San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Ronstadt book to explore her heritage
Linda Ronstadt is penning a love letter to her Mexican American roots.
The singer, 75, has announced plans to publish “Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands,” a book that looks back on her early years living between Tucson, Ariz., and the Rio Sonora region of northern Mexico.
The book, a collaboration with writer Lawrence Downes and photographer Bill Steen set for release in fall 2022, will be made up of stories, photographs and recipes, according to its publisher, Heyday. It will also include watercolor illustrations by Ronstadt’s father, the late Gilbert Ronstadt.
“Because I’m lightskinned and I have a German surname, people don’t realize that is my background,” the 10-time Grammy winner and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame singer told the San Francisco Chronicle last year.
The granddaughter of a Mexican immigrant, Ronstadt
has drawn attention to her heritage throughout her career, most prominently with a run of albums devoted to traditional mariachi music released from 1987 to 2004 — some of the bestselling non-English albums in the U.S.
The book will advance Ronstadt’s mission of putting the spotlight on the music and people she grew up with along the border in the Sonoran Desert.
“There’s a Mexican story that isn’t often told about the desert and the families who live there,” she said in a statement. “It takes cooperation and ingenuity to survive and build a beautiful life in such a harsh environment. This is Arizona, where I was born, and Sonora, where my soul is anchored.”
The publisher said “Feels Like Home” will feature stories Ronstadt has never told in full about “her ancestors and her own freerange childhood in the 1950s and 1960s.” She also hopes to draw attention to the border politics that impact the lives of so many immigrants and refugees.