My Town

Overview

Incorporating short prose, photography, and poetry, this memoir celebrates Albuquerque, New Mexico, and recollects how the author’s life and the city itself were impacted by Cold War politics, the atomic bomb, McCarthyism, racism, and misogyny. Covering topics such as familial relationships, troubled marriage, lesbianism, and human rights activism, this collection also provides a poetic understanding of the region’s history and culture over the past half century. Politically charged, this account highlights inhumane government policies while recounting the history of this Southwestern town.

Reviews

“An elegy to place, history, and culture, to innocence (and ignorance) that have evolved to a macroscopic understanding of how the world works.†—John Nichols, author, The Milagro Beanfield War

“This memoir haunts me in the way that all fine and true writing does. My Town is a celebration of a woman’s fully-lived and courageous life, one not to be missed.†—Pamela Uschuk, author, Crazy Love

"Will resonate with anyone who has lived in New Mexico, anyone who came up in the 1950s, and many who did neither." —Lucy R. Lippard, author, The Lure of the Local

“Randall’s ingenuous poetry captures [a lonely woman] exploring space, shapes, light, people and coming of age experiences translated into the brail of a place unconscious of its cultural power and full of hypocrisy, hospitality, racism, and generosity.†—Maria Varela, New Mexico community organizer

"Margaret Randall's My Town is an exciting and genre-bending memoir from one of America's most prolific and socially conscious artists. Her blending of poetry, prose, and photography offers the reader multiple avenues through which to enter My Town's themes of memory and place." —Southwestern American Literature

Author Biography

Margaret Randall is a feminist poet, writer, photographer and social activist. She is the author of more than 80 books, including Sandino’s Daughters: Testimonies of Nicaraguan Women in Struggle, Stones Witness, and Their Backs to the Sea: Poems and Photographs. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. John Nichols is an iconic New Mexico novelist and the author of The Milagro Beanfield War. He lives in Taos, New Mexico.