Sam Houston Research Articles

characters who dreamed of migrating to the United States in some way, shape, or form. The Other Americans follows up on those dreams and gives nuance to previously articulated depictions of migration to America. Additionally, although the plotline of the text is fictitious, elements of Lalami’s nonfiction work (e.g., her New York Times essay “What Does It Take to ‘Assimilate’ in America?”) are readily discernible in the story arc she creates throughout the novel. Overall, The Other Americans is a thrill to read. It theorizes the “American Dream” by putting it into conversation with racial and socioeconomic categories. It questions the role of family loyalty. It introduces us to the struggles of Americans on the margins, and it wraps everything up neatly around the story’s pivotal moment: an accident that may or may not have been a crime. Lalami ’s finely tuned analysis of contemporary America is insightful and, at times, biting in its critique. Jocelyn Frelier Sam Houston State University Naomi Shihab Nye The Tiny Journalist Rochester, New York. BOA Editions. 2019. 128 pages. Whether a product of the twenty-four-hour news cycle or an ancient survival mechanism , it is exceedingly easy for us to cordon ourselves off from the suffering of others. Before reading The Tiny Journalist, I was thoroughly cordoned off from the IsraeliBooks in Review Marlon James Black Leopard, Red Wolf New York. Riverhead Books. 2019. 640 pages. Fantasy, as we’re familiar with it in the global genre market, is a primarily Western -centric affair shaped by the writing of white men with many initials—J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, G. R. R. Martin— and circulated further through successful film and TV adaptations. (China, too, is a major player in fantasy, but its texts have had little influence outside the sinophone world.) Decades of arguments about what constitutes fantasy aside, there is no doubt that fantasy is a matter of great importance to world literature and culture and that fantasy from the postcolonial world has tended to be received in the literary market under the name “magical realism.” Jamaican writer Marlon James’s Black Leopard, Red Wolf is not magical realism. Winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize for his historical novel A Brief History of Seven Killings (about Jamaica, reggae, and the geopolitics of crack in the 1970s–1990s), James has written a work of epic fantasy that draws on African stories and traditions, on the textual and material worlds of subSaharan Africa, and on a century of literary, generic, and popular-cultural influences to bring a bold, violent, and challenging world to life. Black Leopard, Red Wolf tells the sixhundred -plus-page story of Tracker and his search for a missing child with a company of adventurers (friendly and otherwise), including the werecat Leopard, the giant Sadogo, and the witch Sogolon. In response to James’s “experiment” slumming with epic fantasy, critics have repeatedly (and happily) cited similarities with Tolkien, Martin, and Robert E. Howard (creator of pulp fantasy hero Conan) and noted that James brings his literary flare for experimentation, poetic language, and the vulgar grittiness of reality to their fantasy worlds. They aren’t wrong, but the discourse is telling. James’s success setting the literary world abuzz about a fantasy novel, of all things, suggests what many have long known: in some ways, the old boundaries between genre and literature have become more fluid; in others, they have become more rigid. Repeated comparisons to Tolkien, Martin, and Howard betray a shallow understanding of contemporary fantasy and ignore the lengthy history of Afrofantasy that has run parallel to the now-popular Afrofuturism. What’s more, James’s novel fits best with the hope-effacing tone of grimdark, though even there it is somewhat out of place, proffering a sly, self-besmirching nihilism in place of grimdark’s typically bleak one. In this fantastic Africa, Tracker and Leopard at times seriously proclaim, and occasionally mock, their shared motto that MARLON JAMES 80 WLT SPRING 2019 Rae Armantrout Wobble Wesleyan University Press Pulitzer Prize–winning poet and California native Rae Armantrout’s provocative collection of poetry, Wobble, was a nominee for the 2018 National Book Awards and...

Reviewed by: Spanish Dollars and Sister Republics: The Money That Made Mexico and the United States by Tatiana Seijas and Jake Frederick Sharon Ann Murphy (bio) KEY WORDS Currency, United States, Mexico, Gold, Silver, Coins Spanish Dollars and Sister Republics: The Money That Made Mexico and the United States. By Tatiana Seijas and Jake Frederick. (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. Pp. 196. Paper, $29.00.) In this concise volume, Tatiana Seijas and Jake Frederick attempt to provide the reader with a sweeping tour of the history of gold and silver coinage in the United States and Mexico. Designed mainly as a classroom text, this nicely illustrated book begins with a handy timeline of major events and concludes with a useful glossary of terms. The text itself is highly descriptive, explaining vignettes in the history of these sister republics through the lives of eight individuals. The book begins by placing the Spanish American real de a ocho or “piece-of-eight” at the center of the global trading network of the late eighteenth century, emphasizing its importance for the early development of the U.S. monetary system. Lacking in specie, the United States depended on the wide circulation of Spanish coins until the middle of the nineteenth century, when they finally possessed enough native coinage to ban foreign money. Revolutionary leaders such as (little-known) Virginia congressman John Page recognized their dependence on Spanish coins for trade, and thus adopted both the terminology (“dollars”) and the symbols ($) from the Spanish for the nascent United States currency. [End Page 370] In successive chapters, the authors recount the experiences of early U.S. banking through the eyes of Philadelphia banker Stephen Girard, Mexican independence from Spain through Mexican Treasury Secretary José Ignacio Esteva, the fight for Texas independence from Mexico through the life of Sam Houston, the Mexican–American War from the perspective of General Antonio López de Santa Anna, the settling of the new border between the nations from the experiences of John Russell Bartlett, the California gold rush through the eyes of the director of the United States Mint Dr. Robert Maskell Patterson, and the French intervention in Mexico through Emperor Maximilian I. The reciprocal monetary relationship between the United States and Spanish North America is apparent in a few of the stories—especially surrounding the twin revolutions in the United States and Mexico and the Texas rebellion. Several of the chapters, however, get too caught up in the biographies of the protagonists (such as Girard or Santa Anna) or on textbook accounts of commonly discussed events (the politics of the founding of the First and Second Bank of the United States, or the Mexican–American War) and lose the monetary thread altogether. Although the stated intention of the book is the interrelated monetary history of these sister republics, many of the chapters focus exclusively on the experiences of only one of these entities, with any relationship being merely tangential or accidental. For example, the chapter on the gold rush has the tightest focus on monetary issues but is exclusively about the U.S. experience; only California’s recent acquisition as part of the Mexican Cession connects the event to her sister republic. On the other hand, the authors present the monetary history of Mexico as being equally dependent on its relationship with Great Britain, France, and the United States. For the reader whose main knowledge base is U.S. or Mexican history, the book succeeds in providing a useful sketch of the parallel history of her sister republic. Although the importance of Spanish coinage is well-documented in most monetary histories of the United States, the reminder of this relationship is important for the more general student of U.S. history. But as a larger monetary history of the relationship between the two nations, it falls short. [End Page 371] Sharon Ann Murphy Sharon Ann Murphy is professor of history at Providence College, and author of Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America (Baltimore, 2010), winner of the 2012 Hagley Prize for the best book in business history, and Other People’s Money: How Banking Worked in the Early American Republic (Baltimore, 2017). Her latest project...

Sam Houston Research Articles

Articles published on Sam Houston

An evaluation of United States forest Service prescribed fire regimes in East Texas

Reflect. Remember.

Synergy of ICESat-2 and Landsat for Mapping Forest Aboveground Biomass with Deep Learning

The Causal Effect of Birth Weight on Cognitive Development: New Evidence from India

Mapping forest aboveground biomass with a simulated ICESat-2 vegetation canopy product and Landsat data

Using Simulation to Address a Training Gap in Battlefield Ocular Trauma: A Lateral Canthotomy and Cantholysis (LCC) Prototype Training System.

An Evidence-Based Approach to Precepting New Nurses.

Estimating aboveground biomass and forest canopy cover with simulated ICESat-2 data

116: PEDIATRIC INTENSIVIST SUPPORT FOR AN ADULT EXTRACORPOREAL LIFE SUPPORT PROGRAM

When Was the Republic of Texas No More?: Revisiting the Annexation of Texas

A Comparison of the Laryngeal Handshake Method Versus the Traditional Index Finger Palpation Method in Identifying the Cricothyroid Membrane, When Performed by Combat Medic Trainees.

Documents, Volume 6: February 1838–August 1839

Paolo Cognetti: <em>The Wild Boy</em>

Naomi Shihab NyeThe Tiny Journalist

Rising to the Challenge of Our Rival: Promoting Rivalry at Sam Houston State University Through Campus Recreation

166: CARDIAC TAMPONADE DUE TO HEMOPERICARDIUM AFTER IMPELLA AND VA ECMO FOR REFRACTORY CARDIOGENIC SHOCK

Paolo Cognetti: The Wild Boy

Spanish Dollars and Sister Republics: The Money That Made Mexico and the United States by Tatiana Seijas and Jake Frederick

Marlon JamesBlack Leopard, Red Wolf

Exiled: The Last Days of Sam Houston by Ron Rozelle

Lead the way for us

Editage

Paperpal

R Discovery

Mind the Graph

Sam Houston Research Articles

Articles published on Sam Houston

An evaluation of United States forest Service prescribed fire regimes in East Texas

Reflect. Remember.

Synergy of ICESat-2 and Landsat for Mapping Forest Aboveground Biomass with Deep Learning

The Causal Effect of Birth Weight on Cognitive Development: New Evidence from India

Mapping forest aboveground biomass with a simulated ICESat-2 vegetation canopy product and Landsat data

Using Simulation to Address a Training Gap in Battlefield Ocular Trauma: A Lateral Canthotomy and Cantholysis (LCC) Prototype Training System.

An Evidence-Based Approach to Precepting New Nurses.

Estimating aboveground biomass and forest canopy cover with simulated ICESat-2 data

116: PEDIATRIC INTENSIVIST SUPPORT FOR AN ADULT EXTRACORPOREAL LIFE SUPPORT PROGRAM

When Was the Republic of Texas No More?: Revisiting the Annexation of Texas

A Comparison of the Laryngeal Handshake Method Versus the Traditional Index Finger Palpation Method in Identifying the Cricothyroid Membrane, When Performed by Combat Medic Trainees.

Documents, Volume 6: February 1838–August 1839

Paolo Cognetti: &lt;em&gt;The Wild Boy&lt;/em&gt;

Naomi Shihab NyeThe Tiny Journalist

Rising to the Challenge of Our Rival: Promoting Rivalry at Sam Houston State University Through Campus Recreation

166: CARDIAC TAMPONADE DUE TO HEMOPERICARDIUM AFTER IMPELLA AND VA ECMO FOR REFRACTORY CARDIOGENIC SHOCK

Paolo Cognetti: The Wild Boy

Spanish Dollars and Sister Republics: The Money That Made Mexico and the United States by Tatiana Seijas and Jake Frederick

Marlon JamesBlack Leopard, Red Wolf

Exiled: The Last Days of Sam Houston by Ron Rozelle

Paolo Cognetti: <em>The Wild Boy</em>