Against the American Grain

Gary Paul Nabhan is a Lebanese American ecologist, agrarian activist, Ecumenical Franciscan Brother, and bilingual essayist whose work focuses primarily on the arid binational Southwest. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and an Utne Reader’s annual visionary award, and he is the author of thirty-two books, beginning with The Desert Smells Like Rain. His most recent book is Agave Spirits. He resides in Patagonia, Arizona, and Desemboque del Sur, Sonora.

“From this gallery of visionaries, rogues, dissidents, authors, and naturalists, a new American mythos begins to emerge.” - Thomas Hallock, author of Happy Neighborhood: Essays and Poems“With his lyrical biographies of mystics, activists, rabble-rousers, singers, trailblazers, and outlaws, Gary Paul Nabhan places the desert at the center of the ongoing struggle against colonialism, racism, and capitalism. He celebrates the spiritual and social gains of thinkers and dreamers who go ‘against the American grain.’” - Catherine Keyser, author of Artificial Color: Modern Food and Racial Fictions“Against the American Grain could not be more timely: it performs the complementary tasks of reminding us that the good fight is a lot less lonely when contemplated alongside the resistances of recent history, and that the true exception in the American identity lies in its running against the grain of all the -isms.” - Rubén Martínez, author of Desert America: A Journey through Our Most Divided Landscape