By Bethanne Patrick
FROM: L.A. Times
Christina Hammonds Reed vividly remembers witnessing the unrest in her city in 1992 after the acquittal of four LAPD officers in the arrest and beating of Rodney King — on television. She was only 8, after all, and the violence in South L.A. felt far away. She grew up in the comfortable suburb of Hacienda Heights.
The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books is opening a virtual chapter this year amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Continue reading “L.A. Times Festival of Books Going Virtual as Community-Wide Gathering”
The author of Pizza Girl talks about what she learned during her own wayward summer delivering pizzas, as well as the complexity of grief and the irresistibility of voyeurism.
Pizza Girl, Jean Kyoung Frazier’s explosive debut novel, everything changes on a Wednesday afternoon at 4:30 p.m. Our nameless narrator is eighteen, pregnant, and feeling adrift as she stumbles through her days as a Los Angeles pizza delivery driver, all the while grieving the death of her alcoholic father and avoiding the smothering ministrations of her loving mother and boyfriend. When a suburban housewife named Jenny Hauser calls in with a peculiar order for a pepperoni and pickle pizza, Pizza Girl’s collision with Jenny sends her tailspinning into a psychosexual obsession with dangerous consequences.
Continue reading “Jean Kyoung Frazier Thinks Fiction Should Have More Hot Cheetos”
Local muralist Judith Baca’s magnum opus, is the 2,800-foot-long mural, Great Wall of Los Angeles. The following seven books help one to understand the mural and L.Á. itself. Continue reading
By Vallarie Wallace
FROM: Electrict Literature
After several grueling hours of protesting against systemic injustice (no one can prepare you for long hours on your feet, long hours screaming for recognition of your humanity), we stood with our signs tucked safely under our arms as the organizer introduced some parting words. The speaker was an older Black man, the weariness of the movement evident in his face and in the way he leaned against a streetlamp for support. But his passion was clear in his speech as he declared that we were not the first to fight for our rights, and we will not be the last: he was protesting in the streets back in his early adulthood, the same way we were today. It was then that I looked at the faces of the people around me; some couldn’t be older than sixteen, and some as old as the speaker, or older. It was in the aftermath of being surrounded by these people, all aligned in our goal for the abolishment of the systemic injustices that cause Black oppression, that Nina Revoyr’s literary crime novel Southland came to mind.
Continue reading “The Novel That Shows Us How to Face Our Past to Change Our Future”
By Brian Dunlap
The United States is now in the midst of its strongest push for racial equality since the Civil Rights era. Civil unity and protests sprung up instantly after George Floyd’s death at the hands of police last month in Minneapolis. The calls for police reform have been loud and wide, including calls for justice for Breonna Taylor who was killed by Louisville police as she slept.
Continue reading “The Need For Racial Equality Hits the L.Á. Literary Community”
By Brian Dunlap
Because life interceded, there will be no list of Los Ángeles literary events this week. Check out Facebook Events for any local virtual literary event to support your local literary community. However, this list of L.A. literary events will be back next week.
Continue reading “No Los Angeles Literature Events 6/08/20 – 6/14/20”
By Brian Dunlap
During this time of social unrest, the country visibly upset over the continued killing of innocent black men and wemen at the hands of police, the Los Angeles Poet Society has issued a submissions call for social justice poems. On Facebook they announced:
Continue reading “Los Angeles Poet Society Call For Submissions”
By Brian Dunlap
For Asain/Pacific American Heritage Month, Los Āngeles Literature is recommending books about Asian L.Á. written by Asians and books written by Asian Angeleños. This history of the city’s Asian American literature extends at least as far back as the 1920s, as historian Valerie J. Matsumoto chronicles in the chapter “Sounding the Dawn Bell: Developing Nisei Voices” from her book City Girls. Continue reading “Recommended Los Ángeles Literature For Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month”
By Myriam Gurba
FROM: Electric Lit
Amado Vazquez, a Mexican botanist, named an orchid after Joan Didion. While that was a chic gesture, I don’t think of her as an orchid. I think of her as an onion. She’s very white, very crisp, and she makes people cry.
Continue reading “It’s Time to Take California Back from Joan Didion”
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