Writing the Golden State: The New Literary Terrain of California explores California through essays that look beyond the clichés of the “California Dream, " portraying a state that is deviant and recalcitrant, proud and humble, joyful and communal. It is a California that reclaims the beauty of the unwanted, the quotidian, and the out-of-place. Readings by Daniel Rivers, Sue Mark, Fred Williams, Romeo Guzmán and Samine Joudat. They’ll be joined by Yaccaira Salvatierra, author of Sons of Salt. Copies of the book will be available for purchase.
Romeo Guzmán was born in Goleta, California, to migrant parents from Guadalajara; he has deep affinities for Pomona and South El Monte/El Monte. He came to know Pomona by practicing and playing at many of its elementary, middle school, and high schools futbol fields. He hung out at the old pool hall on second street, where the owner, Leo, played classic rock. He has come to know El Monte and South El Monte through family parties and celebrations as well as the slow and beautiful labor of collaboratively writing its history. To learn more visit romeoguzman.com
The movement that has shaped Samine Joudat’s upbringing in the world—born in Iran before immigrating to different parts of the United States and Europe via Ecuador—now shapes the way he thinks of home. Beyond a place locked into land, he finds home in moments, people, notes, and words, too. His mind is never far from pondering the forces that uproot, displace, and transfigure notions of home and the longing we often feel for it. He finds duty, meaning, and joy in the negotiation between looking back in search of recovery and looking forward in search of transformation. He hopes that all beings are afforded the dignity to do the same. Find him on Instagram @saminejoudat.
Rooted in the Golden Gate neighborhood, Commons Archive stands on the shoulders of the Black Panther Party’s survival programs. Sue Mark, Commons Archive founder, is a cultural researcher, artist and literacy educator. A North Oakland neighbor for three decades, Sue supports community resiliency by creating spaces for connection and learning. Along with Heidi Herrera, Sue produced a tribute to Fred Williams.
Born in Silicon Valley a few years before the ‘90s tech boom, Daniel Lanza Rivers grew up between Sunnyvale, San Diego, and the East Bay suburbs. Though Daniel spent their childhood summers (and much of grad school) driving “the Five,” they mostly stick to I-680 these days—commuting between their home in El Sobrante and their office at San José State. In recent years, Daniel has developed a new appreciation for the 99 freeway, which connects them and their partner, Rowan, to family in Modesto, Escalon, and Oakdale (the “cowboy capital of the world”).
Born in Los Ángeles, California, Yaccaira Salvatierra is a poet, translator, and dedicated educator teaching for over 20 years while raising her two sons as a single parent. She earned her BA at the University of California at Santa Cruz, an MA at San José State University, and an MFA at Randolph College. She received the Dorrit Sibley Award for Poetry and the Puerto del Sol Poetry Prize. She has been awarded the Lucille Clifton Memorial Scholarship as a fellow at the Community of Writers Workshop, and scholarships for the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, Bread Loaf Translator’s Conference, and Macondo. Her first book of poetry Sons of Salt was published this year by BOA Editions. She lives in Oakland, CA, where she teaches literacy and poetry to youth.