California has inspired the works of famous writers such as John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, Isabel Allende and Joan Didion. Now, a just-published book introduces a new generation of creative minds ready to tell the state’s ongoing story.
“Writing the Golden State: The New Literary Terrain of California” invites 24 writers to recount their life experiences, including issues of race, class, and disability, that tell a broader story of the state. Each author’s contribution offers a unique perspective that goes beyond the stereotypical sunny skies, beaches, and palm trees of one of the union’s most populous states. Essays like Wendy Cheng’s “In Rancho Santa Fe, We Were Orientals” explore how the state’s handling of immigration shapes complicated childhood feelings of home and belonging. David Helps’ “In the Rubble: Picturing LA’s Housing Crisis” examines how the War on Drugs accelerated Los Angeles’ housing crisis, with Black and brown residents bearing the brunt of its policies.
Released on August 20, the book was edited by Samine Joudat, Carribean Fragoza and Romeo Guzmán, who are co-directors of the South El Monte Art Posse, a collective of artists, writers, urban planners, educators, scientists, farmers, ecologists and flea market vendors. Their shared mission is to connect with the community through the arts and rethink how each person inhabits space. The editors put this fundamental philosophy into practice during an open call for writers.
“One of our goals was to create a platform for writers we know, but also for emerging writers who are struggling to pitch or get their writing accepted. We wanted to provide a safe space to guide them through the process,” Guzmán said in a recent Zoom call. “The best part about editing this book was that we got pitches from people we didn’t know, especially young writers, and we were able to work with them to get the writing published. It’s pretty mixed in terms of disciplines too. There are some academics here, so I think it also provided a space for them to write in a genre that might be new to them. We’re very intentional about providing spaces for people to experiment.”
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Guzmán is an assistant professor of U.S. history at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, specializing in Chicano history, Mexican migration, and California. He has also taught fourth-graders in Fresno how to teach California history to their students, structuring the lessons by examining fundamental questions such as: What is California and what makes it unique?
He said there are many approaches to answering questions about the state’s identity. The most prominent are often taken up by politicians who portray the state as dystopian or utopian. Views like these are often based on lived experience, and because the state is so diverse and populous, there is a wide range of experiences. This book seeks to increase the visibility of these marginalized stories and their role in the future.
“The beauty of the essays is that some of them hold on to the (vision of what California could be), but more of them are concerned with making it happen and have a very realistic attitude to what California is,” Guzmán said. “It was nice to see people struggling to build a home here, but building it anyway. The question of ‘What is home? Can you stay in your home?’ was a nice thread that we perhaps didn’t expect to see so much, but it’s there.”
Guzmán’s life experiences have shaped his story and its connection to California, a state that has seen an influx of migrant workers from different parts of the world throughout its existence. Born in Goleta, California, to migrants from Guadalajara, he grew up in Pomona but frequently visited El Monte and South El Monte for family gatherings.
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“I have an emotional connection to different places and locations that remind me of different things,” he said. “I can map my life onto a personal place, but it doesn’t have that deep knowledge that transcends generations. Another big inspiration was thinking about what it means to tell firsthand stories about a place that is personal and deeply connected to bodies of knowledge and all their forms. Some of the best essays have that intimate and personal connection to these places.”
One of the most powerful works is “Good Vibrations From California’s Deaf Geographies,” by author Peter Sebastian Chesney, which delves deeply into the history of the state’s deaf population. The essay stretches back to the late 1890s and looks at the struggle of deaf people to access education at the turn of the century. It also examines how deafness intersected with the Black Lives Matter movement and the Beach Boys. For California historians like Guzmán, these stories were a reminder of what there is still to learn for everyone, whether they study history or not.
“These authors take us on journeys to these different places that in some cases we think we know, but they’re told from an author’s perspective and they shed light on things we didn’t know about them,” he said. “For us, the book was also about learning about California, and that’s what made the editing process so enjoyable.”
Selected readings from “Writing the Golden State: The New Literary Terrain of California.”
When: 4–6 p.m., Saturday, September 28.
Where: Matilija Lending Library, 3571 Lexington Ave., El Monte.
Info: matilijabooks.org.
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