Why am I passionate about this?
Growing up in Alberta, Canada, I spent many summer days at the Calgary Stampede, where I became familiar with the idea of the Wild West. We would don our cowboy hats and trek to the fairgrounds to watch bucking horses and chuckwagon races. Thus began my obsession with popular westerns. I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation on the subject, and I still teach courses and write books about various aspects of the popular West. As a bit of an outsider myself, I especially love Westerns by folks on the margins, without a lot of power. Their takes on the West are always quirky and surprising. I hope you agree!
Victoria's book list on changing how you think about the Western
Why did Victoria love this book?
I love reading books by authors from the margins like Nat Love, who started life enslaved and later adopted a persona as a black cowboy outlaw.
His autobiography surprised me by combining elements of slave narratives, popular Westerns, and travel narratives. The result is a kind of crazy quilt of different personalities that Nat takes on as he moves from slave to cowboy to railroad porter.
I come from a working-class background, so I admire how authors like Nat have to be resourceful and reinvent themselves to survive and tell their own stories in a world where they have little power.
1 author picked Life and Adventures of Nat Love as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.
This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thankā¦