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Mary Austin's love of the desert is everywhere evident in The Land of Little Rain, a collection of fourteen vignettes about the land and people of the region that today includes Death Valley National Park and the Mojave National Preserve. Part nature essay, personal essay, folk legend, and local history of the California Sierras, this enduring American classic resists classification. Her lyrical observations are infused with a deep understanding of the flora and fauna of the area and an appreciation of the people she encountered and befriended there-Shoshones and Paiutes, Mexican and Chinese immigrants, shepherds, stagecoach drivers, and miners among them. Austin's writings have been compared to the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold, but her poetic sensibility is purely original, winsome, and entirely her own. This Warbler Classics paperback includes the illustrations that appeared in the original edition and a detailed biographical note.
Mary Austin was one of the first to recognize that Native American myths and culture were in danger of being eroded and lost. She then took upon herself the duty of tracking down American Indian songs and poems, saying that she was not giving a translation of the original but what she preferred to call a re-expression which she referred to as reëxpressions. It was her belief that the life and environment of the person who made up the words was an important part of understanding the rhythm and meaning of the work. She considered tribal dancing an essential part of the sung or spoken words and her extensive research led first to lectures and later to the publication of The American Rhythm. It was her work in this field that resulted in Austin being named an Associate in Native American Literature by the School of American Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Ebook available to libraries exclusively as part of the JSTOR Path to Open initiative.
This absorbing study examines the remarkable campaign for domestic worker rights in Indonesia. Drawing on interviews with workers, activists, unionists, journalists, and researchers, Austin provides a compelling narrative of the development of feminist-inspired cross-class alliances. She follows the movement from its beginnings in the student protests of the 1980s and 1990s, through its lobbying, street protests, and networking in the 2000s, ending with the digital activism stimulated by COVID-19. Shifting focus from migrant domestic workers to the five million in Indonesian homes, Austin interweaves theoretical insights with evocative portrayals of individual lives.
Informed by the author's experience of living in Indonesia in the 1980s, Domestic Workers in Indonesia offers a novel analysis of the changing imaginaries of domestic work. Chronicling activism in spaces ranging from the neighbourhood meeting house and domestic worker schoolroom to the smart hotels of transnational activism, Austin locates the movement's resilience in a feminist politics of presence that has enabled the emergence of a nascent Indonesian domestic worker class.
This first full-length study of domestic worker organizing in Indonesia will appeal to scholars, activists, and policy makers concerned about the global gender injustices of informal employment and with the futures for feminist, labour and social movement activism in Southeast Asia and beyond.
Mary Austin was one of the first to recognize that Native American myths and culture were in danger of being eroded and lost. She then took upon herself the duty of tracking down American Indian songs and poems, saying that she was not giving a translation of the original but what she preferred to call a re-expression which she referred to as reëxpressions. It was her belief that the life and environment of the person who made up the words was an important part of understanding the rhythm and meaning of the work. She considered tribal dancing an essential part of the sung or spoken words and her extensive research led first to lectures and later to the publication of The American Rhythm. It was her work in this field that resulted in Austin being named an Associate in Native American Literature by the School of American Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
In 1903 when The Land of Little Rain was first published it became an instant success. It has continued to attract and enchant readers ever since that time. It was one of the first books to be written in a popular style about the animals, plants and people of a Southwest desert area. Mary Austin wrote it from her own observations and experiences in the field. She lived the book. It is also one of the first to express the need for the conservation of our natural resources. Carl Van Doren once wrote that Austin should have the degree M.A.E.--Master of American Environment. The book, a work of authenticity and originality still has meaning for twenty-first century readers.
One of the joys of going on a trip is coming home to share with others your adventures and experiences. Mary Austin felt that way, so when she took an extended trip through an area of the American Southwest, she recorded her impressions in The Land of Journeys' Ending. This is no ordinary travel book and she was no ordinary tourist. Her book goes beyond the descriptions of flora and fauna of the land between the Colorado River and the Rio Grande. It also covers the history, culture and customs of the area. Austin includes not only figures from the past but people she met on the trip. While the book is now decades old, it is timeless and still valid. Humorously, in the author's preface to The Land of Journeys' Ending Austin said, If you find holes in my book that you could drive a car through, do not be too sure they were not left there for that express purpose. Her statement rings true today as much as it did back in 1924.
The Land of Little Rain
by Mary Austin
COMPLETE
The Land of Little Rain is a book written by American writer Mary Hunter Austin. First published in 1903, it contains a series of interrelated lyrical essays about the inhabitants of the American Southwest, both human and otherwise.
The Land of Little Rain has been published six times. The first publication was in 1903 by Houghton Mifflin. Subsequent publications include a 1950 abridged version with photographs by Ansel Adams (also by Houghton Mifflin), a 1974 illustrated version by E. Boyd Smith published by University of New Mexico Press, a 1988 edition with an introduction by Edward Abbey published as part of the Penguin Nature Library by Penguin Books, and a 1997 edition published with an introduction by Terry Tempest Williams, also published by Penguin Books, and a 2014 edition with photography by Mojave Desert photographer Walter Feller, publisher by Counterpoint Press.
The Land of Little Rain is characterized as both local color and non-fiction, scientific writing. It was written for an urban American audience unfamiliar with life in the Mojave desert. The book attempts to engage the reader by including direct, second person along with first and third person point of views. Common stereotypical images and ideas about the desert are presented and contrasted to the narrator's past experiences. Specific and intimate experiences with nature in the desert are reproduced in the present tense for the reader's benefit.
The language is elevated and formal but made more conversational with informal colloquial language and jargon of the Southwest. The long and involved sentences often link abstractions to concrete images and description of the desert. The descriptions are subjective and characterized by laudatory, critical, or satiric language. They are further colored by abundant use of metaphors, similes, and hyperbole.
