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Armpit Tortillas and Cactus Saliva: On Linda Ronstadt and Lawrence Downes' Feels Like Home
Los Angeles Review of Books
19 October 2022
“Ronstadt’s knowledge of this history makes one of the key questions of Feels Like Home how to validate long-term attachments to and senses of place that are nevertheless those of settlers. This is an important question for US readers, whose familial connections to this country’s legacy of Indigenous dispossession are often left unknown or are blurred behind the discourse of a nation of immigrants. Ronstadt holds the two in tension: she denounces colonial, anti-Indigenous violence (Feels Like Home includes a reprint of a letter she penned to Pope Francis denouncing the Catholic Church’s canonization of violent missionary Junípero Serra), while also acknowledging the reality of her attachment to place.
Rather than appealing to roots to validate her sense of belonging in the Sonoran borderlands, Ronstadt then appeals to the senses. Feels Like Home treats taste, sound, smell, and touch on an equal plane with sight for understanding place, achieving a rare level of sensory immersion. Ronstadt’s advantage in this regard likely comes from the fact that her first vocation was not that of a writer, but a musician — one in which sound, not sight, is primary.”
Los Angeles Review of Books
19 October 2022
“Ronstadt’s knowledge of this history makes one of the key questions of Feels Like Home how to validate long-term attachments to and senses of place that are nevertheless those of settlers. This is an important question for US readers, whose familial connections to this country’s legacy of Indigenous dispossession are often left unknown or are blurred behind the discourse of a nation of immigrants. Ronstadt holds the two in tension: she denounces colonial, anti-Indigenous violence (Feels Like Home includes a reprint of a letter she penned to Pope Francis denouncing the Catholic Church’s canonization of violent missionary Junípero Serra), while also acknowledging the reality of her attachment to place.
Rather than appealing to roots to validate her sense of belonging in the Sonoran borderlands, Ronstadt then appeals to the senses. Feels Like Home treats taste, sound, smell, and touch on an equal plane with sight for understanding place, achieving a rare level of sensory immersion. Ronstadt’s advantage in this regard likely comes from the fact that her first vocation was not that of a writer, but a musician — one in which sound, not sight, is primary.”
Caroline Eaton Tracey writes about the environment, migration, and the arts in the US Southwest, Mexico, and their borderlands. She speaks and works in English, Spanish, and Russian. Her first book, SALT LAKES, will be published by W.W. Norton.
Caroline’s reporting appears in the New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books, High Country News, and elsewhere, as well as in Spanish in Mexico’s Nexos.
In 2022 she was awarded the Waterston Prize for Desert Writing and in 2023 she received Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Fellowship in Journalism and Human and Civil Rights and a Silvers Foundation Work-in-Progress grant. In 2024, she received an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.
Caroline holds a PhD in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley. She lives with her wife, Mexican architect and sculptor Mariana GJP, between Tucson, Arizona and Mexico City.
She is represented by Bridget Matzie of Aevitas Creative Management.
Caroline’s reporting appears in the New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books, High Country News, and elsewhere, as well as in Spanish in Mexico’s Nexos.
In 2022 she was awarded the Waterston Prize for Desert Writing and in 2023 she received Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Fellowship in Journalism and Human and Civil Rights and a Silvers Foundation Work-in-Progress grant. In 2024, she received an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.
Caroline holds a PhD in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley. She lives with her wife, Mexican architect and sculptor Mariana GJP, between Tucson, Arizona and Mexico City.
She is represented by Bridget Matzie of Aevitas Creative Management.
Caroline Eaton Tracey escribe sobre el medioambiente, la migración, el arte y la literatura en México, el Suroeste de Estados Unidos y su frontera. Habla ingles, español y ruso. Su primer libro, SALT LAKES, será publicado bajo el sello de la editorial W.W. Norton.
Sus artículos aparecen en The New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books y High Country News entre otros lugares. En español escribe frecuentemente para la revista Nexos.
En 2022 ganó el Premio Waterston por Escritura del Desierto y en 2023 recibió la beca Ira A. Lipman de periodismo de derechos humanos y civiles de Columbia University y una beca de la Fundación Silvers. En 2024, recibió una beca para escritura sobre el arte de la fundación Andy Warhol.
Caroline es Doctora en Geografía de la Universidad de California–Berkeley. Vive con su esposa, la arquitecta y escultora mexicana Mariana GJP, entre Tucson, Arizona y la Ciudad de México.
La representa Bridget Matzie de la agencia literaria Aevitas Creative Management.
Sus artículos aparecen en The New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books y High Country News entre otros lugares. En español escribe frecuentemente para la revista Nexos.
En 2022 ganó el Premio Waterston por Escritura del Desierto y en 2023 recibió la beca Ira A. Lipman de periodismo de derechos humanos y civiles de Columbia University y una beca de la Fundación Silvers. En 2024, recibió una beca para escritura sobre el arte de la fundación Andy Warhol.
Caroline es Doctora en Geografía de la Universidad de California–Berkeley. Vive con su esposa, la arquitecta y escultora mexicana Mariana GJP, entre Tucson, Arizona y la Ciudad de México.
La representa Bridget Matzie de la agencia literaria Aevitas Creative Management.