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.
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.’
Remezcla | October 5, 2020
“The Latino community is suffering a lot right now,” says Arnulfo Romero. The former field supervisor lives in Santa Maria, California, an agricultural community that, depending on which way its … Read more