Electric Lit | October 16, 2025
When I explained my dad’s new job to my girls-only club members, I told them what he had told my brother, sister, and me.
Dad said that it was the responsibility of every single teacher in this country to give kids a good education. He said that some teachers were assholes, that they didn’t want to give a good education to all kids. He said that these bigots discriminated against the children of migrant farm workers and that it was basically his job to force these racists to do their jobs.
LA Taco | July 13, 2025
On the morning of June 19, federal agents stormed a bus stop where laborers waited to be transported to construction sites in nearby neighborhoods devastated by wildfires. The agents wore masks and brandished firearms. The laborers clutched cups of coffee and baked goods. Agents abducted one man while he held a glazed donut. “These gentlemen were filling their stomachs to be able to work,” says Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo, himself an immigrant.
Places Journal | March 16, 2025
This January, a blaze began in Altadena’s Eaton Canyon. From my porch, I watched as the brightest orange overtook the San Gabriel Mountains, turning them the same color as the marigolds that I brought to the cemetery in November. Santa Ana winds moving more than 100 miles per hour carried embers into neighborhoods where wooden bungalows ignited, palm trees combusted, and coyotes panicked. More than 9,000 buildings were destroyed. To quote Butler, we were lucky with the fire. When I evacuated, I took a small bag with me. In it was a small jar filled with plants harvested from the forest that was now burning. This was my small way of trying to save the forest by preserving her seeds.
Places Journal | October 16, 2024
A youthful obsession with Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother turns to frustration over how its subject, Florence Owens Thompson, an Indigenous woman, has been misperceived.
A drunk named John Steinbeck wrote a lot about California. My father had given me one of Steinbeck’s novels, Cannery Row, which I preferred to The Red Pony, another Steinbeck novel given to me by my sixth-grade teacher. Cannery Row did something that no other novel I’d read had done: it mentioned my hometown. ‘Doc didn’t stop in Salinas for a hamburger. But he stopped in Gonzalez, in King City, and in Paso Robles. He had a hamburger and beer in Santa Maria – two in Santa Maria, because it was a long pull from there to Santa Barbara.’
Alta | July 2, 2024
Because Long Beach, California, is a place where a moonlit Marine can easily find a muscle queen willing to kneel in the soggy sand and fellate him while foghorns and ship horns bellow in the distance, certain residents refer to it as Schlong Beach. My girlfriend, best friend, and I learned this tasteless sobriquet upon moving into a ground-floor condo in the middle of the city’s gayborhood. A fat masseuse rented the unit to us. She insisted that we pay her in cash and that we keep the potted ficus moping on her veranda alive. The landlady also imposed a rule that made our home feel unlike a home: no hanging anything on the walls.
We agreed to her terms, but the emptiness soon grew oppressive.
Our home felt like a generic coffin.
LA Times | May 17, 2023
The last time she’d heard glass break, her head had been used to shatter it. He — she hated to even think his name — had slammed her head into the long oval mirror hanging in his bathroom. She had protected her face by lowering her head, tucking her chin against her neck, and for days after she had harvested pieces of glass from her scalp. When she told her cousin Valentina what he had done, she offered to have her husband “take care of him,” but the witch had told her, “No, prima. I can handle it. He’ll be sorry.”
From the ATM, the witch had withdrawn $300.
Tasteful Rude | March 14, 2023
The last time I visited Venice Beach, I made one of my wildest teen fantasies come true.
At one of the many beachfront stores where bathing suits cost five times what they should, I bought myself a gold lamé string bikini. The day was overcast but warm enough to be mostly naked outdoors and so I wore my purchase out of the shop and onto the footpath.
A nasty breeze blew my bowl cut crooked. The clouds parted. I wondered if the 24-karat glare from my bikini was bothering any seagulls. I curled my toes. Moist earth sucked them. I thought of Rose, the cocaine-fueled protagonist of Lithium for Medea, the late Kate Braverman’s first novel. In one of the book’s later chapters, Rose has an epiphany about the wetness that I let lap and slurp at my feet. Rose arrives at the understanding that our ocean isn’t pacific.
LA Times | October 10, 2022
Memories are made in Los Angeles parking garages. Some inspire electrifying nostalgia and even more electrifying storytelling. First blunt smoked … First hand job given or received … The survival, … Read more
New York Times | April 28, 2022
Before George Holliday caught the L.A.P.D.’s beating of Rodney King on camera, the former police officer Don Jackson helped reveal the brutal reality of policing for Southern California’s Black citizens.
The night of Jan. 14, 1989, Don Jackson, a police officer turned activist, arrived in Long Beach, Calif., riding in the passenger seat of a rental car driven by Jeffrey Hill, another activist and an off-duty state corrections officer. Both men wore plain clothes, and clandestine chaperones escorted their Buick. A van carrying a television crew tailed the rental car.
LA Times | October 4, 2021
School security officers establish a militarized atmosphere. They also create a sense of imprisonment. This adversarial dynamic heightens student stress. At best, a militarized environment makes learning difficult. At worst, … Read more
LA Taco | January 27, 2021
“Welcome to friendly El Monte” is the slogan of the San Gabriel Valley city where a DIY bomb placed in First Works Baptist Church exploded early Saturday morning. The force of the … Read more