These Is my Words

When I bought Nancy E. Turner's These Is my Words at an antique store a while back, I thought maybe I had read the book in middle school or something. It seemed like the type of thing I would have reached for. Certainly, at least, the name and cover felt familiar to me. On finally reading it, I find that no, I have never read this book before--but it is certainly one with which to be familiar. When I read Vanished Arizona from Martha Summerhayes, I felt like that was something for every Arizonan to read. The same goes for this book.

They are somewhat similar and yet completely different. While Sarah Agnes Prine was a real person and Nancy E. Turner based her character on what she knew of her great grandmother, this book is fiction. As I read, I wondered how much was based on fact--a quick Internet look afterwards shows that most of it is indeed fiction (except for historical things like the army's activity--this is still a well-researched book, even if it is fiction). But it reads very real, so real that it could be and so that is therefore quite reflective of real people's lives in the Arizona Territory.

Martha Summerhayes was an outsider who spent some time living in Arizona as an army wife. Her book is a great read and I do recommend it. But Sarah Prine grew up in the West and lived her whole life in its harsh landscape. When I say I love Arizona today, I am well aware of the fact that the Arizona that exists today is nothing like what it was 140 years ago and who I am today would probably not have been at all able to live in that setting. This book is full of love for the place: Sarah made a home and made friends and family and held onto hard work and hope and love. So even when potential opportunities came to leave, she did not want to.

What makes Sarah's love for her home even more real, though, is her portrayal of its negative side, as well. Although she has a touch exterior, she is internally terrified of attacks, whether Native American raids or from outlaws. She is a good worker and willing to do whatever is necessary, but she tires from the physical labor and she wishes for pearls and velvet. She sweeps snakes off of her porch with nary a thought, then weeps to save her daughter from a rattler. Her love of her home is like her love of her husband: she declares her hatred of him as often as her love. She is passionate and honest--and even though she has emerged as a remarkable person, you can also see her brokenness from growing up under such harsh circumstances. 

While the journal style can be reminiscent of the Dear America books (which are targeted at what, 9 to 12 year olds?) just as much as real memoirs and the 1800's setting of Little House on the Prairie, this is decidedly a book for adults. It is much more graphic than either of those series. Attacks (using any definition of the word) happen and injuries happen (it also has more adult love content, though probably less than the average YA book has). It's quite a heartbreaking book, in fact. And yet it's interesting. Sarah Prine is someone who aims only to live her life--and she knows that other people around her are doing the same. So she is just as sad to know of the Native American camp that was attacked as to know of her own wagon train. And when she is in communities with people, she responds to behavior rather than prejudice. She befriends the Chinese family in the wagon train and helps teach them English, she becomes like family to her Mexican neighbors and learns Spanish and recipes from them, and she is the only army wife to host the Yavapai scout. In contrast, she is turned off by the behavior of the snobby ladies on the train, and is exasperated at her brother's wife who proves herself to be rude rather than dainty (and from whom Sarah must defend her friends). So there is sadness in here, but hope, too.

And you know, the love story is nice, too. We all like a good love story.

This book is an interesting story to read because of its historical portrayals. But it is equally moving to read because it is a portrayal of life lived. There are such strong emotions in here. We might all be thinking of different events in our own lives when we are moved by things in Sarah's life, but I think everyone will be touched emotionally. It is a heartbreaking book, and one of the best books I have read. 

The Riders Ride Once More

Riders of the Purple Sage is the first opera that I have seen a second time. I caught Arizona Opera's world premiere of it three years ago and was quite happy to see it coming back again this season. (Click here to read that original post.) Essentially it was the same production, with perhaps some adjustments to the sets. So I have already talked about the music, Ed Mell's artwork, and the themes.

The question is, how does this opera appear on a repeat viewing? Was it just exciting because it was different (a Western opera)? Was it just beautiful because of the moving-painting-screen backdrop? Sure, those are great, but no, there is something more to this piece that made it a pleasure to revisit.

My favorite part remains Jane's song at the beginning of Act II. That is this opera. It is the extension of the self over the landscape. It is the absorption of the beauty all around and the expression of the harshness--and the vocalized resolution to embrace that which is good. The Southwest makes for such a great fictional setting because it is a land rich with color, texture, and life, and yet it is also a land that is deadly if you take a wrong step. That delicate way of walking is essentially the way that Jane tries to walk, believing so strongly in her faith and yet realizing that the very churchmen who claim to uphold it in her community are not living out love and faith.

So that is what makes Rider of the Purple Sage a lovely piece to revisit. Its embracing of the Southwest is enough to make it an anthem for Arizona Opera. But its way of capturing that duality of the desert makes it into the anthem for Arizona (or the Southwest) as a whole.

The Magic of Opus Cactus

I'm living through this magical phase right now. I'm always busy doing something and I'm nearly always thrilled about where I am. Life is shiny.

For instance, Saturday I rushed home to take a quick half hour to change clothes and eat before heading downtown for Ballet Arizona and the Desert Botanical Garden's presentation of Opus Cactus. Though 7:30 suddenly felt like much later in the evening than it perhaps should, I felt like I was sitting in a dream there in the theatre, like I was drifting through an ethereal ending to an awesome day (part of what made the day awesome was that I pet a beautiful alligator, but that's another story).

So what was this Opus Cactus? Initially I thought it would be one of the performances to skip (I don't, after all, aim to see every production from Ballet Arizona). Then I allowed a second glance and realized that it's a show inspired by the desert and that's exactly the type of thing I say I love and want to support. Though the show was presented by Ballet Arizona, the performance was put on by MOMIX, which is a touring company under the direction of Moses Pendleton. So it wasn't exactly ballet; the style was more modern, I would say, but not exactly "modern." More like dance with a twist of Cirque du Soleil, actually.

There were a series of scenes that played out essentially as separate tableaus, each one representing something about the desert. We started with Desert Storm, where tumbleweeds bounced about the stage. We saw saguaros and snakes and lizards and representations of the sun. So everything had a poetic quality to it that formed a celebration of not just the Southwest but also other deserts in the world. The music, likewise, began with Southwest inspiration and moved on, in later scenes, to include other music from around the world. Such sounds also combined the traditional and the modern.

Let me get back to that Cirque du Soleil reference. The MOMIX dancers are amazing. Such strength and agility and ease of movement. They were literally forming the shapes of the desert with their bodies. Often a scene would start with just silhouettes; the lighting might later increase so that you could then see the people in costumes, or sometimes the light stayed dim enough that all you saw were silhouettes. Either way, the visual scene was carefully controlled. When you're watching in awe of what bodies can do and how they can move and work together, the general feel of a dance tends to be sensual. But somehow this all felt like such high art that that it wasn't sensual at all: you became aware of, for instance, how one person was holding up another to form a shape and yet the effect was simply awe at the shape rather than focus on the two people. If that distinction makes sense. The point is, yes, it enhances the experience to realize how the dancers, as people, are moving. But the images that they are creating are the most important thing that you see on the stage--and they're images of plants and animals, desert imagery, not imagery of people.

Some scenes I liked more than others. And sometimes I wished that instead of seeing separate tableaus (the show was short compared with what I'm used to at only about an hour and a half), we were seeing more of a complete and connected piece. But overall it was such an amazing performance and visual image that it turned out to be one of my favorite shows from the past year.

And what made the evening more magical was the fact that it was not in the usual Symphony Hall but rather down the street at the Orpheum Theatre. This was my first time at this theatre, and I do admit that I found the inside layout a bit confusing at first (I like to always know where exactly I'm going, so it throw me off when I enter a new place where the layout isn't immediately clear). It's a much smaller location than Symphony Hall and has a completely different style. This theatre, outside and then both in the halls and in the theatre itself, is beautiful. The peacock ceiling above the farther staircase and the art nouveau (at least, that's the style it looked like to me) wardrobe and oil paintings upstairs and the chairs in the downstairs bathroom and the dusky, starry sky in the theatre. So many details all around to look at and take in; I can see why there are tours of the theatre during the day. Maybe because of the setting, I almost felt like people were more dressed up here than they are for the ballet or opera at Symphony Hall. Even if that difference was just my imagination, I felt at home in the beauty of it all.

Petting an alligator at work and then dressing up in green sequins to watch dancers imitating the movement of a gila monster. What a day, eh?

Riders of the Purple Sage: Arizona's Opera

I don't know if any of us knew what to expect from Arizona Opera's first world premiere, Riders of the Purple Sage. But it is a safe statement to say that we all enjoyed what we found.

Riders of the Purple Sage is in fact a Zane Grey novel; he's the author of all the Westerns that you see covering shelves and shelves of antique stores and other relevant locations. The idea, then, of using a Zane Grey story was to embrace the Southwest with this production, a production made in Arizona and taking place around Arizona (technically, it took place in Utah) and celebrating the cultural heritage of Arizonans. And all of you know that I love that aspect alone.

Was I, though, somewhat hesitant about an opera being a Western? Yes, I was. The two operas that I've seen were classics sung in Italian; this is both a new piece and an opera in English. And yet composer Craig Bohmler and librettist Steven Mark Kohn made something that felt cohesive and natural. (Here I will remind you that I am not a musical person, nor do I know all the musical terms with which to talk about an opera. Which is fine because I'm sure other people have already offered their learned, musical analyses of this opera.) The performers are singing music that is written for these words, so it never felt odd for them to be singing these lines just because they're lines in a Western. And there is something very grand about Westerns that in fact lent itself to opera style, if that's what I can call it.

There were two standout moments for me, musically. The first was Jane's (Karin Wolverton) song in Act 2, in which she speaks about God's love and thinks about her father. Karin has a wonderful voice, kind and feminine and strong and powerful. The second moment was the duet between Bern Venters (Joshua Dennis) and Bess (Amanda Opuszynski) in the same act; it's basically a falling in love and seeing that all is right in the world through that love type of song. Their duo and their place in the story reminded me a bit of Cosette and Marius in Les Miserables.

Now I come to one of my favorite aspects to talk about, the stage. At the end of the production, when everyone was clapping for the performers, they started to bring out the crew, as well--and when scenic designer Ed Mell came on, everyone started cheering. Many Arizonans probably know Ed Mell's name, and even most of those who don't would at least recognize the style of his work. He does paintings the Southwest that, through simplicity of shape and exact use of color, really capture the feel of the land. So in this opera, there were the sort of traditional cutouts (in this case, of orange cliffs) that were sometimes on the edges of the stage. But there was also a huge screen that covered the entire back of the stage; because his paintings were on that screen, it was like having a painted backdrop there. My eye couldn't tell that it was a screen. And sometimes there were mountains with clouds above them, and the colors of the mountains would change as with the changing light of evening and the clouds above would shift as in a real sky. Painted clouds shifting while the mountains stay still. It was a flawless use of technology and truly beautiful. It was like being inside an Ed Mell painting, and as I said, his paintings capture the feel of the land--therefore as you were watching the stage, you felt as though you were watching the land. Oh, and there was lightning, too, stunningly real lightning. I don't think I'll ever see a stage like this one was again.

I'll finish with a couple of notes on story and theme. Jane is the main character of this piece because she is the one reacting, she is the one trying to choose the path, and she is the one that holds it all together. She's a Mormon woman whose father left her his ranch. Tull wants her to marry him, and the townspeople want her to marry him so that he can have her ranch. But she doesn't believe that she's supposed to marry him. There is also conflict because one of her workers, Venters, is not Mormon; the others resent the fact that Jane is kind to him. And of course along comes Lassiter seeking vengeance against someone in the town (he doesn't yet know who); Jane has to try and reconcile her liking of Lassiter with her need to protect her people. So there is a wonderful theme in there of Jane's faith, which remains steadfast even when other people try and pressure her to do things contrary to what she believes. Any person of any religion can relate to that situation, and that pressure can come from both inside and outside the faith--it just goes to show that people are always people and people always find things to disagree about and we just have to hold true. And there were a couple of pretty lines in there about knowing that God is there because of this beautiful land, something like that; I enjoyed those.

And going back to the themes, there were messages about treating everyone with kindness. Jane, who is very devout in her Mormon faith, is kind to both Venters and Lassiter even though they're outside of her faith and the rest of the town sees that as reason enough to keep them away. And because of that hatred (promoted mainly by Tull and the Bishop), the town that's supposed to be upholding a positive faith is trying to use it not just against Venters and Lassiter but also against their own, against Jane. So there is a relevant message in there about how destructive we can be when we forget how to relate to other people with kindness.

So all around, going through all of the aspects that make up an opera, this was a quality, memorable, and significant production. I didn't know what to expect, and therefore I walked away mesmerized by all of the artistry of this opera to represent the Southwest. It was a big endeavor, so it was a pleasure to be able to watch it and to see that all of that work came together so successfully.

Culinary, Cultural Identity

Today let's talk about identity.

One of the English classes I'm taking this semester is Transborder Chicano Literature. I've been kind of wanting to take it for a while since, living in the Southwest, I always wish I learned more about this particular area (reading Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony, which takes place in New Mexico, in my Major American Novels class, for instance, was great--but moments like that are infrequent). So much of this literature, so far, has dealt with questions of identity. And discussions like this make me wonder, do I deny part of myself and my identity?

You see, let's put it this way: three of my grandparents were from Mexico. But I grew up speaking English and probably thinking I was white until I don't even know when. Even though when I was in kindergarden, it was a normal thing to visit relatives and hear more Spanish than English, in my bilingual class (that was my second kindergarten class--I started late here so the bilingual class was the only one open) I was with the English-speaking kids. It's kind of funny to think of now: I was probably the only Mexican girl grouped with the white kids, even though I realized no such discrepancy (kids really don't know race exists, do they?). But that's the funny part, too: I think I tend to look racially ambiguous. Especially before I came to Phoenix for college and got a tan: I used to be very white, and I still am light. Usually it was only the people who actually were from Mexico who could tell that that was my background, too. So I guess I always grew up on that line between worlds. The question I have now is whether that is a bad thing, whether I have missed out or repressed anything or some such thing like that.

But what I find funny when I consider these questions is what I have, in some ways retained from that cultural background. I don't really speak Spanish, though I can understand some of it if people aren't talking too fast or if I can see it in print. I'm pretty sure most of the songs in Spanish I listen to are by Josh Groban. But I have the influence of food.

That's right, I'm turning this into a food post. You see, especially because I live in Arizona, I don't always realize certain tendencies in what I eat--some of them are just normal to this area, no matter your background. But I have Abuelita hot chocolate in my cabinet right now next to the Earl Grey tea--but that's something they sell at Target. I have tortillas in my refrigerator--but they're from Trader Joe's. I made pinto beans last week that I bought at a farmer's market--but I also have a bag of black beans that I got at Whole Foods. I once got sad looking through all the stores because I couldn't find any jamaica (hibiscus) to make iced tea--but I don't remember ever drinking that until I was maybe twelve. I usually like tortilla chips best--but that's also because I'm part hipster and avoid the junk food Lay's/Cheetos/etc. I have Cholula hot sauce--and I can't think of an excuse for having it besides that I bought it at World Market. Oh, and I've been known to put hot sauce on eggs. And butter and sugar on toast (do they do that in the South, too? I'm not sure. Although, lately, it's true that I've been switching the sugar for a mound of raw honey).

What amuses me most is when I blend these things together: that, I feel, is me marking my culture. To drink my hot chocolate while eating scones or wrap salmon and spinach in a tortilla or drink jamaica while eating potato salad, those are the types of things I find entertaining. Because I think, ultimately, culture lives inside you. Identity is partly given to you, but also partly formed by you. And I have always grown up on those borderlines between cultures: and there I am happy to remain. Perhaps that's one reason I have come to have such affection for Arizona, despite not having been born here.