Alvarado, Beth

This interview covers the following themes:

• Beth’s childhood in Grand Junction, Colorado and her father’s career as a mineral explorer.

• Move to Tucson as a 14 year-old in 1968, impressions of the city and Highland Vista neighborhood.

• High school at Rincon, youth counterculture, and tension with parents.

• Drug use and youth drug culture.

• Growing interest in Tucson’s Mexican American culture, dating and later marrying Fernando Alvarado, and living with his family on the south side. The differences between Beth’s reception by Fernando’s family and vice versa.

• Employment, family, and parenting in the 1970s. Experience with the Welfare system.

• Work as the live-in caretaker at Autumn House, a facility started by Salomon Baldenegro at the Youth Services Bureau to help children who were status offenders. A description of 4th Avenue and downtown in the mid-1970s.

• Interest in creative writing and studies at Pima Community College, the University of Arizona, and Stanford. Trends in creative writing during the 1980s and MFA program with David Foster Wallace.

• TCE contamination in south Tucson and sickness in Beth’s extended family.

The interview was recorded at the base of Tumamoc Hill in Tucson, Arizona on March 6th, 2018.