Monster hunting is more than just going out into the woods or hanging out in graveyards. The history and performance of monster hunting, from Alexander the Great to scientific expeditions of the Victorian era, can lead us directly to modern-day Bigfoot searches. Combining methods of scientific exploration with aspects of tourism theory demonstrates how monster-hunting is performative and, through an analysis tool called The Cryptid Tourist Gaze, this book examines how and why we go looking for monsters and the ways in which small towns celebrate the monsters that once haunted them.By looking at specific museums such as The North American Bigfoot Center and Expedition Bigfoot: The Sasquatch Museum as well as various festivals and conferences such as The Mothman Festival and the UFO Festival in Roswell, we can witness the ways modern monster-hunting practices are performed and see how much they have evolved from their predecessors. Through themes of liminality, community, and initiation, the performance of monster hunting through cryptid tourism allows both participants and observers to gain insight into why looking for monsters, proving their existence, and sharing experiences with other believers is so important.

Foreword by Robert Coles

The daughter of a freeholder, Sara Brooks was born in 1911 on her parents' subsistence farm in west Alabama. Here, in her own words, she makes us understand what it felt like to be young, black, innocent, and steeped in the ways of a black rural world that has largely been lost to us.

"A wonderful book—funny, sad, packed with action and information about life in black Alabama in the decades before World War II. . . . A welcome addition to the growing body of books by and about black women." —Dorothy Sterling, author of We Are Your Sisters

"A profoundly poignant yet triumphant book, a recreation by an Alabama-born black of her struggle against racism and poverty while striving for the common dream of Americans. . . . A marvelously earthy 'narrative.' . . . Her memoir is the stuff of human pride made memorable in raw, homely vernacular." —Publishers Weekly

"A joy and revelation. . . . A story about immense courage, faith and spirit." —Washington Post

"Now we have a women's narrative to stand alongside those of Nate Shaw and Hosea Hudson. I found the description of farm life unusually evocative, the narrator's 'voice' distinctive, consistent, and a lift to the spirit, the story of marriage and work life honest and human." —Jacquelyn Hall, director, Southern Oral History Program, University of North Carolina