River Reflections: A Collection of River Writings ed. by Verne Huser

W e s t e r n A m e r ic a n L it e r a t u r e S p r in g 2 0 0 7 Like much Chicana literature, this memoir deals with identity crises and the blurring of a variety of borders. Gloria Anzaldua defines the multiply interpolated identity of Mexican Americans in Borderlands/LaFrontera (1987): “Having or living in more than one culture, we get multiple, often opposing messages. The coming together of two self-consistent but habitually incompatible frames of reference causes un choque, a cultural collision” (100). These cultural colli­ sions, for Guilbault, involve the national border between the United States and Mexico, linguistic borders, class borders, racial borders, gendered borders, and the generational border between the girl and her parents. The story ends with the last summer that Guilbault spent sorting tomatoes on a conveyor belt. She had just finished junior college and was leaving for the university. Her coworkers, the “conveyor belt ladies,” as she called them, were migrant workers, mostly Mexican, most recently from Texas. At the end of her last day on the line, the conveyor belt ladies shook her hand, “and gave [her] a blessing or a big hug. ‘Don’t come back. Make us proud, hija’” (155). As they banished her from the community, they also wished a better life for her and for their own children— a life beyond borders. River Reflections: A Collection of River Writings. Edited by Verne Huser. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. 273 pages, $21.95. Reviewed by Katherine Fischer Clarke College, Dubuque, Iowa Voyageurs, fur trappers, explorers, and pioneers paddle through the pages of River Reflections: A Collection ofRiver Writings alongside modern naturalists, families, fishers, famous entertainers, and thrillseekers. Forty essays, journal entries, and stories offer energetic insights into economic, environmental, emotional, and political forces that affect American rivers as diverse as the Mississippi, Brazos, Snake, Salmon, Missouri, Tuolumne, Yukon, St. Croix, and Peace. These are not the tales of those who study rivers from a safe distance in academic offices or from high atop bluffs rendering quantitative analyses and pretty pictures. At its heart, this collection celebrates rivers from the rough and tumble perspectives of those who travel them in kayaks, steamboats, canoes, sportyaks, squirt-boats, rafts, and, the greatest of all river crafts, the human body. Divided into two sections— “The Classics” and “Modem Times”— the first part of the book delivers the history of discovery by those who accompanied John Wesley Powell, John Jacob Astor, and Lewis and Clark. These tales of adventure and exploration are joined in the second half by contemporary stories of shooting rapids, exploring the past through names etched on canyon walls, and running rivers. Throughout both parts, editor Verne Huser precedes selections with his own commentary that places the works within the field of riverine literature. BO O K REVIEW S Benchmark river writers such as A. B. Guthrie, Mark Twain, Ann Zwinger, Norman Maclean, and William Faulkner are featured in this volume. Included, too, are the writings of well-known conservationists Michael Frome, Joel Vance, Tim Palmer, and Edward Abbey. Dayton Duncan tells of following the Lewis and Clark trail. Lyrical selections by Wendell Barry and Patricia McCairen take readers deep into the heart of what it means to know a river. Less standard in river literature, but nonetheless stunning, are accounts by Amelia Stewart Knight who chronicles river crossings on the wagon journey from Iowa to Oregon, culminating in the birth of her eighth child, and broadcaster Tom Brokaw’spoetically grim account of running the Salmon River only to lose one of their party at Webber Falls. Here there are other hard stories of loss such as the depredation of rivers, canyons, and species due to human greed and stupidity. But here, too, are hopeful tales of dams being removed and of watersheds and habitats being restored and protected. In the wilderness of untamed places, these writers— and those who travel with them— find their souls in something as simple as paddling a river or in watching a heron take wing. Although river folks will feel immediately at home with this collection, those unacquainted with...

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