Ronstadt book to explore her Mexican roots
Linda Ronstadt is penning a love letter to her Mexican American roots.
The 75yearold singer 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 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 Berkeley 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 10time Grammy winner and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame singer told The 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 nonEnglish albums in the U.S.
The forthcoming book will further push Ronstadt’s lifelong 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,” Ronstadt 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.”
“Feels Like Home” will expand on the theme of her musical memoir, “Simple Dreams,” which was published in 2013. The publisher said it will feature stories that Ronstadt has never before 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.
“Heaven to me is a long ride with Linda and Bill from Tucson into Mexico and down along the Rio Sonora,” Downes said. “There’s deep beauty and mystery in these borderlands, and those two know how to take you there. When you’re with them, you listen and learn, laugh and get hungry, and then you eat. If we could have done it, this book would have no words, just Linda’s voice, Bill’s photos, and plates of carne asada and frijoles and bottles of mescal bacanora.”