Cowboys and East Indians: Stories
Cowboys and East Indians: Stories
Cowboys and East Indians: Stories
Description
Description
Set in Wyoming and India, the stories in Cowboys and East Indians explore the immigrant experience and collisions of cultures in the American West as seen through the eyes of outsiders. From Indian motel owners to a kleptomaniac foreign exchange student, a cross-dressing sari-wearing cowboy to oil-rig workers, an adopted cowgirl to a medical tourist in India - the characters in these stories are lonely and are looking for connection, and yet they can also be problematic and aggressive in order to survive in an isolated landscape. These stories focus on the not-often-mentioned rural immigrant experience. For these characters, identity is shaped not just by personal history but by place, the very land they live on.
About the Author
About the Author
NINA McCONIGLEY is the author of the story collection Cowboys and East Indians, which was the winner of the PEN/Open Book Award and the High Plains Book Award. She has received grants and fellowships from the NEA, the Radcliffe Institute, Bread Loaf, Vermont Studio Center, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference. She was a recipient of the Wyoming Arts Council's Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Writing Award and a finalist for a National Magazine Award for her columns in High Country News. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, Orion, O: The Oprah Magazine, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Salon, among other outlets. Born in Singapore and raised in Wyoming, she now lives in Colorado.
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
"McConigley's deft prose takes people who don't quite fit, who are not supposed to fit, and makes them part of the landscape. . . . McConigley writes about Wyoming with the same mythic nostalgia that many Southern writers write about the South."
--Los Angeles Review of Books "In Cowboys and East Indians, Nina McConigley gives us Wyoming precisely the way we expect it--in landscape, sky, and animal life--and in ways we don't. The inhabitants of this surprising, thrilling, and richly textured short story collection are unpredictable, both in their actions and identities. . . . A work destined to be a classic, like Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. Its characters--Indians in America, Americans in India, and Indian-Americans in both places--echo Vonnegut's statement that 'Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.' It's electrifying to be out on the edge with this book."
--Judge's Citation, 2014 PEN Open Book Award "You don't often read a book that shows you the world you think you know in a wholly unexpected light. Nina McConigley, a wonderful young writer, has given us a fresh and wise view of a new world--at turns delightful and sad, but surprising at every turn. I love this work, and I know it begins a fine career. Highly recommended."
--Luis Alberto Urrea, author of Queen of America and The Devil's Highway "In this collection, McConigley understands the ways in which a place can unsteady and also shape us, and the stories reveal such grace and understated power that you know you are in the presence of an incredible new voice in fiction. And, like the best writers, she knows the exact moment to let wildness rush into the story and ruin us. I loved this book, every story a perfect piece of an amazing landscape."
--Kevin Wilson, author of Nothing to See Here "In her captivating debut story collection, Casper-raised author Nina McConigley examines with wit and empathy what it means to be 'the wrong kind of Indians living in Wyoming.' . . . As in all great fiction, McConigley has delved into the particular and emerged with genuine stories that touch on the universal."
--High Country News "Brave and compelling. . . . What is most admirable is how deftly McConigley shows that even those who never feel as if they fit in somehow develop just as strong a connection to the West as anyone else."
--Billings Gazette "Beautiful, startling, poignant, Nina McConigley's stories invite us into a seldom-depicted landscape, peopled by characters we'll remember a long time, transfixed as they are between worlds, and racked by unnamable desires."
--Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, author of Oleander Girl "McConigley is a painter of many landscape. . . . With detail and wit, McConigley portrays the Western world through the eyes of Hindus and Christians, vegetarians and meat eaters."
--Bustle "McConigley, who hails from Casper, Wyoming, expands the canonical voice of the prairie to spotlight the South Asians who have called the state home for decades."
--Electric Literature "We need more books like Cowboys and East Indians, which engage our collective humanity through humor and pathos, rather than exploit our most superficial cultural differences. During a time when issues of identity, race and ethnicity can be divisive, McConigley's stories clear new paths into the human heart."
--India Currents Magazine
"McConigley is both empathetic towards her characters and able to memorably evoke their personalities through quirks of dialogue. It's a fine debut."
--Vol. 1 Brooklyn
"Nina McConigley crafts out of the Wyoming landscape a West few readers have known before--a place where, when you don't look like everyone else, there aren't many places to hide. And yet anyone who has ever felt a complicated kind of love for home, country, and family will find pleasure and wisdom in these stunning stories."
--Eleanor Henderson, author of Ten Thousand Saints "Shove aside Louis L'Amour and Leslie Silko and make room on the shelf for Nina Swamidoss McConigley, who stakes her distinctive claim to the American West in this moving collection of stories that will hold you rapt with their humor and danger and sadness and fresh-eyed take on cultural, familial, geographic identity."
--Benjamin Percy, author of The Dead Lands "What I love about this collection of stories is its wit and warmth. McConigley's characters are 'the wrong kind of Indians living in Wyoming, ' and their struggles as exoticized and denigrated community members could be, in a less interesting writer's hands, yet another scolding tract on America's guilty conscience. Instead, this book celebrates human pluck and humor, a new sensibility for a new time, when everyone is both at home and utt erly alien in the contemporary American west. A terrific read."
--Antonya Nelson, author of Bound "In these moving, emotionally complex stories, Nina McConigley gives us a world within a world most people don't even know exists. That world exists here, vividly so, and this writer's wise, wry, and savvy narrators deliver it to us in surprisingly rich and varied ways. This is an excellent debut. McConigley is a wonderful writer."
--Brad Watson, author of Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives
"A vital and unique perspective on the American experience."
--Htmlgiant.com
--Los Angeles Review of Books "In Cowboys and East Indians, Nina McConigley gives us Wyoming precisely the way we expect it--in landscape, sky, and animal life--and in ways we don't. The inhabitants of this surprising, thrilling, and richly textured short story collection are unpredictable, both in their actions and identities. . . . A work destined to be a classic, like Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. Its characters--Indians in America, Americans in India, and Indian-Americans in both places--echo Vonnegut's statement that 'Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.' It's electrifying to be out on the edge with this book."
--Judge's Citation, 2014 PEN Open Book Award "You don't often read a book that shows you the world you think you know in a wholly unexpected light. Nina McConigley, a wonderful young writer, has given us a fresh and wise view of a new world--at turns delightful and sad, but surprising at every turn. I love this work, and I know it begins a fine career. Highly recommended."
--Luis Alberto Urrea, author of Queen of America and The Devil's Highway "In this collection, McConigley understands the ways in which a place can unsteady and also shape us, and the stories reveal such grace and understated power that you know you are in the presence of an incredible new voice in fiction. And, like the best writers, she knows the exact moment to let wildness rush into the story and ruin us. I loved this book, every story a perfect piece of an amazing landscape."
--Kevin Wilson, author of Nothing to See Here "In her captivating debut story collection, Casper-raised author Nina McConigley examines with wit and empathy what it means to be 'the wrong kind of Indians living in Wyoming.' . . . As in all great fiction, McConigley has delved into the particular and emerged with genuine stories that touch on the universal."
--High Country News "Brave and compelling. . . . What is most admirable is how deftly McConigley shows that even those who never feel as if they fit in somehow develop just as strong a connection to the West as anyone else."
--Billings Gazette "Beautiful, startling, poignant, Nina McConigley's stories invite us into a seldom-depicted landscape, peopled by characters we'll remember a long time, transfixed as they are between worlds, and racked by unnamable desires."
--Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, author of Oleander Girl "McConigley is a painter of many landscape. . . . With detail and wit, McConigley portrays the Western world through the eyes of Hindus and Christians, vegetarians and meat eaters."
--Bustle "McConigley, who hails from Casper, Wyoming, expands the canonical voice of the prairie to spotlight the South Asians who have called the state home for decades."
--Electric Literature "We need more books like Cowboys and East Indians, which engage our collective humanity through humor and pathos, rather than exploit our most superficial cultural differences. During a time when issues of identity, race and ethnicity can be divisive, McConigley's stories clear new paths into the human heart."
--India Currents Magazine
"McConigley is both empathetic towards her characters and able to memorably evoke their personalities through quirks of dialogue. It's a fine debut."
--Vol. 1 Brooklyn
"Nina McConigley crafts out of the Wyoming landscape a West few readers have known before--a place where, when you don't look like everyone else, there aren't many places to hide. And yet anyone who has ever felt a complicated kind of love for home, country, and family will find pleasure and wisdom in these stunning stories."
--Eleanor Henderson, author of Ten Thousand Saints "Shove aside Louis L'Amour and Leslie Silko and make room on the shelf for Nina Swamidoss McConigley, who stakes her distinctive claim to the American West in this moving collection of stories that will hold you rapt with their humor and danger and sadness and fresh-eyed take on cultural, familial, geographic identity."
--Benjamin Percy, author of The Dead Lands "What I love about this collection of stories is its wit and warmth. McConigley's characters are 'the wrong kind of Indians living in Wyoming, ' and their struggles as exoticized and denigrated community members could be, in a less interesting writer's hands, yet another scolding tract on America's guilty conscience. Instead, this book celebrates human pluck and humor, a new sensibility for a new time, when everyone is both at home and utt erly alien in the contemporary American west. A terrific read."
--Antonya Nelson, author of Bound "In these moving, emotionally complex stories, Nina McConigley gives us a world within a world most people don't even know exists. That world exists here, vividly so, and this writer's wise, wry, and savvy narrators deliver it to us in surprisingly rich and varied ways. This is an excellent debut. McConigley is a wonderful writer."
--Brad Watson, author of Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives
"A vital and unique perspective on the American experience."
--Htmlgiant.com
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
Publisher:
Vintage
Pub date:
2026-01-20
Length:
208 pages
The Allstora Membership
Membership Perks:
- Save 30% on all online store purchases
- Exclusive access to author's content
- You pay less, but authors still earn double
Membership Terms:
First Month:
$0.00
Monthly price:
$5.00
- To access membership discount simply log in and add to cart, discount applied automatically.
- One month free trial, cancel anytime. Membership renews on the 15th of each month.