I Am a Stranger Here Myself

Title: I Am a Stranger Here Myself
Author: Debra Gwartney
Memoir: 1699544
ISBN: 9780826360717
Publisher: UNM Press
Published: 2019
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Edition: First Edition
Number of Pages: 296
Section: Literary Collections | Essays
Condition Note: Excellent, unmarked copy with little wear and tight binding. We ship in recyclable American-made mailers. 100% money-back guarantee on all orders.
Publisher Description:

Winner of the 2020 WILLA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction from Women Writing the West

Part history, part memoir, I Am a Stranger Here Myself taps dimensions of human yearning: the need to belong, the snarl of family history, and embracing womanhood in the patriarchal American West. Gwartney becomes fascinated with the missionary Narcissa Prentiss Whitman, the first Caucasian woman to cross the Rocky Mountains and one of fourteen people killed at the Whitman Mission in 1847 by Cayuse Indians. Whitman's role as a white woman drawn in to "settle" the West reflects the tough-as-nails women in Gwartney's own family. Arranged in four sections as a series of interlocking explorations and ruminations, Gwartney uses Whitman as a touchstone to spin a tightly woven narrative about identity, the power of womanhood, and coming to peace with one's most cherished place.