By Scott Neuffer
FROM: Trampset
My wife tells me not to talk about it: her trauma. She survived the dirty wars in Peru. If you talk, you die, she tells me. People don’t talk about it. The dead are dead. The living go on. Sorry, it’s not my place, I say. But these ghosts. I can feel them.
Continue reading “Book Review: Let the Buzzards Eat Me Whole”
By Romeo Oscar Cascolan
FROM: 700 Magazine
The inclusive mindset of the American dream makes the United States a welcoming destination for the variety of cultures that the world has to offer. As a Filipino who immigrated to the United States in 2000 and earned my American citizenship in 2018, I can personally attest to the opportunity within this country; as a result, I am more aware of the struggles and hardships that people endure in the hopes of leading a better life in the United States. The field of ethnic studies focuses on understanding the undeniable impact that these immigrants make on this country. The people involved in these studies may come from vastly different backgrounds, but their goal is always the same: to build upon the principles of freedom and independence that unite all Americans.
By Lynell George
FROM: Los Angeles Times
The sequence is as predictable as the season itself: The calendar reads “fall” but the thermometer registers 90-plus. The Santa Ana winds kick up. Wildfires zipper across the landscape. Once again Joan Didion whispers in the Southland’s collective ear.
Continue reading “Joan Didion’s California Captured in Sweeping New Collection”
By Lacey Womack
FROM: The Travel
There are stores dedicated to just about everything, all around the world. Whether you’re shopping for jewelry, shoes, or even books, there are stores where you can browse and buy whatever it is that you’re looking for.
By Jeffery Fleishman
FROM: Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles is a madman’s prayer wrapped inside a murderous dream.
It’s homeless on sidewalks and hustlers in the hills. It’s laborers and housekeepers, and billboards of lust, dystopia, apes, robots, Chewbaccas, Kim and Kanye, and Lady Gaga’s newest thing. It’s clear skies, no mosquitoes and laser-sculpted people with money, hedgerows and sins. A crime writer can make of it what he or she wants, like “Westworld” or a lover who gives you a kiss and a key, and one day changes the locks.
Continue reading “Literary History: Why L.A. Is The Perpetual Dark Heart of Crime Writing”
By Janet Kinosian
FROM: Los Angeles Times
The strained Los Angeles landscape in Steph Cha’s crime thriller “Your House Will Pay” is immediately recognizable to anyone who lived in the city during the traumatic period surrounding the 1992 riots.
Continue reading “Review: Thriller ‘Your House Will Pay’ Confronts the Legacies of L.A. Riots”
By Nichi Bei
From: Nichi Bei
Los Angeles Literature Note: This obituary of Los Ángeles writer Hisaye Yamamoto was published February 23, 2011 in Nichi Bei. Yamamoto was an important writer and Nisei writer, one of the first to get national recognition by publishing short stories in magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar. Yamamoto was one of many little known Asian/Japanese writers and Asian women of color to emerge from Los Ángeles in the aftermath of WW II. Her short stories are set mostly in and around Los Ángeles.
LOS ANGELES — Hisaye Yamamoto, a pioneer in Asian American literature, passed away on Jan. 30, 2011 in Los Angeles at the age of 89.
Continue reading “Literary History: OBITUARY: Hisaye Yamamoto”
Viramontes’ passion for bringing erased communities to the forefront of literature and history has materialized into several acclaimed literary works.
By Jackie Swift
FROM: research.cornell.edu
Helena María Viramontes, English, brings people and places erased from history to life again. For years, she has focused her lens on the Latino experience in the United States, writing award-winning fiction that draws from her own heritage as a Chicana from Los Angeles. In her latest novel-in-progress, The Cemetery Boys, she explores the experiences of three generations of East Los Angelenos mired in three different wars. During this exploration, she highlights the mix of ethnicities and marginalized communities that flourished and then faded away in the California of the early-to-mid twentieth century.
The Former LA Times Book Critic in Conversation with Paul Holdengraber
By Lit Hub
FROM: Lit Hub
In this episode of A Phone Call With Paul, Paul Holdengraber speaks with David Ulin, writer, and former book critic of the Los Angeles Times, about the dramatic changes in Los Angeles, the literature of the city, and his work on Joan Didion.
Continue reading “David Ulin on the Rapidly Changing Landscape of Los Angeles”
By Alex Espinoza
FROM: L.A. Times
As the president issues the first veto of his tenure after Congress rejected his declaration of a national emergency to fund his wall, it’s hard to imagine that the dynamics along the U.S.-Mexico border were once different, when people shuttled back and forth between the two nations. Facundo Bernal marks such a moment in “Palos de Ciego,” his manuscript of poetry translated to English for the first time by Anthony Seidman as “A Stab in the Dark” for the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Los Angeles Literature 