Land of Enchantment, Land of Conflict: New Mexico in English-Language Fiction by David L. Caffey

Abstract

136 WAL 37.1 Spring 2002 Karen E. Waldon’s essay on Leslie Marmon Silko emphasizes how Silko’s writing accomplishes what Thoreau and modem nature writers fail to do: “manifest the relationship between the human being and his or her surround­ ings as one of being rather than viewing.” She also suggests that Silko’s work “offers no wilderness concept” (179). Another essay, focusing on Gloria Anzaldua’s work, begins with a thoughtprovoking challenge: “Latina/o voices are strikingly absent from most antholo­ gies on nature writing, a conspicuous void given the abundance of narratives that historically focus on the centrality of geography— from fences to borders to nation states— and of a physical connection to the land, to deserts, fields, and islands” (204). The authors connect Anzaldua’s children’s books to nature through curandismo, the Rio Grande, deserts, outdoor games, collecting fire­ wood, environmental injustice, human-animal relations, and the symbolism of fences. Other essays include references to indigenous gardening traditions, “despite some expert commentary that has claimed that there has been no such thing,” and African American gardeners (166). The book would make an excellent volume in a course featuring women nature writers. One could assign, for instance, Marcia B. Littenberg’s excellent summary of the women’s role in awakening an environmental consciousness, developing the nature essay as a recognizable genre, and struggling with the male-dominated scientific community— as an introduction to readings from Florence Merriam, Susan Fenimore Cooper, Celia Thaxter, and Sara Ome Jewett. Chapters such as Michael P. Branch’s tribute to Marjory Stoneman Douglas or Valerie Levy’s insight into Zora Neale Hurston’s work would help students read those authors as bioregional writers. In addition to the nineteen excellent essays on women nature writers, the text is also full of ideas for further research into nontraditional literary forms and environmental justice issues. The book’s weakness is the title, which gives no hint toward the richness of diversity within the pages. Land of Enchantment, Land of Conflict: New Mexico in English-Language Fiction. By David L. Caffey. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999. 235 pages, $29.95. Reviewed by Angela Ashurst-M cGee Mesa, Arizona From Timothy Flint to Willa Cather to Tony Hillerman to Rudolfo Anaya, a diverse and variously talented bunch of authors has written fiction set in New Mexico. Thus David L. Caffey, vice president for instruction at Clovis Community College in New Mexico, proposes “an exercise in literary archeology” (7). By sifting through literature set in New Mexico from Francis Berdan in 1826 to the present, he seeks to uncover “patterns of commentary . . . recurring themes . . . judgments . . . observations” (7). B o o k R eviews 137 Caffey organizes his chapters by theme, such as landscape, fictional treatment of historical figures as heroes, New Mexico’s three major cultures, New Mexico in film, and attitudes about law, civilization, and freedom. Caffey follows each theme from the nineteenth century to its twentieth-century manifestations. In most cases Caffey sees great improvement through time, generally locating early fiction on the “low road” of literary merit and recent fiction on the “high road.” The first half of Caffey’s title, Land of Enchantment, comes from the slogan seen everywhere in New Mexico from travel brochures to license plates—and punned in countless small-business logos. The second half, Land of Conflict, describes the ways fiction writers, always in need of discord to feed the flames of plot, have capitalized on the ready-made clashes in New Mexico’s layers of cultural oppression, the struggle over land and water use, the competing impulses toward traditionalism and development, and its role in creating the Nuclear Age (33). In one chapter, Caffey pays special attention to the con­ flicts resulting from the state’s “tri-cultural heritage” of Native Americans, Hispanics, and Anglos (34). Except in his last chapter, Caffey chooses to cover fiction set in New Mexico rather than fiction written by authors who live in New Mexico and whose perspectives are informed by the New Mexican issues Caffey identifies. That focus would have, for example, excluded pulp Western authors from the East (whose lack of literary talent Caffey finds occasion to bemoan...