This fall, celebrate the fifth anniversary of the California Book Club with us. In a 2020 essay, published in Alta Journal, the editor, critic, and poet John Freeman wrote about the need for a new California canon, and the California Book Club was started to read some of the books that belonged in such a canon. It’s an idea that flourished during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and has continued to grow in the years since. We’ve featured contemporary classics by Deborah A. Miranda, Karen Tei Yamashita, Walter Mosley, Helena María Viramontes, Michael Connelly, Claudia Rankine, Kim Stanley Robinson, Charles Yu, Percival Everett, Rachel Kushner, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Laila Lalami, among many others.
Our choices for this autumn include a collection of literary essays and criticism, new and selected poems, and a family history, each of which sparks both the imagination and the intellect.
CALIFORNIA REWRITTEN: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE GOLDEN STATE’S NEW LITERATURE, BY JOHN FREEMAN
Starting in October 2020 with C Pam Zhang’s How Much of These Hills Is Gold, Freeman wrote a monthly piece of literary criticism about a featured book during the lead-up to the California Book Club’s Zoom gathering to talk about the book. Many of these essays, some slightly expanded, now appear in the pages of his book California Rewritten: A Journey Through the Golden State’s New Literature. Freeman’s humane and erudite reflections on the state’s literature are organized by theme into conversations about a range of topics, including “Early Myths” and “Exploding Fantasias” in the Golden State. In “How We Sound,” for instance, we read about style and immersion in a quartet of humorous or satirical California books, Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, Jaime Cortez’s Gordo, Andrew Sean Greer’s Less, and Danzy Senna’s Colored Television.
Intriguing resonances build between the books—this is California literature as it hasn’t been mapped before. To read Freeman’s essays is to feel oneself enlarged, in the presence of something a bit transcendent—and the feeling is exponentially increased by reading the collection as a whole.
STARTLEMENT: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, BY ADA LIMÓN
The lucidity and beauty of Limón’s work are evident over six poetry collections and roughly 20 years: Lucky Wreck (2006), This Big Fake World (2007), Sharks in the Rivers (2010), Bright Dead Things (2015), The Carrying (2018), and The Hurting Kind (2022). Certain works from these collections appear now in her breathtaking Startlement: New and Selected Poems, along with around 20 new poems, including the poem “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa,” which was written for NASA’s spacecraft the Europa Clipper, which launched in 2024.
Startlement allows us to trace the evolution of Limón’s aesthetic, from personal moments and characters longing for love to environmentally aware work that seems to slide back the superficies of the world, allowing us to see it more fully, more particularly, lured forward by the passionate, wholehearted energy of striking lines, intelligently enjambed. Read aloud and be awed, for instance, by the graceful sonics and depth of feeling in “Overjoyed,” in which Limón writes, “Let me be the first to admit, when I / Come across some jewel of pleasure, I too want / To squeeze that thing until even its seedy heart / evaporates like ethanol, want to throw my / bird-bones into the brush-fire until, / half-blind, all I can hear is the sound / of wings in the relentlessly delighted air.”
ON GOLD MOUNTAIN: THE ONE-HUNDRED-YEAR ODYSSEY OF MY CHINESE-AMERICAN FAMILY, BY LISA SEE
This year, 2025, is the 30th anniversary of On Gold Mountain’s publication—celebrate with us this unforgettable epic of a Chinese American family’s assimilation. In 1871, See tells us early in the book, her great-grandfather Fong See, then young, left China to seek his fortune on Gold Mountain—the United States. His brothers and his father, an herbalist during the building of the transcontinental railroad, had already gone ahead. He went on to make his fortune in California and take multiple wives, one a Pennsylvania Dutch woman, Letticie Pruett, who was the author’s great-grandmother. Ticie, as she was known, came to Fong See for a job at his factory that made crotchless underwear and sold it to brothels; she wound up improving the business by expanding the type of merchandise, keeping books, researching, and demonstrating kindness toward others.
On Gold Mountain presses a century’s worth of absorbing stories through the sieve of the history and laws, including anti-miscegenation laws, that excluded Chinese people from full belonging in California for generations. While the events the family went through were often difficult, this vibrant, dramatic narrative is a pleasure to read. See’s dedication to painting her family’s resilience as vividly as its hardships shines through.•
Join us on Thursday, August 21, at 5 p.m. Pacific time, when Adrian Tomine will sit down with CBC host John Freeman and a special guest to discuss Shortcomings. Register for the Zoom conversation here.
ASTERISKS
Check out Kate Isenberg’s comic response to Adrian Tomine’s Shortcomings, the August California Book Club selection. —Alta
ROMANCE IN VIRTUAL REALITY
Read Jessica Blough’s review of Elaine Castillo’s Moderation. —Alta
SAN FRANCISCO HISTORY
Read Tom Zito’s Q&A with Gary Krist, author of Trespassers at the Golden Gate: A True Account of Love, Murder, and Madness in Gilded-Age San Francisco. —Alta
AUGUST RELEASES
Here are 15 new books about the West that we’re excited to see publish this month. —Alta
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