An engaging look at a band’s artistic activism and Navajo people’s resistance.
An environmentally and politically minded memoir of Clan Dyken, a touring folk-rock band that’s dedicated to environmental activism.
Muniz effectively blends history, biography, and Navajo cultural traditions as she traces the evolution of a musical group that brothers (and credited co-authors) Mark Dyken and Bear Dyken formed in the late 1970s, at the height of anti-nuclear activism in the United States. “The band’s core mission is to help people create a better world through music and nonviolent activism,” she writes. At the center of the story is Muniz’s trip with the band on their annual Beauty Way Tour, during which they delivered food and firewood to Navajo families resisting forced relocation from their homes in Big Mountain, Arizona. The Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act had forced displacement and relocation of many Navajo people; however, many families, including a contingent of protesting grandmothers, have refused to go. The people must contend with poverty, destruction of natural resources, and a lack of electricity because there’s “no infrastructure, no grid” on the land. Big Mountain is located next to the world’s largest coal strip mine, which has drained the land’s aquifer and killed natural vegetation, Muniz writes, causing Navajo and Hopi people to suffer from environmental devastation. In intimate detail, the author narrates the history that’s shaped the Navajo people and culture of Big Mountain. Along the way, she also offers an essential account of Clan Dyken, which became politically engaged after an anti-nuclear talk at the University of California, Davis, in the early 1980s. With their solar-powered sound system, the band has taken their music on the road, playing festivals all over the country and protesting at nuclear testing and waste sites in Nevada and California. Other tours have included tree-logging protests, and the band travels annually to Bear Mountain in support of Navajo families. Over the course of this book, Muniz movingly relates how those families have continued to refuse displacement, spurring a creative movement.
An engaging look at a band’s artistic activism and Navajo people’s resistance.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73286-911-0
Page Count: 346
Publisher: Word Project Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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