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Prescott Valley Public Library

Lee Wee Kwon, Chinese Grocer in Tucson, 1917-1965 – Prescott Valley

Prescott Valley Public Library 7401 E Skoog Blvd, Prescott Valley, AZ, United States

Lee Wee Kwon, Chinese Grocer in Tucson, 1917-1965 The Chinese had once dominated Tucson’s grocery business. Lee Wee Kwon was among the successful Chinese grocers whose business relied on the patronage of a Hispanic clientele. Lee entered the US as a refugee from Mexican Revolution. Before he came to Tucson, he had lived and worked... Read More

Free

Smitten By Stone: How We Came to Love the Grand Canyon – Prescott Valley

Prescott Valley Public Library 7401 E Skoog Blvd, Prescott Valley, AZ, United States

In spite of being one of the “Seven Natural Wonders of the World,” humans have not always seen the Grand Canyon in a positive light. First seen by Europeans in the year 1540, the canyon was not comprehended easily. Throughout the entire exploratory era, lasting nearly 320 years, conquistadores, explorers, trappers and miners viewed the... Read More

Free

Recurring

Día de los Muertos: A Celebration of Life and Death

Prescott Valley Public Library 7401 E Skoog Blvd, Prescott Valley, AZ, United States

What is Día de los Muertos? Where did it come from, what are its roots? How do we celebrate it here in the U.S.? Día los Muertos or Days of the Dead is a significant and highly celebrated holiday in Mexico, Latin America, and Southwestern U.S. To understand Día de los Muertos one has to... Read More

Free

Riding with the Duke: John Wayne in Arizona

Prescott Valley Public Library 7401 E Skoog Blvd, Prescott Valley, AZ, United States

John Wayne was born in Iowa and lived for most of his adult life in California. Yet, he spent many years exploring, living, and investing in Arizona, where he produced his own films, raised cattle, operated a game ranch, and was seemingly everywhere at once. Wayne remains an iconic presence in American popular culture. In... Read More

Free

Honky Tonks, Brothels and Mining Camps: Entertainment in Old Arizona

Prescott Valley Public Library 7401 E Skoog Blvd, Prescott Valley, AZ, United States

In pioneer Arizona, among the best places to experience the performing arts were in the mining towns. Striking it rich meant having disposable income and miners, like the well-heeled of the Gilded Age, wanted to demonstrate their sophistication with culture. From the early popular music of ragtime and minstrelsy during the forming of these communities... Read More

Free

Telling It Like It Was: Interviews with Arizona Pioneer Women

Prescott Valley Public Library 7401 E Skoog Blvd, Prescott Valley, AZ, United States

During the Depression the Federal Writers Project conducted interviews with over 144 women who arrived in the Territory between 1850 and 1890. The women spoke of their long and dangerous journeys, and with their words paint pictures of the hardships and life threatening situations of their frontier existence. Through hard work, dedication, tenacity and humor... Read More

Free

Art of the Internment Camps: Culture Behind Barbed Wire

Prescott Valley Public Library 7401 E Skoog Blvd, Prescott Valley, AZ, United States

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1942 WWII Executive Order 9066 forced the removal of nearly 125,000 Japanese-American citizens from the west coast, incarcerating them in ten remote internment camps in seven states: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. Government photographers Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, and Ansel Adams documented the internment, and artists Toyo Miyatake,... Read More

Free

Music’s Healing Power

Prescott Valley Public Library 7401 E Skoog Blvd, Prescott Valley, AZ, United States

We have used music to aid healing but only recently have we understood how it works. Music has always been intricately involved in cultures, from lullabies to dirges, work songs to war songs, entertainment to music’s profound role in spiritual expression. There is no culture without it. Thought to have the power to heal the... Read More

Free

A Story, A Story: African and African American Oral Tradition and Storytelling

Prescott Valley Public Library 7401 E Skoog Blvd, Prescott Valley, AZ, United States

When the African slave was brought to the Caribbean and North and South America, s/he brought her oral literature and performance style.  This presentation focuses on the transfer of those oral traditions from African culture to African American culture. Such traditions can be heard in trickster stories, but also observed in the narration of myths,... Read More

Free

The Food of Arizona: Many Cultures, Many Flavors

Prescott Valley Public Library 7401 E Skoog Blvd, Prescott Valley, AZ, United States

Consider the taco, that favorite treat, a staple of Mexican and Mexican American cooking and an old standby on an Arizonan’s plate. The corn in the tortilla comes from Mexico, the cheese from the Sahara, the lettuce from Egypt, the onion from Syria, the tomatoes from South America, the chicken from Indochina, the beef from... Read More

Free