Amid badass women and endless stories, a young California writer comes of age in the orange groves as the Golden State comes into its own.
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Five Quarters of the Orange: A Sense of Place in the Inland Empire
Author Susan Straight was born in Riverside, California and still lives in Riverside. For her, residents’ citrus trees and commeraderie are the ties that bound people in Los Angeles Metropolitan Area’s massive interior, and they’re what can sustain them through future hard times.
Some Inland California History Begins with an Orange
Even as California’s Inland Empire loses its citrus industry to urbanization, urbanites can still keep social ties by planting fruit trees in their yards.
‘To Be Polite By Ignoring the Obvious’: Jess Row on Unpacking Whiteness in Literature
“I was looking for texts that seem to go the extra mile in hiding something — texts that almost seem to be begging to be interpreted in terms of what’s not being said.”
Down the Rabbit Hole: A Psychedelic Reading List
The science, the strangeness, the promise, of psychedelic journeys.
This Is the Excellent Foppery of the World
Mercury’s in retrograde, so it’s a great day to read this post.
How I Got My Shrink Back
An entanglement with her shrink-stalking protege teaches Susan Shapiro something about forgiveness.
Brown Girl with Bubblegum
As a mixed-race kid with free-form hair, Lisa Rosenberg believed learning to blow bubblegum bubbles would be her ticket to an idealized (white) American girlhood.
The Queer Generation Gap
How the sexual fluidity of the next generation reflects the limitations of the one that came before it.
‘I Don’t Think Those Feelings of Self-Doubt Ever Go Away.’
Susan Choi talks about feeling unsure of oneself, as a writer, as a performer — or as a victim — and about how her latest novel evolved in uncanny tandem with the real world.