Students, staff, faculty, and members of the Northwest Arkansas community at large are warmly invited to a reading and Q&A with María Cristina Moroles, the author of the recently published memoir, Águila: The Vision, Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Two-Spirit Shaman in the Ozark Mountains. This event will take place at 6 PM in Giffels Auditorium (201) in Old Main at the University of Arkansas. María Cristina Moroles will lead a prayer with members of the Arco Iris Earth Care Project, read from the memoir, and answer questions about the book. There will be a reception to follow in the Latin American/Latino Studies (LALS) lounge in Old Main 203 with light refreshments and the opportunity to buy books from Más Libritos Bookstore.
For more information, and to register, click here.
This event is presented by the Multicultural Center, Mexican American Student Association, and the Latin American/Latino Studies program, with support from the Arco Iris Earth Care Project and Más Libritos.
In Águila: The Vision, Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Two-Spirit Shaman in the Ozark Mountains, María Cristina Moroles traces the path of her extraordinary life from the streets of Dallas to the wilderness of the Arkansas Ozarks, where she has resided for fifty years. Hailing from a large Indigenous and Mexican American family in Texas, Moroles apprentices herself to healers and shamans across the Americas as she follows the spiritual vision that leads her to establish a mountaintop sanctuary for women and children of color in a notoriously insular location in the Ozark Mountains. This is a survivor’s tale, and a back-to-the-lander’s tale, unlike any other. From early traumas to countercultural rebellion and profound spiritual awakening, Moroles recounts milestones that earn her the ceremonial names SunHawk and Águila, as she builds a sustainable community off the grid, atop a mountain otherwise uninhabited by human life. Águila tells the truth of one woman’s search for freedom and all women’s quest for dignity as it celebrates the healing powers of nature.
María Cristina Moroles is matriarch of Arco Iris, a healing sanctuary in the Ozark Mountains originally established for women and children of color and the queer community and now open to all people seeking healing. Moroles lives on the five-hundred-acre wilderness preserve in community with her children, Jennifer and Mario; visiting students; and other resident stewards. Also known by the ceremonial name Águila, she incorporates her Indigenous and Mexican American heritage in her work as a curandera, master massage therapist, and shaman. She is co-founder of the Arco Iris Earth Care Project.
Lauri Umansky teaches history and directs the Heritage Studies PhD Program at Arkansas State University. Her books include Motherhood Reconceived: Feminism and the Legacies of the Sixties, Naked Is the Best Disguise (pseud. Lauri Lewin), “Bad” Mothers: The Politics of Blame in Twentieth-Century America, Impossible to Hold: Women and Culture in the 1960s, and The New Disability History: American Perspectives.