{"title":"Blake Allmendinger","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"geographic-personas-book-blake-allmendinger-9781496225061","title":"Geographic Personas","description":"During the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as the American West underwent a series of transformations, certain pivotal figures also undertook a process of self-transformation. Geographic Personas reveals a practice of public performance, impersonation, deception, and fraud, exposing the secret lives of men and women who capitalized on changes occurring in the region. These changes affected the arts; land ownership; scientific exploration; definitions of race, gender, and sexual orientation; and relations between the United States and other countries throughout the world.   In addition to well-known figures such as Clarence King and Willa Cather, Geographic Personas examines lesser-known players in the performative process of westward expansion, including Isadora Duncan, the founder of modern American dance; Polish actress Helena Modjeska; Adolf Hitler’s favorite author, Karl May; Japanese poet Yone Noguchi; Sylvester Long, a mixed-race star of Native American silent films whose mother was born into slavery; and the perpetrator of the greatest land grant hoax in U.S. history.   While scholars have written about the environmental, demographic, and economic changes that occurred in the West during the nineteenth century, Allmendinger adds a crucial piece to this dialogue. He brings to light the experiences of artists, dancers, film stars, con men, and criminals in stories of self-transformation that are often sad, tragic, and poignant.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50378255106321,"sku":"CIN1496225066VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1496225066.jpg?v=1761387829"},{"product_id":"melon-capital-of-the-world-book-blake-allmendinger-9780803255401","title":"The Melon Capital of the World","description":"In this psychologically gripping memoir, Blake Allmendinger returns to his childhood home after a forty-year absence. His homecoming to the struggling farming community of Rocky Ford, Colorado, formerly known as the Melon Capital of the World, forces the author to confront his own sad and disturbing history, one that parallels his hometown’s decline.   Allmendinger’s family was dominated by his emotionally and mentally unstable mother, who became depressed while living in Rocky Ford as a young woman. For the rest of her life she abused the members of her family, creating tensions that remained unresolved until the end of the author’s visit, when his mother died suddenly, a family member committed suicide, and a secret diary was discovered.   The Melon Capital of the World is a remarkable blend of personal narrative, memoir, and Allmendinger’s interviews with people who knew his mother and her family. His story is a gritty but compassionate, and at times humorous, portrait of a family trying to survive in the rapidly disappearing rural American West.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50784307773713,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50784310591761,"sku":"CIN0803255403VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52740115628305,"sku":"NIN9780803255401","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0803255403.jpg?v=1764162336"},{"product_id":"tongues-of-settlement-book-blake-allmendinger-9781496241863","title":"Tongues of Settlement","description":"Known for their cultural traditions, celebrated cuisine, and distinct language, Basque peoples originated in a small area in the Pyrenees Mountains called Euskal Herria, or the Basque Country. Over the centuries, large numbers of Basques have left their homeland to settle throughout Spain, France, North America, Latin America, and South Africa, accompanied by their unique language and literature.  Tongues of Settlement traces how Basque emigrants and their descendants have adapted to the Americas by interacting with the land and people, while inscribing their presence and producing a body of literature distinct from the literature of Euskal Herria. Blake Allmendinger explores the evolving relationship between language and place, analyzing forms of remembrance used to signify the Basque presence in numerous countries, especially in the western United States, where most immigrants settled and where their descendants currently reside.  Tongues of Settlement considers what eventually happens as assimilated Basques relinquish their native language yet maintain a connection to place. It includes works by Basque authors, translated into English, recounting their experiences in the American West; books by Basque American writers whose narratives are set (at least in part) in the Basque Country; popular genres published by Basque American authors; and recurrent themes in Basque American literature. In this first comprehensive study, Allmendinger traces the evolution of Basque American literature from its origins in medieval oral culture to the creation of a literary renaissance in the twenty-first century American West.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51633100259601,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51633100718353,"sku":"NIN9781496241863","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/149624186X.jpg?v=1761389018"},{"product_id":"cowboy-book-blake-allmendinger-9780195072433","title":"The Cowboy","description":"The Cowboy uses literary, historical, folkloric, and pop cultural sources to document the cowboy's role in the culture of the American West. In doing so, Allmendinger makes use of early oral poems recited by cowboys in the course of their work, and later poems, histories, and autobiographies written by cowboys - most of which have never before been studied by scholars.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52122658078993,"sku":"NLS9780195072433","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780195072433.jpg?v=1757441802"},{"product_id":"imagining-the-african-american-west-book-blake-allmendinger-9780803220829","title":"Imagining the African American West","description":"The literature of the African American West is the last racial discourse of the region that remains unexplored. Blake Allmendinger addresses this void in literary and cultural studies with Imagining the African American West-the first comprehensive study of African American literature on the early frontier and in the modern urban American West. Allmendinger charts the terrain of African American literature in the West through his exploration of novels, histories, autobiographies, science fiction, mysteries, formula westerns, melodramas, experimental theater, and political essays, as well as rap music and film. He examines the histories of James P. Beckwourth and Oscar Micheaux; slavery, the Civil War, and the significance of the American frontier to blacks; and the Harlem Renaissance, the literature of urban unrest, rap music, black noir, and African American writers, including Toni Morrison and Walter Mosley. His study utilizes not only the works of well-known African American writers but also some obscure and neglected works, out-of-print books, and unpublished manuscripts in library archives. Much of the scholarly neglect of the Black West can be blamed on how the American West has been imagined, constructed, and framed in scholarship to date. In his study, Allmendinger provides the appropriate theoretical, cultural, and historical contexts for understanding the literature and suggests new directions for the future of black western literature. Blake Allmendinger is a professor of English at the University of California at Los Angeles. He is the coeditor of Over the Edge: Remapping the American West and the author of Ten Most Wanted: The New Western Literature.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53461791375633,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53461791703313,"sku":"CIN0803220820G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780803220829.jpg?v=1777140035"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-blake-allmendinger.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}