Salt in the Sand

“Salt in the Sand is a nuanced, thoughtful, and elegant book. . . . Frazier’s book speaks to broader issues of violence, memory, power, and politics. It will undoubtedly draw the keen interest of scholars across disciplines and geographic concentrations.” - Patrick Barr-Melej, EIAL

“[A] very solid monograph, and will be beneficial to professional historians and anthropologists alike, as well as graduate students. Indeed, this review of nation-state formation and the subjective uses of history comes at an appropriate time in world politics.” - Kim Richardson, Itinerario

“Could not have been timelier . . . [T]he material culled from [Frazier’s] oral history research and participant-observation with human rights groups makes for a gripping tale.” - William E. Skuban, The Americas

“Frazier has produced a fine and thought-provoking study that creatively engages issues of memory, violence, and power in the process of nation-state formation on Chile’s often neglected northern frontier.” - William E. Skuban, A Contracorriente

“Some of the points made by Frazier in regard to nation-building are, by now, commonly accepted by historians and social scientists. . . . There are, however, few Anglophone studies that analyse how such ideas play out in the Chilean experience, so Salt in the Sand is a welcome piece of scholarship, particularly given its richness of detail and its cross-cultural approach to history. The book also provides an insightful account of the state as a mediator of ‘national’ memories and helpfully underscores the fact that this state is not a homogenous whole. . . . [This is a] very accomplished work on nation-state formation and the politics of memory.” - Jo Crow, National Identities

“There is a lot to commend in this study. The author makes an important contribution to memory studies encompassing historical, political, sociological, and psychological aspects of collective memory and using a wide range of sources. . . . [T]he book provides an excellent analysis of Chilean memory and, especially, its political use. Any course on Chile and its transition to democracy should include the book in its reading list.” - Luis Valenzuela, Bulletin of Latin American Research

“This is a welcome and serious substantiation of the significance of emotion, soul, and heart that constitutes popular identification with, or rejection of, or outcry against the state.” - Katherine Hite, Latin American Politics and Society

“A path-breaking study of history and memory in Chile’s legendary nitrate north that ties together the massacres of miners in the early twentieth century and the human rights abuses of the Pinochet era. A highly original contribution to memory studies, gender studies, and Chilean history.” - Peter Winn, editor of Victims of the Chilean Miracle: Workers and Neoliberalism in the Pinochet Era, 1973–2002

“The hot winds of the Atacama desert in northern Chile have not succeeded in erasing what has become the territory of Lessie Jo Frazier’s Salt in the Sand, a book centered on the meanings of the deep memories of repression, massacres, and executions that contributed to the formation of Chilean popular identity. Well written and theoretically and historically original, Salt in the Sand reveals the continuous dialogue between events and subjectivities throughout the Chilean twentieth century.” - Francisco Zapata, El Colegio de México

“The modern Chilean state has been linked to violence since its inception, despite official historiography’s assertion that the 1973 coup and the Pinochet regime that followed were ‘aberrations’ in an otherwise democratic order favoring peace. Lessie Jo Frazier illuminates the competing uses of the past across cultural, racial, and class lines. Through her brilliant analysis of memory as a dynamic category employed by clashing collectivities, Frazier demonstrates how the use of memory in post-dictatorial regimes is not in and of itself liberating or new, but rather modeled on previous historical instances of remembering and forgetting.” - Licia Fiol-Matta, author of A Queer Mother for the Nation: The State and Gabriela Mistral