Cover image for Spirit run : a 6,000-mile marathon through North America's stolen land
Spirit run : a 6,000-mile marathon through North America's stolen land
Title:
Spirit run : a 6,000-mile marathon through North America's stolen land
ISBN:
9781948226462
Physical Description:
xviii, 218 pages ; 22 cm
Summary:
"Growing up in Yakima, Washington, Noé Álvarez worked at an apple-packing plant alongside his mother, who “slouched over a conveyor belt of fruit, shoulder to shoulder with mothers conditioned to believe this was all they could do with their lives.” A university scholarship offered escape, but as a first-generation Latino college-goer, Álvarez struggled to fit in. At nineteen, he learned about a Native American/First Nations movement called the Peace and Dignity Journeys, epic marathons meant to renew cultural connections across North America. He dropped out of school and joined a group of Dené, Secwépemc, Gitxsan, Dakelh, Apache, Tohono Oodham, Seri, Purépecha, and Maya runners, all fleeing difficult beginnings. Telling their stories alongside his own, Álvarez writes about a four-month-long journey from Canada to Guatemala that pushed him to his limits. He writes not only of overcoming hunger, thirst, and feardangers included stone-throwing motorists and a mountain lionbut also of asserting Indigenous and working-class humanity in a capitalist society where oil extraction, deforestation, and substance abuse wreck communities. Running through mountains, deserts, and cities, and through the Mexican territory his parents left behind, Álvarez forges a new relationship with the land, and with the act of running, carrying with him the knowledge of his parents migration, andagainst all odds in a society that exploits his body and rejects his spiritthe dream of a liberated future."--Amazon.com.
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