Tired of speaking to like-minded people, San Francisco blogger and radio journalist Rose Aguilar quit her job, bought a Toyota van, picked up her boyfriend, and took off on a six-month road trip through southern and mountain states. There she interviewed a wide array of people who rarely, if ever, appear in the national media. They include a former Republican evangelical pastor who now preaches inclusion in Tulsa; anti-war, pro-choice, and green Republicans; and a Montana hunter planning to leave his job as a conservationist to fight for gay rights.

This political travelogue challenges stereotypes and goes far beyond the sound bites and statistics to reveal what red-state voters really care about—and what they expect from their political leaders.

As Aguilar writes in the first chapter, “We breathe the same air, we live under the same political system, we’ve probably seen the same television and news shows, and most of us grew up going to public schools; yet because we might vote differently once every four years, we find ourselves stereotyped in the national media and separated by red and blue borders.”

Red Highways is a riveting examination of what matters most in the heartland, what makes it tick, and what issues get its citizens to vote.

Rose Aguilar is the host of Your Call, a daily, live call-in radio show on NPR-affiliates KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco and KUSP 88.9 FM in Santa Cruz. Rose is a contributor to the book, Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland. She also writes for Alternet.org and offers political analysis for the BBC.
 
 
 
 
 

“Find out what happened when a liberal journalist and radio host from San Francisco embarked on a six-month road trip through the conservative West. Rose Aguilar felt there must be more to the stereotypes about the voting habits and personal preferences of people living in so-called “red states.” She soon found that the differences between liberals and conservatives in this country aren’t as black and white as many believe and that political diversity is the norm, despite what she calls “the media’s obsession with stereotypes and shallow sound bites about divisive issues.” Red Highways provides insights on how difficult it can be to talk with people who have differing political views but concludes that this dialogue is crucial.”
—Claude R. Marx, October 10, 2008 — Politics Magazine

The American imagination,
Rose Aguilar looks for change on Red Highways
By Amanda Witherell
www.sfbg.com – 11.12.2008

REVIEW If you’re one of the 200,000 San Franciscans who voted for Barack Obama, maybe you’re staring at that map of red and blue states wondering, “How could 56 million people vote for John McCain? Why is there still this incredible swath of crimson belting our country?”

Similar questions have been burning in the minds of liberals since the 2000 election. In 2005, San Francisco resident Rose Aguilar turned them into a quest: “One night, after spending several hours online, sending articles to friends who were probably sick of me barraging them with e-mails and practically falling over political books and magazines I had yet to open, I realized it was time to leave my comfort zone. I needed to turn off my computer and get out into the streets to find out why people vote the way they do and find out if we’re as divided as we’re led to believe.”

Red Highways: A Liberal’s Journey into the Heartland (PoliPoint Press, 221 pages, $15.95) is the result of Aguilar’s six-month road trip through reliably red states to ask people why they identify with one party over another, or vote for certain candidates, or don’t vote at all…Read More

The United States of America According to Rose Aguilar
One liberal’s odyssey through red-state America.
By Rachel Swan
www.eastbayexpress.com – 11.12.08

Rose Aguilar has a solution for anyone forced to work twenty-hour days at a job that requires huge reserves of brain power: The raw food diet. Spinach smoothies; nothing processed or packaged; no meat, eggs, or dairy products. That’s how she subsisted while writing her new book Red Highways: A Liberal’s Journey into the Heartland — about a six-month investigative journey through America’s so-called “red states” — and hosting the daily KALW radio show Your Call. It’s also the reason that 35-year-old Aguilar can stay out until 3 a.m. celebrating Obama’s victory in her Mission District neighborhood, then stay up another hour reading the newspaper headlines online, and still look bright-eyed for an interview the following day. Showing no signs of sleep deprivation, Aguilar sat by the front window of San Francisco’s Ritual Café on that now-historical Wednesday. She was eating yellow vegan cake — a rare splurge — and perused that day’s San Francisco Chronicle. Aguilar is, by all appearances, an iconic San Francisco tree-hugger: She wears fleece jackets, has an illustrious public radio career, and uses progressive blogs like CommonDreams.org as her primary source of information. How she withstood six months in the Bible Belt and came away with renewed faith in humanity is anybody’s guess…Read More

Red State, Blue State
KUSP talk show host Rose Aguilar’s quest to understand Red State America.
By Jessica Lussenhop
www.metrosantacruz.com – 10.29.08

When Rose Aguilar, host of Your Call on San Francisco public radio and more recently on KUSP, first decided to write her book Red Highways: A Liberal’s Journey Into the Heartland after the soul-crushing 2004 election, she probably didn’t imagine that, come book-tour time, she’d be face-to-face with the kind of sound-bite journalism that pissed her off enough to write it in the first place. “Nobody reads the book,” she says. “And the differences between the men and the women interviewers–the men always have to have the upper hand.”…Read More

More than two colors
By Kate Washington
www.newsreview.com – 11.06.08

Red Highways: A Liberal’s Journey Into the Heartland
Rose Aguilar
Polipoint Press

The stark blue and red contrast of the electoral map is misleading: In reality, not just states but groups and even individuals are varying hues of purple. But even with the election over, how shall we make sense of the vast, overwhelming diversity of our political landscape? Two new books offer contrasting models of how to do so, with some tantalizing similarities: Both seek to complicate the easy red-blue snapshot offered on television…Read More

BOOKS-US: A Liberal’s Travels in “Flyover Country”
By Aaron Glantz*

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 23 (IPS) – “What are they thinking?” is a question my mother screams at the television every election season. A union nurse in overwhelmingly liberal, Democratic San Francisco, she cannot believe that the presidential election is even close.

“What is wrong with these people?” she asks, amazed that about half the country will vote Republican this year.

Who are these people who will vote Republican even after the Grand Old Party started a war based on lies, ruined the economy, fouled the environment while enriching the oil companies, and created a situation where tens of millions of citizens lack even basic health insurance?

“Who are these people?” indeed. Inside the comfortable political bubble of San Francisco, it is possible to go through daily life without meeting a real live Republican. Like other big U.S. cities on the East and West Coast, many San Franciscans feel under siege — their future held hostage by a strange species of conservatives they in many cases have never met.

Many wish they could reach out and convince these conservatives that the right doesn’t have the answers they’re seeking, but they don’t know where to start.

Enter Rose Aguilar, a journalist and political blogger who grew up in Sonoma County, about 40 miles north of San Francisco and now hosts a daily talk show on KALW, an affiliate of National Public Radio. After George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004, Aguilar rented a van and hit the road with her boyfriend. Their goal: to meet and speak with as many Republicans as possible on their own turf.

The result of their travels is the book, “Red Highways: A Liberal’s Journey into the Heartland”, which records the dialogues Aguilar had with conservatives in four traditionally Republican states: Texas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Montana…Read More

Publication date: October 21, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

RED HIGHWAYS
A Liberal’s Journey Into the Heartland
by radio host and blogger
Rose Aguilar

This is a book goes beyond the sound bite to explore the ways our great national pastime of political myth-making—the whole red state/blue state divide—oversimplifies real Americans, flattening three-dimensional people into idealized one-dimensional votes. Rose Aguilar manages to unravel this ball of yarn magically on a road trip with her boyfriend, Ryan. The result is a very readable romp through the truth about the heartland—one that proves Barack Obama was right when he said there is no red states or blue states, just the United States of America.

As Aguilar writes in the first chapter, “We breathe the same air, we live under the same political system, we’ve probably seen the same television and news shows, and most of us grew up going to public schools; yet because we might vote differently once every four years, we find ourselves stereotyped in the national media and separated by red and blue borders.”

Here is a very readable book, a travelogue, and riveting blue state review of red state folk and why they vote the way they do, what matters most in the heartland, what makes it tick, and most importantly, the vital issues that get its citizens to the voting booth.

Aguilar breaks with all stereotypes traveling through states that usually vote Republican—Texas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Utah and Montana—to find out why red state voters choose candidates who often do not have their backs and what issues they really care about, what they expect from their political leaders. This is a travelogue with all the attendant local color you might find on the road with Alton Brown but pure politics, like NASCAR but in an un-air-conditioned Toyota van that can only manage 60 miles per hour on a good day. Focusing on the Mountain West, which could well determine the outcome of the 2008 presidential election, Rose Aguilar challenges the stereotypes to reveal new strategies for progressives.

About the author:

Rose Aguilar is radio personality, producer, journalist and political blogger from San Francisco. She is a contributor to the book, Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland. She currently hosts “Your Call,” a daily public affairs radio show on NPR-affiliate KALW. “Your Call” features in-depth conversations about everything from the Iraq war and poverty to the environment and the arts. Aguilar also writes for Alternet and offers political analysis for the BBC.

About the book:

Price $15.95, paperback original, ISBN: 978-0-9794822-7-4, Distributed by Ingram Book Services: (800) 937-8000