Satisfying and cohesive, the essays in this volume focus on metaphorical and literal ideas of frontiers (as distinguished from borders, which many of the contributors consider limiting and disabling rather than flexible and generative). Taken together, the essays suggest that, for Lawrence, every literal frontier experience was a metaphorical one that enabled fruitful if also fraught encounters with otherness. Most ... Read moreessays focus on Lawrence's time in the American Southwest and Mexico in 1922-25. Among the topics are Lawrence's (reluctant) involvement in a campaign to help the Pueblo people in their struggle for land and water rights; his relationship to artists like Dorothy Brett and Georgia O'Keefe, who painted the southwestern landscape; his changing attitudes to the ceremonial dances of the Pueblo people; and his (well-intentioned but perhaps failed) reversal of the Christian conversion enterprise in The Plumed Serpent. This book provides a valuable reexamination of a misunderstood period in Lawrence's life. Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.
D. Stuber, Hendrix College
CHOICE, April 2011
Show Less