Spirit Run: A 6,000-Mile Marathon Through North America's Stolen Land

by Alvarez, Noe
3.2 out of 5 Customer Rating
ISBN: 9781646220533
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Used - Trade Paperback - 9781646220533

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Overview

The son of working-class Mexican immigrants flees a life of labor in fruit-packing plants to run in a Native American marathon from Canada to Guatemala in this "stunning memoir that moves to the rhythm of feet, labor, and the many landscapes of the Americas" (Catriona Menzies-Pike, author of The Long Run).

Growing up in Yakima, Washington, No lvarez worked at an apple-packing plant alongside his mother, who "slouched over a conveyor belt of fruit, shoulder to shoulder with mothers conditioned to believe this was all they could do with their lives." A university scholarship offered escape, but as a first-generation Latino college-goer, lvarez struggled to fit in.

At nineteen, he learned about a Native American/First Nations movement called the Peace and Dignity Journeys, epic marathons meant to renew cultural connections across North America. He dropped out of school and joined a group of Den , Secw pemc, Gitxsan, Dakelh, Apache, Tohono O'odham, Seri, Pur pecha, and Maya runners, all fleeing difficult beginnings. Telling their stories alongside his own, lvarez writes about a four-month-long journey from Canada to Guatemala that pushed him to his limits. He writes not only of overcoming hunger, thirst, and fear--dangers included stone-throwing motorists and a mountain lion--but also of asserting Indigenous and working-class humanity in a capitalist society where oil extraction, deforestation, and substance abuse wreck communities.

Running through mountains, deserts, and cities, and through the Mexican territory his parents left behind, lvarez forges a new relationship with the land, and with the act of running, carrying with him the knowledge of his parents' migration, and--against all odds in a society that exploits his body and rejects his spirit--the dream of a liberated future.

  • Format: TradePaperback
  • Author: Alvarez, Noe
  • ISBN: 9781646220533
  • Condition: Used
  • Dimensions: 8.20 x 0.80
  • Number Of Pages: 240
  • Publication Year: 2021

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