books

Tell Mother I’m in Paradise: Memoirs of a Political Prisoner in El Salvador, Ana Margarita Gasteazoro (University of Alabama Press, 2022). Co-editors Judy Blankenship and  Andrew Wilson recorded, transcribed and collaborated with Ana Margarita Gasteazoro during the time they all lived in Costa Rica to create an oral history of an extraordinary woman. “As a journalist visiting El Salvador during its brutal civil war, I met Ana Margarita Gasteazoro in the women’s prison of Ilopango. I was struck by her passion for justice, her honesty, and her compassion for what the people of her country have suffered. The same qualities shine through in this book. Judy Blankenship and Andrew Wilson have done a great service in making this remarkable woman’s story available to readers. I hope they will be as inspired and moved by it as I am.”  Adam Hochschild, author of Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939.

Our House in the Clouds: Building a Second Life in the Andes of Ecuador, (University of Texas Press, 2013)

“While many baby boomers are downsizing to a simpler retirement lifestyle, photographer and writer Judy Blankenship and her husband Michael Jenkins took a more challenging leap in deciding to build a house on the side of a mountain in southern Ecuador. In this absorbing memoir, Blankenship tells the interwoven stories of building their house in the clouds and strengthening their ties to the community. Blankenship writes vividly of the rituals of births, baptisms, marriages, festival days, and deaths that counterpoint her and Michael’s solitary pursuits of reading, writing, listening to opera, playing chess, and cooking.” Joanne B. Mulcahy, author of Remedios: The Healing Life of Eva Castellanoz. 

book cover 1001Cañar: A Year in the Highlands of Ecuador (University of Texas Press, 2005) Short-listed for the Oregon Book Awards, 2006. “This superb collection of Blankenship’s photographs and journal-like text creates a moving, intimate portrait of a people trying to balance the demands of the twenty-first century with  the traditions that have formed their identity for centuries.” Beautifully written and illustrated by a gifted photographer, the book has much of importance to say about the daily lives being experienced by the Cañari people. Cañar: A Year in the Highlands of Ecuador is written with heart and comes from the soul.” Michael Hamerly, Brown University, Editor, Ecuadorian Studies.

With Cañari colleagues and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), I coordinated the development of La Nación cañari y sus expresiones culturales, (The Cañari Nation and Its Cultural Expressions) a bi-lingual book for (Kichwa/Spanish) educators, scholars, and others interested in heritage languages and Andean cultures.

NMAI COVER FINAL

 

 

 

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2 thoughts on “books

  1. Judy,

    Wonderful to see these photos. Things have progressed a lot since I was there in 1967.

    Hope to see it all in person some day,

    Jeff

  2. Judy, sumak yachak warmi, con tu trabajo nos haces reflexionar que nuestro territorio kañari y cañarense es diverso y complejo, y tenemos una gran riqueza en diferentes aspectos, sin embargo en estos últimos tiempos está en desequilibrio, me interesa alguna vez dialogar con usted porque me doy cuenta que usted tiene bastante material para observar y escribir una abrazo.

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