel our own tagonist Gordianus the Finder to "solve" various historical puzzles and mysteries working around the facts established by historians and classicists moving as he does so through an exotic and distant world Saylor's studies have made familiar and contemporary Roma Sub Rosa has now reached its fourth Installment with The Venus Throw which may not be the best novel of the series but which is certainly the sexiest The sexual heat thrown of by this novel does not depend entirely on the poems of Catullus and on Foberg's 1844 Manual of Classical Erotology acknowledged in the author's note at the end before embarking on Roma Sub Rosa Saylor was a pseudonymous and skillful erotologist himself and it shows The subject of The Venus Throw is the trial of Marcus Cuclius in 56 BC and the climax Is nothing of Saylor's own devising but Cicero's famous speech defending Marcus Caelius from the accusations of the notorious and sexually omnivorous Clodla Prominent literary and historical figures appear in The Venus THE VENUS THROW: A Novel of Ancient Rome By Steven Saylor St Martin's Press 308 pages $2295 In 1991 Steven Saylor had a good idea: He would turn his training in history and classics at the University of Texas to good commercial advantage He wrote a detective story set in ancient Rome called Roman Blood and with it launched a series he has dubbed Roma Sub Rosa His method is for his pro- fliMH (it ib I- 'il'lj i i He understands politics and sex- 4.