Tipai Ethnographic Notes: A Rare Look at Baja California’s Indigenous Past

By SAFIYA MOHAMED

San Diego State University Press proudly presents Tipai Ethnographic Notes: A Baja California Indian Community at Mid-Century, by William D. Hohenthal, Jr., edited by Thomas C. Blackburn with contributions from Margaret Langdon, David Kronenfeld, and Lynn Thomas. 

Tipai Ethnographic Notes

The story behind this book is as remarkable as its contents. While conducting research at the Bancroft Library, anthropologist Thomas C. Blackburn discovered an extensive set of manuscripts titled Field Observations I by William D. Hohenthal, Jr. Captivated by the depth and richness of Hohenthal’s fieldwork, Blackburn reached out to the author. Hohenthal, thrilled that his work had been rediscovered, provided Blackburn with the original manuscript along with field notes, sketches, photographs, maps, wordlists, and other vital materials — realizing their collective importance for future scholarship.

Born in 1919, William Dalton Hohenthal, Jr. grew up immersed in different cultures, thanks to his father's military postings. Experiences in the Philippines, China, Brazil, and across Europe sparked his lifelong interest in anthropology. After completing his undergraduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and serving in World War II, Hohenthal returned to Berkeley to pursue graduate work in anthropology, receiving his Ph.D. in 1951. His early exposure to diverse Indigenous groups and his extensive field training shaped the extraordinary ethnographic sensitivity found in Tipai Ethnographic Notes.

The book itself is a comprehensive study. It not only documents Tipai life but also includes valuable information about the Paipai and Kiliwa peoples. Hohenthal’s work details their natural environment — climate, animal life, water sources, vegetation, and topography — alongside their social structures, clan territories, settlement patterns, and languages. Readers will find careful linguistic documentation, including many Tipai, Paipai, and Kiliwa words with an explained orthography system.

Hohenthal’s notes also delve into:

• Prehistory and history of the region, including discussions of pictographs, petroglyphs, and archaeological sites

• Subsistence practices such as agriculture, hunting, fishing, and food preparation

• Social organization, law, and governance

• Religious beliefs, ceremonies, and healing practices

• Ethnoscientific knowledge systems

Tipai Ethnographic Notes preserves a unique record of Indigenous life during a pivotal period of transition — offering an irreplaceable resource for scholars, students, and anyone interested in the ethnology of Baja California, Indigenous studies, and the history of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.

Tipai Ethnographic Notes

Tipai Ethnographic Notes

Tipai Ethnographic Notes

Rich in observation, respectful in detail, and essential for a deeper understanding of the region’s cultural history, Tipai Ethnographic Notes is a major contribution to anthropology and Indigenous studies.

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USA PAPERBACK $27.95

ISBN 10: 0879191449

ISBN 13: 978-0879191443

Poetry Without Limits: Inside Barilli’s Voyage to the End of the Word

By SAFIYA MOHAMED

What happens when poets push language to its breaking point? Originally published in Italian in 1981, Renato Barilli’s Voyage to the End of the Word, now available in English, translated by Teresa Fiore and Harry Polkinhorn, offers a fascinating exploration of Italian experimental poetry during the explosive cultural moment of the 1960s and 70s. 

Voyage to the End of the Word

Barilli, an influential figure in aesthetics and literary criticism, places this experimental wave within a rich theoretical framework. Drawing on Saussure’s concept of the linguistic sign and Freud’s idea of pre-oedipal bliss, he maps out how poets stretched and reshaped language during a time of intense artistic innovation. The book doesn’t just offer critical analysis, it also includes a dynamic mini-anthology of poems that embody the era’s spirit. Readers encounter puns, playful visuals, neologisms, and daring formal experiments that expand the very idea of what poetry can be. Each piece captures the raw energy of a moment when words were stretched, bent, and reshaped with radical intent.

Voyage to the End of the Word

Voyage to the End of the Word

Voyage to the End of the Word

As Professor of the Phenomenology of Styles at the University of Bologna, Barilli has long been recognized for his deep and interdisciplinary approach to both art and literature. Voyage to the End of the Word stands as a vital bridge between theory and poetic practice, inviting readers into the dynamic world of language experimentation at a moment when art and politics were tightly intertwined.

This new translation brings Barilli’s insights to an English-speaking audience at a time when questions about the limits and possibilities of language feel as urgent as ever. For scholars, students, writers, and anyone curious about the experimental spirit of twentieth-century Italian literature, Voyage to the End of the Word offers both a masterclass in theory and a celebration of poetic play. This first-ever English edition opens up an important chapter of Italian literary history for a global audience and offers fresh inspiration for today’s writers and thinkers who continue to ask: how far can language go?

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USA $16.95

ISBN 10: 1879691493

ISBN 13: 978-1879691490

New Release: Reflections from the Inside: New Indigenous Scholarship from Brazil in Translation

By SAFIYA MOHAMED

Published by San Diego State University Press under its new Girassol Books imprint, Reflections from the Inside: New Indigenous Scholarship from Brazil in Translation, edited by Kristal Bivona and Manuela Cordeiro, introduces groundbreaking work by emerging Indigenous scholars from Brazil. 

Reflections from the Inside

The collection responds to a critical gap in available resources. While designing a new B.A. in Brazilian Studies at San Diego State University, educators identified a lack of translated texts that reflect non-hegemonic, Indigenous perspectives. Reflections from the Inside brings together five essays written by young Indigenous researchers, offering a necessary corrective to the historical invisibility of these voices in academic and public discourse.

Each contributor is also associated with the Brazilian Articulation of Indigenous Anthropologists (ABIA), an organization committed to anti-racist activism and the promotion of Indigenous rights, both within and beyond academic spaces. These scholars are not only researchers but also active participants in public policy forums, activist movements, and cultural institutions. The essays featured were originally published in peer-reviewed academic journals in Brazil and are now available in English for the first time.

The collection spans a wide range of topics and methodologies:

• Chapter One: "Indigenous Anthropologists and the Spectacle of Otherness"
  Felipe Sotto Maior Cruz (Tuxá) offers a critical analysis of the field of anthropology, focusing on Indigenous students’ experiences in Brazilian universities and the systemic barriers they encounter.

• Chapter Two: "Sociogenesis of the Ethnic Mobilization that Occurred in the Serra do Truarú Community"
  Eriki Aleixo Wapichana traces the history of Indigenous land struggles in Roraima, combining local oral histories with case studies from global Indigenous movements to reveal the driving forces behind territorial mobilizations.

• Chapter Three: "Colonization on Indigenous Women: A Reflection on Body Care"
  Braulina Aurora Baniwa explores the lasting impacts of colonization on Baniwa women's ancestral body care practices, particularly the role Christian missionary activity played in disrupting the transmission of traditional knowledge.

• Chapter Four: "Collective Authorship and Autoethnography"
  Ana Manoela Primos dos Santos (Karipuna) challenges dominant academic practices by proposing a model of collective authorship, grounded in the Karipuna concept of maiuhi — mutual support and joint effort — as central to ethnographic work.

• Chapter Five: "The Cosmology of the Image"
  Edgar Kanaykõ Xacriabá examines the power of photography in Indigenous struggles, using his documentation of the 2017 Free Land Encampment in Brasília to highlight how images serve both cultural survival and political resistance.

Reflections from the Inside offers essential perspectives for readers interested in Indigenous rights, decolonial thought, anthropology, Brazilian studies, and beyond. It brings urgent new voices to the forefront and invites a rethinking of scholarship, authorship, and resistance.

Reflections from the Inside

Reflections from the Inside

Now available from Girassol Books, an imprint of San Diego State University Press.

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$16.95 USA

ISBN 10: 1938537610

ISBN 13: 978-1938537615

Noted Classic and Vintage SDSU Press Titles Once Again Available! Including DISTANT ROADS by Juan Crespí! #juancrespi

 

Spring Has Sprung—and So Has West Coast Review's Spring 2025 Issue No. 1

By SAFIYA MOHAMED

The newly released Spring 2025 West Coast Review Number 1 is a vibrant collection of fiction and art curated to stir the imagination and challenge the boundaries of storytelling. This year’s volume features work from an impressive lineup of acclaimed writers and artists, including Karen Pierce Gonzalez, D. Harlan Wilson, Johnny Payne, Hannah Thorsell, Andrew Joron, K. L. Johnston, Lance Olsen, Gerrie Paino, Karen An-hwei Lee, JoAnna Novak, and Sam Szanto.

West Coast Review Spring 2025 #1

This edition includes the following standout pieces:

• Palm Frond Mardi Gras by Karen Pierce Gonzalez

• Inventing the Sky by D. Harlan Wilson

• The Rooster Thugs by Johnny Payne

• Hail to The Chief by Hannah Thorsell

• The Swerve Collector by Andrew Joron

• Savannah Harbor by K. L. Johnston

• Terminal Lucidity in The After & Beyond by Lance Olsen

• Paint the Sky by Gerrie Paino

• The Bureau of Misidentification by Karen An-hwei Lee

• The Third Time by JoAnna Novak

• Ex Machina by K. L. Johnston

• Moments of Aloneness by Sam Szanto

From award-winning authors and artists to playwrights, poets, essayists, editors, and creative writing directors, these contributors bring a wealth of creative depth to every page.

Inside, you'll find a range of provocative and emotionally resonant stories: a drug-dazed dream of a soldier and his volatile, murderous companion; a love-struck graduate student on a quixotic quest to win back his high-maintenance ex; a woman self-appointed as the "Minister of Loneliness," trapped under a dystopian ban and longing for her pastry-filled past; and a newlywed who uncovers a shocking secret about her husband’s international escapades while she lays recovering in a hospital bed.

The Spring 2025 West Coast Review Number 1 is a stunning mosaic of voices—unafraid to be daring, tender, political, surreal, or deeply human. Just $15.95, It’s a must-read for fans of contemporary fiction and literary experimentation. 

  

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ISBN-10: 1300635681

ISBN-13: 978-1300635680

The Living Voices of the Kumeyaay: A Trilingual Journey Through Story and Memory

By SAFIYA MOHAMED

Footsteps From The Past Into The Future: Kumeyaay Stories of Baja California

Footsteps From The Past Into The Future: Kumeyaay Stories of Baja California is more than just a book—it's a testament to resilience, cultural sovereignty, and the enduring power of storytelling. This beautifully curated trilingual collection—written in Kumeyaay (or Kumiai), Spanish, and English—features the voices of Zeferina Alana Cuero, Jovita Aldama Machado, Aurora Meza Calles, Emilia Meza Calles, and Jon Meza Cuero, with editing by Margaret Field.

This remarkable collection is the result of over a decade of collaboration with fluent Kumiai speakers from Baja California, an area where the Kumeyaay language is still spoken daily in some communities. Grounded in the principle of rhetorical sovereignty, a concept coined by Scott Lyons, the stories were selected and shared by the Kumeyaay community themselves. That means the storytellers—not outsiders—decided what to preserve, how to tell it, and in whose voices—offering a powerful counter to colonial retellings of Indigenous histories.

Footsteps From The Past Into The Future: Kumeyaay Stories of Baja California

The book highlights stories from two Kumeyaay communities: Juntas de Nejí and La Huerta. Storyteller Jon Meza Cuero, who has lived on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, provides unique insight into the shared but diverse experiences of the Kumeyaay people across regions.

One of the most powerful aspects of this collection is that many of the stories are told by Kumiai women—elders who retained their native language by growing up on their traditional lands, with limited exposure to formal education or Spanish until later in life. Their words carry generations of memory, culture, and ancestral knowledge.

The collection draws primarily from two families: the Meza Calles family of Juntas de Nejí and the Aldama family of La Huerta. With the help of Aurora, Emilia, Norma, and Yolanda Meza Calles, several traditional stories were translated and preserved—including Los Gemelos del Mar (The Twins from the Sea), El Rescate de Kuri Kuri (The Rescue of Kuri Kuri), and Esta Tierra Aquí (This Land Here). The moving autobiographical narrative Ollas Rotas (Broken Pots), narrated by Emilia Meza Calles, shares the life story of her great-aunt Genoveva Calles-Cuero. Their uncle, Jon Meza Cuero, also shares the playful story Sapo Enamorado (Frog in Love). 

Linguist Margaret Field works with three of the Meza-Calles sisters

From La Huerta, conversations recorded between Zerefina Cuero and her great-aunt Jovita Aldama—preserved by Josefina Muñoz Aldama—bring to life both traditional and autobiographical stories. Highlights include Gato Montes (Mountain Lion) and Cuatro de Octubre (Fourth of October), narrated by Jovita and translated by Zerefina.

What makes this book especially important is its trilingual format, which mirrors the complex linguistic landscape of today’s Kumeyaay communities. While Kumeyaay people in the U.S. often speak English, and those in Mexico mostly speak Spanish, Kumeyaay remains the shared heartbeat that connects them all.

Footsteps From The Past Into The Future: Kumeyaay Stories of Baja California

Footsteps From The Past Into The Future is not only a cultural preservation project, it's an invitation. An invitation to listen, to learn, and to witness Indigenous voices reclaiming their stories in their own words.

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ISBN-10: 193853784X

ISBN-13: 978-1938537844

Reinventing Poetry After the War: Guillermo de Torre’s Propellers

By SAFIYA MOHAMED

Propellers

Propellers: A New English Translation of Guillermo de Torre’s Hélices, translated by Willard Bohn and co-edited by Daniele Corsi, brings a groundbreaking work of European avant-garde poetry to English-language readers for the first time in nearly a century. Written between 1918 and 1922, these poems explode with the energy, urgency, and experimentation of the post–World War I period; drawing from Italian Futurism, French and Chilean Creationism, and the radical vision of Spain’s Ultraist movement.

De Torre, co-founder of Ultraism and a towering figure in the Spanish avant-garde, famously declared, “Motors sound better than hendecasyllables.” In Propellers, first published in 1923, he set out to reinvent poetry for the machine age. The result is a visually stunning collection that merges text and design through what he called his “spatial propeller procedure,” in which words radiate across the page like the blades of a spinning engine. These kinetic poems challenge linear reading and invite readers to engage with poetry as a visual, spatial experience. 

Propellers

This new edition stays true to the radical spirit of the original. Bohn and Corsi not only preserve de Torre’s bold typography but also offer sharp, illuminating commentary that situates the work within its rich artistic context. The poems pulse with a fascination for speed, technology, and modernity—qualities inherited from Futurism—but also resonate with the inventive power of Creationism, where the poet is not a mirror of reality but a maker of new worlds. 

With Propellers, readers are invited into a thrilling moment in literary history—when poetry took flight, shattered conventions, and captured the rhythm of a world in motion.

Propellers

Propellers

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ISBN-10: 0916304116
ISBN-13: 978-0916304119

What "How the West Was Juan" Can Teach Us About Connection, Culture, and Opportunity

By SAFIYA MOHAMED

How the West Was Juan

What if we’ve been looking at the U.S.-Mexico border all wrong? In How the West Was Juan: Reimagining the U.S.-Mexico Border, author and legal scholar Steven W. Bender offers a bold new perspective on one of the most contentious dividing lines in modern politics—not by digging into the usual debates, but by completely reframing the conversation. 

Bender introduces us to Alto Mexico—a sweeping region that includes present-day California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of several other U.S. states that were once part of Mexico. Rather than obsessing over fences and enforcement, Bender challenges us to consider the deep cultural, historical, and economic ties that still bind the U.S. and Mexico today. His message is clear: real progress lies not in separation, but in connection.

More than a history lesson, How the West Was Juan is a powerful meditation on identity, belonging, and shared legacy. Bender explores how Spanish language, Mexican heritage, and cross-border labor have shaped the American Southwest—not as something foreign, but as something foundational. This isn’t a book about “them.” It’s a story about us.

At a time when demographic shifts are transforming everything from politics to consumer behavior, How the West Was Juan offers a strategic lens for understanding what comes next. Bender makes a compelling case for viewing the Southwest as a zone of cultural convergence—where bilingual, bicultural realities are the norm, not the exception. It’s a must-read for anyone thinking about the future of community, immigration, or cultural storytelling in America.

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For readers interested in social justice, history, or inclusive policy, this book offers a refreshing alternative to the usual narratives of division. And for marketers, brand strategists, or cultural commentators, it’s a valuable guide to understanding the roots—and the future—of one of the most dynamic regions in the U.S.

How the West Was Juan doesn’t just reimagine a border. It invites us to reimagine the possibilities of connection, shared culture, and a more compassionate future.

“Regardless of who owns and governs the U.S. Southwest, we are inextricably bound with Mexico in history, culture, and economy. This text imagines a different border than the current configuration, but at bottom, our connected destiny suggests that we should worry less about locating, marking, and securing our national border with Mexico, and more about recognizing, celebrating, and strengthening our shared connections with Mexico and Mexicans.” — Steven W. Bender. 

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ISBN - 10: 1938537939

ISBN - 13: 978-1938537936

Beyond Memory and Words: Exploring Identity in They Made A List by Susan Letzler Cole

By SAFIYA MOHAMED

SDSU Press

They Made A List: A Memoir Beyond Memory by Susan Letzler Cole is a beautifully reflective journey through early language, memory, and the quiet power of parental attention. Rather than following a linear narrative, Cole’s memoir unfolds as a series of intimate meditations—lenses through which we glimpse not only a child’s early development but the enduring mystery of self-discovery. 

At the heart of the book is a lovingly compiled list of the author's first 200 words, meticulously recorded by her parents during the first ten and a half months of her life. Years after their passing, Cole uncovered these lists and embarked on a deeply personal quest: to discover which word came first. That search led her to profound questions—about identity, memory, and the very act of noticing.

"Why do I care about this list of my earliest words?" Cole asks. "Am I looking for myself? Am I looking for my parents, long dead, whom I might resurrect by these words? If I could peer into my first words, or the spaces between them, what would I know about my life? Do I learn that we shall never know enough about who we are, and why?"

They Made A List offers readers more than just a nostalgic look at babyhood. With baby snapshots, health records, parental notes, and tender reflections, it becomes a meditation on how we trace the threads of who we are—through language, love, and the fragments our caregivers leave behind.

Susan Letzler Cole is a professor of English and director of the Concentrations in Creative Writing and Dramatic Studies at Albertus Magnus College. She is also the author of several acclaimed works, including The Absent One, Directors in Rehearsal, Playwrights in Rehearsal, and Missing Alice: In Search of a Mother’s Voice. 

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ISBN-10 : 193853719X

ISBN-13 : 978-1938537196