SPIRIT RUN

Growing up in Raymond Carver country - Yakima, WA - Noé Álvarez worked at an apple-packing plant alongside his mother, who "slouched over a conveyor belt of fruit, shoulder to shoulder with mothers conditioned to believe this was all they could do with their lives." Escape came in the form of a university scholarship, but as a first-generation Latino college-goer, Álvarez struggled to fit in.

At nineteen, he learned about a Native American/First Nations movement called the Peace and Dignity Journeys, epic marathons meant to renew cultural connections across a North America older than its present political borders. He dropped out of school and joined a group of Dené, Secwépemc, Gitxsan, Dakelh, Apache, Tohono O'odham, Seri, Purépecha, and Maya runners, all fleeing difficult beginnings. Telling their stories alongside his own, Álvarez writes about a four-month-long journey that pushed him to his limits. He writes not only of overcoming hunger, thirst, and fear - dangers included stone-throwing motorists and a mountain lion - but also of asserting Indigenous and working-class humanity in a capitalist society where oil extraction, deforestation and substance-abuse wreck communities.

Running through mountains, deserts, and cities, and through the Mexican territory his parents left behind, Álvarez forges a new relationship with the land, and with the act of running, carrying with him the knowledge of his parents' migration, and - against all odds in a society which exploits his body and rejects his spirit - the dream of a liberated future.

Noé Álvarez holds degrees in philosophy and creative writing from Whitman and Emerson College, respectively. He's completed a fellowship at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, as well as conflict analysis, peacemaking, peace-building, and conflict resolution studies at American University in D.C. He studied U.S. Drug Policy, Military Aid, and Human Rights issues in Colombia's Putumayo region, and has met with the Zapatistas of Chiapas and interviewed parliamentary figures of North Ireland. He is a mixed-martial artist, a certified black belt, and has been published in the Washington Post.