Chellis Glendinning – författare

Today''s global economy is yesterday''s empire. Imperialism in whatever guise is the same through time, penetrating every area of our lives, affecting whole cultures as well as the deep core of individuals. And maps have been the tools of empire, defining the territory to be exploited.

Off The Map is a unique exploration of globalization. Part history, part autobiography, and part fiction, it weaves together the history of the last 300 years of Western imperialism, the author''s own story of sexual abuse in the 1950s, and a present-day horseback ride through the recently colonized Chicano world of New Mexico. The author takes us with her as she travels ''off the map'' through the ancestral lands of her friend and traveling companion Snowflake Martinez, describing the Chicano people''s struggle to survive the onslaught of a globalized world, and the ways in which that struggle has been replicated countless times. In a different voice, she reveals scenes from her childhood, her grandparents adorning themselves with artifacts symbolic of the British Empire, and her medical doctor father raping both her and her brother for twelve years. The political is deeply personal. And hope, according to Glendinning, resides in our creating new maps that chart worlds fashioned by love and respect for community, place and nature.

"A dazzling contribution to the critical study of globalization (qua imperialism)." -- Devon Peña, author of Chicano Culture, Ecology, Politics: Subversive Kin

Its use as a narcotic is on a precipitous rise. Worldwide heroin production has doubled in the last decade, and the United Nations estimates more than 15 million users are addicted—up to 3 million in the United States. It’s big business, too, with yearly global sales of $500 billion—up to $22 billion in the U.S. Enmeshed with terrorism, crime, government collaboration, corporate globalization, and the spread of HIV, the opiate trade is inextricably entangled with the functioning of global society. Finally, heroin is controversial because of the on-going debates about solutions to the health, social and economic havoc it creates.Chiva uses creative nonfiction to merge the global epic of heroin trafficking with the human-scale story of its presence in the small desert town that boasts the most per-capita overdose deaths in the U.S. The book interweaves three themes:The true tale of Chimayó, New Mexico, terrorized by its heroin dealers since the 1970s until, in the late `90s, its citizens rose up to challenge the epidemic in their midst.The story of the author’s relationship with a local dealer, and his involvement with addiction, crime, love, recovery and the judicial system.The political context behind these stories: the global workings of the heroin production business.Compelling, disturbing, yet hopeful, Chiva is both personal and political, revealing the relationship between colonization and drug abuse, and the importance of reclaiming sustainable culture as a key to recovery.Chellis Glendinning, Ph.D, is a psychologist. An award-winning activist and writer, she is the author of four previous books, including Off the Map: An Expedition Deep into Empire and the Global Economy (New Society, 2002) which won the National Federation of Press Women 2000 book award for general nonfiction. She lives in Chimayó, New Mexico.

Meetings with remarkable activists since the 1960s American social change movements dominated the 1960s and 1970s, an era brought about and influenced not by a handful of celebrity activists but by people who cared. These history makers together transformed the political and spiritual landscape of America and laid the foundation for many of the social movements that exist today. Through a series of 43 vignettes—tight biographical sketches of the characters and intimate memories of her personal encounters with them—the author creates a collective portrait of the rebels, artists, radicals, and thinkers who through word and action raised many of the issues of justice, the environment, feminism, and colonialism that we are now familiar with. From Berkeley to Bolivia, from New York to New Mexico, a complex, multi-layered radical history unfolds through the stories and lives of the characters. From Marty Schiffenhauer, who fought through the first rent-control law in the United States, to Ponderosa Pine, who started the All-Species Parade and never wore shoes, to Dan and Patricia Ellsberg, who released the Pentagon Papers and became life-long anti-war and antinuclear activists, the portraits bring out some of the vibrant, irreverent energy, the unswerving commitment, and the passion for life of these generations of activists. In our present moment, as many people find themselves in the streets protesting for the first time in their lives, In the Company of Rebels makes the connection to this relatively recent rebellious era.As the author comments on her own twenty-year old self, sitting at the counter of Cody's Books in Berkeley in the early 1970s, thrilled about the times but oblivious of the work that came before: "I didn't know anything about this courageous and colorful past. But now I know."