Author Description

A collection of essays composed during the Obama presidency on politics, theology, art, and education. Social and political critique, pastoral philosophy, postmodern theology, deschooling, and folk phenomenology: Rocha's essays in Tell Them Something Beautiful cover a range of topics and ideas, held together by his literary style and integrated point of view. ""In this collection, Sam Rocha wanders far and wide, and the wandering is a virtue. Sometimes peregrinations are pilgrimages, ways of seeking out truths that have been scattered or hidden, far from the main roads. What unifies these pieces, for all their mercurial diffuseness, is a deeply contemplative intelligence, a lyrical voice, and a keen eye for the telling detail."" --David Bentley Hart, fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Studies; author of The Hidden and the Manifest ""As the essays, blog posts, and talks in this book demonstrate, Sam Rocha is a philosopher/contrarian or contrarian/philosopher for our time. Nimbly shifting from politics to religion to music, race, and culture, Tell Them Something Beautiful is a symphony in many movements: lyric and occasionally barbed, but mostly soaring."" --Kaya Oakes, UC Berkeley ""Sam Rocha's essays in this always intriguing, informative, and entertaining collection represent something new and cutting-edge on the U.S. Catholic intellectual scene. Here we have a Tex-Mex Catholic educator philosopher with more than a little literary and scholarly flare. Rocha's creativity and imagination together with his ability to find the right word or analogy to make his often surprising points make this book a treat for anyone who cares about the life of the mind as well as the soul in today's ugly and fear-ridden climate. Read--even on the fly, if you have to--these snappy, crisp essays that never fail to fill the mind and the heart."" --Allan Figueroa Deck, SJ, Distinguished Scholar of Pastoral Theology and Latino Studies, Loyola Marymount University ""Sam Rocha d