Carol Spindel

I think of each of my books as an inquiry, a journey into a place I know very little about.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SACRED GROVE is a memoir of the year I spent living in a rural farm community in northern Ivory Coast, West Africa. The book was my way of sharing some of what I learned from the subsistence farmers who welcomed me and participated in my husband's research. IN THE SHADOW was selected as a New York Times Notable Book and has been taught in many university classes.

I wrote my second book, DANCING AT HALFTIME: SPORTS AND THE CONTROVERSY OVER AMERICAN INDIAN MASCOTS, to understand why American sports fans were so attached to team names, logos and performances based on imaginary Native Americans. This was a journey into the American collective imagination and into the history I never learned in school. Along the way I became an ally activist, working with Native rights and civil rights organizations to retire these stereotypes and I am proud of having written the resolution passed by the United States Commission on Civil Rights urging schools and universities to end the use of these mascots.

My forthcoming book, I GIVE YOU HALF THE ROAD, returns to Ivory Coast to tell that country's recent history through the lives of five ordinary people I have known since they were children. All five of my neighbors' children left their remote rural community and moved to cities just as a civil war split their country in two. I GIVE YOU HALF THE ROAD tells the story of how a stable country that embraced its diversity and welcomed immigrants was split apart into violent factions by self-seeking, exclusionary, anti-immigrant politicians --and how ordinary citizens took their country back by voting in one of the most remarkable elections anywhere. It's a cautionary tale for us all.

Since retiring from teaching nonfiction at the University of Illinois, I continue to teach writing workshops each summer at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, work as an ACLU activist, and have returned to an early love, hand building with clay. I live in Urbana, Illinois, with my husband, geographer Tom Bassett, and we have two grown children. As often as possible we spend time in our house in Ivory Coast.

My website is carolspindel.com