We do not think that you need an excuse to read, the presence of a good book is reason enough. Fortunately, the UNM Press has a long history of producing very readable books. There are over 1200 titles in the back catalog that are available in the UNM Libraries and through the UNM Press website.
This year, staff looked through the catalog to find titles about caregivers and essential employees. These books show how these workers have been doing their jobs,sometimes under less than ideal conditions, for many years. Do any of these titles interest you?
Black Physicians Struggle for Civil Rights by "This powerful biography traces the career of an African American physician and civil rights advocate, Edward Craig Mazique (1911-1987), from the poverty and discrimination of Natchez, Mississippi, to his status as a prominent physician in Washington, D.C. Florence Ridlon relates how Dr. Mazique's grandfather went from being a slave to becoming one of the largest landowners in Adams County, Mississippi. This moving story of one man's accomplishments, in spite of many opposing forces, is also a chapter in the struggle of African Americans to achieve equality in the twentieth-century. At a time when blacks were being denied entry into the American Medical Association and the staffs of most hospitals, Dr. Mazique was president of the Medico-Chirurgical Society and the National Medical Association, black counterparts to the all-white District Medical Society and American Medical Association. Dr. Mazique worked closely with Martin Luther King, Jr. and presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson as well as black physicians, to expand the availability of health care at a time when many conservative physicians, both black and white, opposed the establishment of Medicare and other federal health programs. Much of this story is in Dr. Mazique's own words, taken from interviews with the author. What emerges from this biography is a picture of an exceptional but very human man, who, despite discrimination and repression, excelled beyond all expectations. From A Black Physician's Struggle for Civil Rights "The power he had! I don't think there was a president that occupied that White House that didn't have him there for consultation. He was so respected as a human being, above and beyond medicine. When the people in the Civil Rights movement would say things to government people, they were suspect because they had to make political decisions. Eddie was someone they could call in who they not only trusted but respected. He had the type of integrity that even if government leaders wouldn't listen to his advice or follow up, the civil rights people knew when he went to see presidents and stuff, he wasn't back there lying. That was the great thing about him--his honesty and integrity."--comedian and political activist, Dick Gregory, speaking about Dr. Mazique in an interview with Florence Ridlon"
Medicine Women by Winner of the 2019 Southwest Book Award from the Border Regional Library Association Winner of the 2020 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for History-Arizona After the Indian wars, many Americans still believed that the only good Indian was a dead Indian. But at Ganado Mission in the Navajo country of northern Arizona, a group of missionaries and doctors--who cared less about saving souls and more about saving lives--chose a different way and persuaded the local parents and medicine men to allow them to educate their daughters as nurses. The young women struggled to step into the world of modern medicine, but they knew they might become nurses who could build a bridge between the old ways and the new. In this detailed history, Jim Kristofic traces the story of Ganado Mission on the Navajo Indian Reservation. Kristofic's personal connection with the community creates a nuanced historical understanding that blends engaging narrative with careful scholarship to share the stories of the people and their commitment to this place.
School Women of the Prairies and Plains by One of the first books to examine the experiences of teachers who were the daughters of western pioneers--now in paperback.
La Clinica by In 1972, when the world around him was making little sense, David Sklar left in his senior year of college to volunteer at a community clinic in rural Mexico. With absolutely no medical experience beyond being accepted to medical school at Stanford, Sklar literally learned medicine by practicing it. With duties that ranged from suturing wounds and delivering babies to digging latrines to pulling teeth, his time at the clinic took him into the heart of a medical world that the sterilized walls of the twentieth century would never have shown him. The experience challenged his idealism and, ultimately, molded him into a skilled emergency physician. Years later, deeply immersed in the stress of running the ER at the University of New Mexico Hospital and facing a divorce, Sklar decided to revisit the Mexican village and clinic that provided inspiration and grounding in the early stages of his career. Weaving together his time in Mexico, his later career, and his marriage, Sklar's memoir offers a thought-provoking meditation on the virtues of idealism in the face of the inevitable failures that haunt all human endeavors.
The Shoulders We Stand On by The Shoulders We Stand On traces the complex history of bilingual education in New Mexico, covering Spanish, Diné, and Pueblo languages.
Closing the Chart by Dr. Steven D. Hsi, a family physician and father of two young sons, was diagnosed in 1995 with a rare coronary disease that caused his death five years later at the age of forty-four. Throughout his ordeals as a patient, including three open-heart surgeries, Dr. Hsi's outlook on the teaching and practice of medicine changed. In 1997 he began a journal intended for publication after his death. Written with the assistance of newspaper columnist Jim Belshaw and completed posthumously by Hsi's widow, Beth Corbin-Hsi, Dr. Hsi's writings urge his colleagues to become healers, to look at their patients as human beings with spiritual as well as physical lives. "Every patient should read it, if only to be made aware that they are not alone with their thoughts. Every spouse of a patient should read it. . . . Every medical student and physician should read it to learn that the biology of the disease is really just a small part of the illness."--John Saiki, M.D., Medical Oncology, University of New Mexico "Dr. Steven Hsi asks his fellow doctors to be more than physicians. He asks them to be healers. He says that when he thinks of healers, he sees traditional medicine men, people who are integral parts of their communities. They are in touch physically and spiritually with the people they serve."--Tony Hillerman "Closing the Chart is built on the personal journals and experiences of Steven D. Hsi, M.D., as he travels on an intense 5-year journey from an assumption of health, professional success, and family stability to his progressive illness and eventual death. . . . Closing the Chart is both an engaging, page-turning read and a story told with so little artifice that you cannot close the cover unchanged."--Kenneth Jacobson, executive director, American Holistic Medical Association, Explore "There are lessons on every page, lessons to make us better caregivers, more discerning patients, and better advocates for family members and friends who are sick. . . . Every reader will take away different lessons from this book based on his or her role, age, and experience. This would be an ideal book for group study by medical and nursing students with some senior physicians, patients, and family members. What a great learning experience for all participants! . . . I exhort you to pick up and read this humble story. Nothing I have encountered in the medical narrative genre has been more worthy of my time." --David J. Elpern, M.D, Psychiatric Services
Orange County Housecleaners by Orange County Housecleaners documents the lives of seven women who make their livings cleaning houses in Orange County, California. Of the seven, five are Latina immigrants and two are Orange County natives. Sara Velazquez came to the United States alone when the youngest of her four children was ten, and found ways to get all of them and her husband from Mexico to Orange County. Sharon Risley earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1990--twenty-six years after a teenage pregnancy destroyed her plans to go from high school to art school. Mimi Lopez was alone on Thanksgiving 1985 when her twin daughters were born in the Miami home where she worked as a nanny. Each chapter combines a woman's life story told in her own words with Frank Cancian's recent photos of her family, work, and other activities. His introduction to the book gives background on domestic workers in Southern California and on the family situations of immigrant women who leave their children in their native countries while providing for them by working in the United States.
Community Health Narratives by Mark struggled at school and became depressed because he was bullied. Ana Maria feared leaving her home after dark due to gun violence. Mario and his family benefited from an intervention to prevent the spread of avian flu in his village. Health problems like these affect not only individuals but also families and communities. These examples suggest how community health is realized in peoples' lives and affects people living in the same place who share similar beliefs and values. For example, feeling safe within one's community is an essential part of living a healthy life. The narratives in this book explore a wide range of topics--social ties, gender and sexuality, mental illness, violence, prevention, and health-care access--that shape community health. Featuring "Communities in Action" sketches describing good community health programming as well as a guide for teachers, this book, along with its companions Global Health Narratives: A Reader for Youth and Environmental Health Narratives: A Reader for Youth (UNM Press), provides a comprehensive curriculum that examines people's health experiences across cultures and nations.
Bakers and Basques by Mexico City's colorful panaderías (bakeries) have long been vital neighborhood institutions. They were also crucial sites where labor, subsistence, and politics collided. From the 1880s well into the twentieth century, Basque immigrants dominated the bread trade, to the detriment of small Mexican bakers. By taking us inside the panadería, into the heart of bread strikes, and through government halls, Robert Weis reveals why authorities and organized workers supported the so-called Spanish monopoly in ways that countered the promises of law and ideology. He tells the gritty story of how class struggle and the politics of food shaped the state and the market. More than a book about bread, Bakers and Basques places food and labor at the center of the upheavals in Mexican history from independence to the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution.
A Virus of Love and Other Tales of Medical Detection by 