Nelson's Latest novel gains critical acclaim
 | Antonya Nelson's latest novel, Nobody's Girl, has received
high
praise from critics since its release in the spring.
An NMSU associate professor of English, Nelson is an award-winning writer whose first novel, Talking In Bed, won the 1996 Heartland Award for Fiction. She also has published three collections of short stories, including The Expendables, winner of a Flannery O'Connor Award. In Nobody's Girl, "Nelson adroitly illuminates our unending struggle to understand ourselves and our often bewildering relationships with family, friends, and lovers," wrote Donna Seamon for Booklist. |
According to Publisher's Weekly, "The easy rhythms of her prose, her eye for telling detail and evocative description, the zesty candor of her humor and her rueful but compassionate assessment of the ironies of the human condition make her second novel (after Talking in Bed) a delight to read."
As Nobody's Girl begins, protagonist Birdy Stone is completing her second year teaching high school English in fictional Pinetop, N.M., but she has yet to bond with the locals. Her only buddy is another young teacher, Jesus Morales, who is gay.
Nelson said she had a good time writing about the 29-year-old Birdy, a smart-alecky Chicago native who sees Pinetop - an old mining town on the decline - as a career pit stop.
Birdy views Pinetop and its citizens with a jaded eye and sharp sense of humor. To her, an Anasazi cave entrance near town resembles "the mouth of a muppet."
"I liked the third person voice. It's jokey and hard-edged," Nelson said.
Estranged from her father and sister, Birdy grieves over her mother's death from cancer. As a diversion, she agrees to edit the sprawling, sentimental autobiography of Isadora Anthony, a widow who lost her teenage daughter as well as her husband years ago. Birdy, who abhors sentimentality, approaches the deaths as unsolved mysteries and sets out find out the truth.
"I wanted to toy with the mystery genre, to deny the sense of closure of mysteries and to acknowledge that the genre is hollow," Nelson said. "I wanted this mystery to be so complex you can't know the truth." New York Times Book Review critic Suzanne Ruta observed, "Birdy is a grieving, bereft daughter. Hapless Mrs. Anthony - in a powerful showdown - reveals herself as a tragically bereft mother. The real passion in this novel is between mothers and daughters."
As Birdy corrects Mrs. Anthony's grammar and punctuation, she begins an affair with the woman's son, who is one of Birdy's students. Although Birdy's passion for a boy 12 years her junior may shock some readers, writers should investigate taboos, Nelson said. What people are willing to risk for passion - a topic that makes headlines in the media - is a compelling subject for fiction, she said.
Redbook magazine in January published a short story by Nelson titled "The Man She Can't Give Up. In a review of Nobody's Girl in Redbook, Alissa MacMillan noted, "With humor and a remarkably striking voice, Nelson takes us on more than an escapade; it's a journey into a deeply mysterious and moving world you'll be sorry to leave."
Nobody's Girl, published by Scribner, is available in hardcover for $22 at the NMSU Bookstore and bookstores throughout the country.
Rita A. Popp, '93
Hispanic Dropout Project vows 'No More Excuses'
Parents, teachers, students, school districts and community leaders all had them: excuses for why 30 to 35 percent of the nation's Hispanic students drop out of school.
NMSU's Rudolfo Chavez-Chavez and six colleagues from other universities spent two years studying the Hispanic dropout problem and titled their final report, "No More Excuses." "Overall, we found a lot of people making excuses for the high dropout rate among Hispanic students," said Chavez, a professor of curriculum and instruction. "People were more than willing to give excuses rather than ask what they could do to remedy the problem."
As part of their research into why Hispanic students tend to drop out of high school at 3.5 times the rate of white non-Hispanic students, Chavez and others in the Hispanic Dropout Project held open hearings in 10 cities. Included in the study were Las Cruces and Albuquerque in New Mexico; Houston and San Antonio in Texas; Los Angeles, San Diego and Calexico in California; Toledo, Ohio; Miami and New York. More than 300 people attended the forums.
The researchers found that parents blamed the schools, students blamed the teachers, teachers blamed the students and school administrators, and school districts cited the lack of qualified staff and an uncooperative community.
"We heard all the imaginable excuses," Chavez said. It got to the point where we didn't want to hear any more. It seemed that everyone was blaming someone else for the problem and nobody was doing anything about it."
The group did find a few bright spots or "pockets of hope" where Hispanic students excelled in school. One such school was in Calexico, Calif., where the dropout rate was less than two percent. "We learned that when Latino and Latina students are supported and held to high expectations, then they succeed in the classroom," Chavez said. "When teachers are supported by their administration and use Hispanic students' cultural and linguistic experiences to make learning meaningful, then students succeed. And, when schools treat parents with respect and dignity, then the students succeed."
The report made several recommendations, including:
"What became very clear to us was that we were dealing with a political machine," Chavez said. "The schools and communities have to care about, and address the needs of, all their students. And if they do that, then all their students, including their Hispanic students, are going to be successful."
The Hispanic Dropout Project was initiated by U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley. Because the project is not a federal commission, its members were not invited to make recommendations addressed to Congress. But, Chavez said, project members are hopeful that many of the recommendations will be implemented by federal, state and local governments, school districts and others interested in the welfare of Hispanic students.
Dan Trujillo, '92