front cover of Making Collaboration Work
Making Collaboration Work
Lessons From Innovation In Natural Resource Managment
Julia M. Wondolleck and Steven L. Yaffee
Island Press, 2000

Across the United States, diverse groups are turning away from confrontation and toward collaboration in an attempt to tackle some of our nation's most intractable environmental problems. Government agencies, community groups, businesses, and private individuals have begun working together to solve common problems, resolve conflicts, and develop forward-thinking strategies for moving in a more sustainable direction.

Making Collaboration Work examines those promising efforts. With a decade of research behind them, the authors offer an invaluable set of lessons on the role of collaboration in natural resource management and how to make it work. The book:

  • explains why collaboration is an essential component of resource management
  • describes barriers that must be understood and overcome
  • presents eight themes that characterize successful efforts
  • details the specific ways that groups can use those themes to achieve success
  • provides advice on how to ensure accountability
Drawing on lessons from nearly two hundred cases from around the country, the authors describe the experience in practical terms and offer specific advice for agencies and individuals interested in pursuing a collaborative approach. The images of success offered can provide ideas to those mired in traditional management styles and empower those seeking new approaches. While many of the examples involve natural resource professionals, the lessons hold true in a variety of public policy settings including public health, social services, and environmental protection, among others.

Making Collaboration Work will be an invaluable source of ideas and inspiration for policy makers, managers and staff of government agencies and nongovernmental organizations, and community groups searching for more productive modes of interaction.

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The Making of a Chicano Militant
Lessons from Cristal
Jose Angel Gutierrez
University of Wisconsin Press, 1999

    Texas, for years, was a one-party state controlled by white democrats. In 1962, a young eighteen-year-old heard the first rumblings of Chicano community organization in the barrios of Cristal. The rumor in the town was that five Mexican Americans were going to run for all five seats on the city council. But first, poor citizens had to find a way to pay the $1.75 poll tax. Money had to be raised—through bake sales of tamales, cake walks, and dances. So began the political activism of José Angel Gutiérrez.
    Gutiérrez's autobiography, The Making of a Chicano Militant, is the first insider's view of the important political and social events within the Mexican American communities in South Texas during the 1960s and 1970s. A controversial and dynamic political figure during the height of the Chicano movement, Gutiérrez offers an absorbing personal account of his life at the forefront of the Mexican-American civil rights movement—first as a Chicano and then as a militant.
    Gutiérrez traces the racial, ethnic, economic, and social prejudices facing Chicanos with powerful scenes from his own life: his first summer job as a tortilla maker at the age of eleven, his racially motivated kidnapping as a teenager, and his coming of age in the face of discrimination as a radical organizer in college and graduate school. When Gutiérrez finally returned to Cristal, he helped form the Mexican American Youth Organization and, subsequently the Raza Unida Party to confront issues of ethnic intolerance in his community. His story is soon to be a classic in the developing literature of Mexican American leaders.

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Master Class
Lessons from Leading Writers
Nancy Bunge
University of Iowa Press, 2005

Master Class: Lessons from Leading Writers gathers more than two decades of wisdom from twenty-nine accomplished authors. It offers previously unpublished interviews along with freshly edited versions of ten interviews from Nancy Bunge's well-received previous collection, Finding the Words. The first section, Theory, incorporates interviews which document the golden age of writing programs in which authors with a strong sense of social and cultural responsibility taught as seriously as they wrote. These conversations delve into the writers' philosophies and teaching methods. The second section, Practice, presents interviews with authors who discuss how they've approached the writing of particular works. Altogether the interviews introduce authors as inspirational models and provide insightful techniques for other writers to try. One piece of advice recurs with striking consistency: to produce fresh, interesting work, aspiring writers must develop a passionate self-trust. This rule has an essential corollary: improving as a writer means constantly stretching oneself with new information and skills. Sure to interest writing and literature teachers as well as writers at every stage of development, Master Class is highly recommended for undergraduate and graduate writing courses.

Interviews with Marvin Bell, Ivan Doig, Sandra Gilbert, Allen Ginsberg, Donald Hall, Jim Harrison, Etheridge Knight, Margot Livesey, Larry McMurtry, James Alan McPherson, Clarence Major, Bobbie Ann Mason, Sue Miller, N. Scott Momaday, Kyoko Mori, Thylias Moss, W. S. Penn, Kit Reed, Alix Kates Shulman, William Stafford, Wallace Stegner, Ruth Stone, Scott Turow, Katherine Vaz, Diane Wakoski, Anne Waldman, Richard Wilbur, Richard Yates, and Helen Yglesias.

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Medicine Trail
The Life and Lessons of Gladys Tantaquidgeon
Melissa Jayne Fawcett
University of Arizona Press, 2000

Contrary to the fictional account of James Fenimore Cooper, the Mohegan/Mohican nation did not vanish with the death of Chief Uncas more than three hundred years ago. In the remarkable life story of one of its most beloved matriarchs—100-year-old medicine woman Gladys Tantaquidgeon—Medicine Trail tells of the Mohegans' survival into this century.

Blending autobiography and history, with traditional knowledge and ways of life, Medicine Trail presents a collage of events in Tantaquidgeon's life. We see her childhood spent learning Mohegan ceremonies and healing methods at the hands of her tribal grandmothers, and her Ivy League education and career in the white male-dominated field of anthropology. We also witness her travels to other Indian communities, acting as both an ambassador of her own tribe and an employee of the federal government's Bureau of Indian Affairs. Finally we see Tantaquidgeon's return to her beloved Mohegan Hill, where she cofounded America's oldest Indian-run museum, carrying on her life's commitment to good medicine and the cultural continuance and renewal of all Indian nations.

Written in the Mohegan oral tradition, this book offers a unique insider's understanding of Mohegan and other Native American cultures while discussing the major policies and trends that have affected people throughout Indian Country in the twentieth century. A significant departure from traditional anthropological "as told to" American Indian autobiography, Medicine Trail represents a major contribution to anthropology, history, theology, women's studies, and Native American studies.

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My Mother's Hip
Lessons From The World Of Eldercare
Luisa Margolies
Temple University Press, 2004
Some 400,000 hip fractures occur every year, the vast majority among the elderly; all too often these fractures are associated with death or severe disability. After her mother's double hip fracture, Luisa Margolies immersed herself in identifying and coordinating the services and professionals needed to provide critical care for an elderly person. She soon realized that the American medical system is ill prepared to deal with the long-term care needs of our graying society. The heart of My Mother's Hip is taken up with the author's day-to-day observations as her mother's condition worsened, then improved only to worsen again, while her father became increasingly anxious and disoriented. As both a devoted daughter and a skilled anthropologist, Margolies vividly renders her interactions with physicians, nurses, hospital workers, nursing home administrators, the Medicare bureaucracy, home care providers, and her parents. In the Lessons chapter that follows each episode, she discusses in a broader context the weighty decisions that adult children must make on their parents' behalf and the emotional toll their responsibility takes. Here she addresses the complex practical issues that commonly arise in such situations: understanding the consequences of hip fracture and its treatment, preparing health care proxies and advanced directives, enabling elders to remain at home, and the heartbreaking dilemma of prolonging life. Like many adult children, Margolies learned her lessons about eldercare in the midst of crises. This book is intended to ease the information-gathering and decision-making processes for others involved in eldercare.
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