Diaz was born on the banks of the Colorado River and raised on the Fort Mojave Indian Reservation in western Arizona. She was a high school basketball superstar and later led Old Dominion University to the Final Four as a freshman point guard. She is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. She identifies as Mojave, Latina, and Queer.

All of this can be found in her award-winning collection. “Postcolonial Love Poem”

But most of all you will see Arizona. That is why “Love Poetry” becomes the featured text. “Big Lead Tucson” It starts next weekend.

The organizers invite us to read the book and attend an upcoming gathering to discuss Diaz’s poetry and the topics they explore.

The series will begin on Saturday, January 14th with a kickoff event from 9am to 12pm. mission garden946 W. Mission Lane.

The program is free and open to the public and features a variety of activities celebrating the power of storytelling and poetry in sharing cultural history.

Sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, Big Read Tucson is an all-reads community hosted by the University of Arizona.

Collaborators include UA’s College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and College of Education, Pima County Public Library, Literacy Connects, Make Way for Books, and other literary groups throughout Tucson.

UA’s core group of planners includes faculty members Sandra Soto, Carol Brochin, Leah Duran, and Cathy Short.

Big Read meetings are scheduled through April at libraries, schools and other local meeting places.

Diaz herself will be attending the Tucson Festival of Books on March 5th. She will perform on stage at her Daily Star in Arizona at 1 p.m. She will also give a reading on the Western National Park Stage at 4pm. Tucson Tome Nome Copies of “Postcolonial Love Poem” will be hidden around the UA campus that day.

Short, director of UA’s Worlds of Words Center, is pleased to see “Love Poem” on the list of eligible books for the National Endowment for the Arts.

“If this is an all-reading community, we wanted to pick something that could connect us all, including our children,” she said. It’s one of the genres. Kids can come with their grandparents.”

Brochin likes the fact that Diaz is Arizonan and writes about issues that resonate more than ever.

“Natalie represents a lot of our condition today,” Brochin said. What can we do about these things in our own communities?”

Clearly, Diaz’s perspective is unique. Not only did she grow up on the Fort Mojave Reservation, she lives back in the Mojave Valley.

“Postcolonial Love Poems” covers many areas, from the bitter history of displacement of indigenous peoples to the many challenges facing people today. Diaz footnotes on history, science, nature, addiction, mental health, and Native American mysticism. Three of her poems are about basketball.

However, one theme running through the collection is water. In “The First Water is the Body,” Diaz describes the Mojave belief that the waters of the Colorado River flow through members of the tribe from the day of conception to the day of their death.

In “How the Milky Way Was Made”, I imagine myself lifting fish and animals out of rivers and placing them in the sky to alleviate the suffering caused by polluted water.

The collection concludes with “Grief Work”. In it, Diaz and her partner are submerged in a river. When they show up, they feel “clean and good.”

“Water and future water availability are probably the most important issues in the state today,” says Brochin.

For children who may not be ready to tackle the adult themes covered in Love Poems, Big Read Tucson’s planners have selected relevant texts. “We are guardians of water” A Caldecott Award-winning picture book by author Carol Lindstrom and illustrator Mikaela Gorde.

It also provides an indigenous perspective on water. In Ojibwe culture, women are the guardians of water and men are the guardians of fire. The Earth is threatened by Black Snakes. Blacksnake is now interpreted as an oil pipeline crossing aboriginal lands.

On the final page of the book, readers are asked to sign the “Guardian of Earth and Water” pledge.

Big Read Tucson will be the NEA All-Read for the third time in the last 11 years. In 2015-2016 Literacy Connects sponsored Big Read honoring Edgar Allan Poe. In 2011-2012, Kole Press published “Love Letters to Emily Dickinson”.

National Foundation for the Arts awards dozens of Big Read grants each year to organizations interested in contributing all their reading to the community. This year’s prize was $20,000 to purchase the book and stage the Big Read program.

Big Read Tucson is one of 62 all-read programs taking place across the United States this year. Two are served in Arizona. Graham County Library in Safford “bear” By Andrew Kulibak.

author Tom Miller He was remembered as the man who opened doors wherever he went at a memorial service held Monday morning at the Hudgel funeral home. died on December 19 at the age of 75. I heard “mean”. But Miller’s occasional moodiness couldn’t hide his big heart and his complete acceptance of everyone he’d ever met. said one. “He respected everyone and wanted his story to bring them justice.”