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Reviews 285 More particularly there is an absence of a Texas attitude and way of thinking. Certainly there are exceptions—Annette Sanford’s “Standing By”and Bobbie Louise Hawkins’ “This one’s for LindaJoy”—but these and a few others areexceptions. Has there been such a change in the eight years between Rodenberger’s collection and Comer’s? Have Texans become so cosmopolitan that Comer could find so fewwho felt the place? Certainlywe do not expect Texas women to “think much about ‘Texanness’ as they write,”but we do assume that Texas is not antithetical to writers’ “womanhood” or to “their shared humanity.” Per­ haps in the last eight years “Texanness” has become a literary liability for women. Whatever the reason for the change, itseems thatTexas women writers, the prudent ones, should abandon their roots and lose themselves in the cosmopolitan world. SALLIE STRANGE University ofNorth Texas Tierra: Contemporary ShortFiction ofNew Mexico. Edited by Rudolfo A. Anaya. (El Paso: Cinco Puntos Press, 1989. 272 pages, $12.95.) This gathering of stories by Chicano author Rudolfo A. Anaya is dedicated to the region which has meant so much to Anaya’sown fiction: New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment, or as those citizens who love it deeply call it, “la tierra sagrada.” As a tribute to place, these “contemporary”stories show that the inspiration of the land is never dying and that all peoples who “pass by here”—Aztlan, Nueva Granada, New Mexico Territory (the historic “state” has gone by many names)—move notjust across the land but are moved by the land, by “la tierra.” In the instance of this anthology, writers of all backgrounds, native born and settlers, and of diverse ethnic and cultural background, Hispanic, Native American, Anglo, all share and celebrate their Southwestern, their New Mexi­ can experiences and heritage. The land, the West, in its incredible endurance, its constancy and regenera­ tion has long held forth a transcendent promise. And there’s a great equalizing process at work here in responding to the West, to New Mexico, suggested by these twenty-five stories. Established writers like Tony Hillerman,John Nichols, Marc Simmons, Simon J. Ortiz, Max Evans, Keith Wilson, Sabine R. Ulibarri, and Kevin Mcllvoy tell their stories alongside lesser known writers. Poets, historians, teachers—all try their hand at short fiction. It’s emblematic of the innovation as well as the inspiration required by belonging to a region, to “place.” And relatively new names like Tim MacCurdy—who comes up with one of 286 WesternAmerican Literature the volume’s best offerings in “The Day It Rained Blood,”—prove that the newness, the vitality in such a historic state continues to resonate into the current decade. All in all, there’s an elan in these stories not too different from the feeling, the luck of drawing a class of the best writers in the school—a feeling which all writing instructors know and relish. And here, Anaya as editor, and the reader, simply have to sit back and bask in the pleasure of the pages as the enchantment, the inspiration, the fulfillment and the promise of New Mexico as a very special place for artists of all kinds is once again confirmed. ROBERT F. GISH CalPoly State University Maps to Anywhere. By Bernard Cooper. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990. 139 pages, $19.95.) Apparently a collection of short essays and meditations (most published earlier), Bernard Cooper’s Maps to Anywhere may be read as a post-modernist artist’s autobiography. The fragments circle key moments and themes linking present and past; they reveal a thoughtful and troubled writer and the boy he was, who grew up in the shape-changing, trickster city, Los Angeles. He learned the power of words there, and tried to construct in his mind a perfect world as defense against change and loss. The boy Bernard played with his Plasticville toy city, visited open houses in new development tracts and the pathetically optimistic “Home of the Future”in Disneyland, and studied books on modern architecture. In another room his older brother, once a glamorous athlete, died of leukemia. The images of real and imagined houses which fill the book might be used...

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