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Jim Kristofic

Biography

Jim Kristofic

Jim Kristofic grew up on the Navajo Reservation in northeastern Arizona. He has written for The Navajo Times, Arizona Highways, Native Peoples Magazine, High Country News and Parabola. He is the author of HOUSE GODS: Sustainable Buildings and Renegade Builders, MEDICINE WOMEN: The Story of the First Native American Nursing School, and NAVAJOS WEAR NIKES: A Reservation Life, and the coauthor of SEND A RUNNER: A Navajo Honors the Long Walk. He lives in Taos, New Mexico.

Jim Kristofic

Books by Jim Kristofic

House Gods: Sustainable Buildings and Renegade Builders
by Jim Kristofic - Architecture, Environment, Nonfiction

Our buildings are making us sick. Our homes, offices, factories and dormitories are, in some sense, fresh parasites on the sacred Earth, Nahasdzáán. In search of a better way, Jim Kristofic journeys across the Southwest to apprentice with architects and builders who know how to make buildings that will take care of us. This is where he meets the House Gods, who are building to the sun so that we can live on Earth. Forever. In HOUSE GODS, Kristofic pursues the techniques of sustainable building and the philosophies of its practitioners. What emerges is a strange and haunting quest through adobe mud and mayhem, encounters with shamans and stray dogs, solar panels, tragedy and true believers. It is a story about doing something meaningful, and about the kinds of things that grow out of deep pain.