A few days after the United States launched Operation Epic Fury in Iran, the Border Patrol changed its policy on visits to the border wall, denying a church group permission to pray there, “for their own safety.”
Gunfights Gunfights Gunfights: A Podcast with Poet Logan Phillips
Logan Phillips was born in Tombstone, Arizona—a town best known for Old West-themed gunfight tourism. In his new book, Reckon, Phillips explores his relationship to the unusual setting of his childhood through themes of masculinity, history, and land.
Tombstone, Arizona calls itself “The Town too Tough to Die.” It has an Old West-themed Main Street and daily re-enactments of gunfights. For most people, it’s a place to briefly drop into in order to experience a Disneyland-style version of Arizona history.
For Logan Phillips, however, Tombstone was once home. The Tucson, Arizona-based poet was born in the town and grew up nearby. His father worked at the town’s Historic Courthouse Museum; his uncle was an actor in Westerns. Phillips’s new book, Reckon, out now from University of Arizona Press, examines what it means to be from a place that glorifies violent, colonial masculinity—and seeks to find a way forward though family, relationships to land, and reckoning with history.
In this episode of the Border Chronicle podcast, Caroline Tracey is joined by Phillips to discuss his new book and what it means to be born in the contemporary “Old West."
Reckon by Logan Phillips (Image: University of Arizona Press)
Historian and writer Lydia Otero on growing up in the borderlands, Tucson's racial and urban history, and their most recent book, Storied Property: María Cordova's Casa.
For years, Flores has served as an immigration policy advisor to Democrats at the national level, including President Biden. She talks about what went wrong, and what Democrats should be doing now.
Budd has investigated Border Patrol fatalities for years and the agency's efforts to cover up its crimes. Her work is now highlighted in a new documentary "Critical Incident: Death at the Border."