In Allegiance to Winds and Waters, a laid-off college professor from Minneapolis bicycles the perimeter of the US with her spouse. Inspired by a study showing that Americans of all ideological stripes are united in desiring a more equitable economy, she sets out to discover why we don’t have what we want. 

Join author Anne Winkler-Morey, in conversation with Robin Wonsley, a Carleton alum and Minneapolis City Council person, for a reading from her 2022 book, Allegiance to Winds and Waters: Bicycling the Political Divides of the United States.

THE BOOK

In this personal/political memoir, historian Anne Winkler-Morey chronicles her 12,000-mile bike trip around the contiguous United States. Over the fourteen months tour, she collects hundreds of stories of people and places. She discovers US regions that are unique in beauty and culture but similar in what ails them: unsustainable economies, gaping inequities, and people with crippling fears of those outside their borders. She explores the question, what makes us safe, concluding that the walls we construct make us more vulnerable. True security comes not from guns, armies, and patriotic slogans. Healing requires exposing our historical traumas, engaging in reparations, and building our commons.  Allegiance mixes the angst and hilarious misadventures of an unlikely bicyclist, poignant stories of the strangers she meets, and acute observations of a historian and social activist.

ANNE WINKLER-MOREY

Anne Winkler-Morey has a PhD from the University of Minnesota and taught history and ethnic studies at colleges and Universities in the Twin Cities for three decades. In the 1980s she was the Director of the Central America Resource Center in Minneapolis and in 2010 she was instigator of the National Ethnic Studies Week. Her Minneapolis Interview Project includes 100 life stories with a social justice lens. She lives in Minneapolis with her spouse, David. In 2011-2012, they rode the contiguous perimeter of the United States. Allegiance to Winds and Waters: Bicycling the Political Divides of the United States is her story of that trip.

ROBIN WONSLEY

Robin Wonsley is an independent Democratic Socialist representing Ward 2 on the Minneapolis City Council. Before winning her election she was a community organizer focused on labor, housing, police accountability, public education, and gender and racial justice. She grew up in Chicago and attended Carleton College, graduating in 2013 with a B.A. in Women and Gender Studies.