Overview
East of East: The Making of Greater El Monte, is an edited collection of thirty-one essays that trace the experience of a California community over three centuries, from eighteenth-century Spanish colonization to twenty-first century globalization. Employing traditional historical scholarship, oral history, creative nonfiction and original art, the book provides a radical new history of El Monte and South El Monte, showing how interdisciplinary and community-engaged scholarship can break new ground in public history. East of East tells stories that have been excluded from dominant historical narratives-stories that long survived only in the popular memory of residents, as well as narratives that have been almost completely buried and all but forgotten. Its cast of characters includes white vigilantes, Mexican anarchists, Japanese farmers, labor organizers, civil rights pioneers, and punk rockers, as well as the ordinary and unnamed youth who generated a vibrant local culture at dances and dive bars.
Full Product Details
Author: Romeo Guzmán ,
Carribean Fragoza ,
Alex Sayf Cummings ,
Ryan Reft
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Imprint: Rutgers University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 2.30cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.463kg
ISBN: 9781978805484
ISBN 10: 1978805489
Pages: 362
Publication Date: 14 February 2020
Recommended Age: From 18 to 99 years
Audience:
General/trade
,
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
General
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
Welcoming Boom's New Editorial Team mention of East of East https: //boomcalifornia.com/2019/08/07/welcoming-booms-new-editorial-team/--Laura Pulido Boom California Richly layered and movingly felt, East of East is a collaborative history of a seemingly ordinary place revealed as a crossroads of the local and the global. A remarkable interleaving of scholarship and the intimacy of memory. --D.J. Waldie author of Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir East of East makes several important interventions. First, it is part of an exciting movement to reclaim the histories and geographies of cities from the bottom up. Second, it focuses on a vital but completely overlooked part of LA history - El Monte. Essential reading for all those interested in southern California. --Laura Pulido co-Author of, A People's Guide to Los Angeles
East of East makes several important interventions. First, it is part of an exciting movement to reclaim the histories and geographies of cities from the bottom up. Second, it focuses on a vital but completely overlooked part of LA history - El Monte. Essential reading for all those interested in southern California. --Laura Pulido co-Author of, A People's Guide to Los Angeles Richly layered and movingly felt, East of East is a collaborative history of a seemingly ordinary place revealed as a crossroads of the local and the global. A remarkable interleaving of scholarship and the intimacy of memory. --D.J. Waldie author of Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir
Combining creative nonfiction, oral history, and traditional scholarship, the various writings here reclaim the histories and geographies of the urban fringe these writers call 'east of east.' What makes this area so significant is that it's been a point of 'contact between farmworkers, punks, white supremacists, suburbanites, Zumba dancers, and civil rights activists.' -- L.A. Taco Your history-buff friends all want this magical book for Christmas. -- The Press-Enterprise Richly layered and movingly felt, East of East is a collaborative history of a seemingly ordinary place revealed as a crossroads of the local and the global. A remarkable interleaving of scholarship and the intimacy of memory. --D.J. Waldie author of Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir East of East makes several important interventions. First, it is part of an exciting movement to reclaim the histories and geographies of cities from the bottom up. Second, it focuses on a vital but completely overlooked part of LA history - El Monte. Essential reading for all those interested in southern California. --Laura Pulido co-Author of, A People's Guide to Los Angeles Who owns history? New book reconsiders San Gabriel Valley's pioneer past, Greater LA hosted by Steve Chiotakis https: //www.kcrw.com/news/shows/greater-la/lausd-police-el-monte/sgv-el-monte-history-book-- Greater LA, KCRW Welcoming Boom's New Editorial Team mention of East of East https: //boomcalifornia.com/2019/08/07/welcoming-booms-new-editorial-team/-- Boom California The editors of East of East see deeper truths. Greater El Monte, it turns out, is the setting for a story as rich and tangled as the flora that still covers the Whittier Narrows Recreation Area, a patch of parkland that lies, relatively unspoiled, in the watershed the El Montes call home. -- Los Angeles Review of Books San Gabriel Mission fire provokes deep, conflicting reactions, by Gustavo Arellano https: //www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-07-13/san-gabriel-mission-fire-morning-mass -- Los Angeles Times How Authors Are Reaching Book Lovers in the Age of COVID-19, by Teena Apeles https: //www.kcet.org/shows/southland-sessions/how-authors-are-reaching-book-lovers-in-the-age-of-covid-19-- KCET.org For 100 Years, El Monte Has Celebrated a Blatant Historical Falsehood. Why? A Southern California City Has a Rich, Multi-Ethnic Past That Its Foundational Myth Erases, by Romeo Guzman https: //www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2020/08/19/el-monte-end-of-the-santa-fe-trail-true-history/ideas/essay/-- Zocalo Public Square East of East digs up the dirt of greater El Monte to find what is left of 'us' -- for the authors and contributors born and raised there, and for the Indigenous, immigrant, multiracial, multicultural and transnational communities brought to vivid life in these pages. It writes 'us' back into the narratives that erased us and writes new ones to remind us that white pioneer settlers are just part of the story, not the center of it. -- KCET.org Best of all, East of East is both chronicle and challenge to all of us: Know your local history, document it and spread its gospel to the world, no matter how seemingly small. -- Los Angeles Times Scholars and regular people will find something to enjoy in East of East. Tourists and Locals alike will have a refreshingly informed understanding next time they go cruising through the streets of Aztlan and find themselves on Durfee in El Monte, remembering novelist Salvador Plascencia's description of Durfee Avenue. What a great gift, or textbook. East of East is scholarship done right. Orale to the publishers and especially lead editors Romeo Guzman and Carribean Fragoza. -- La Bloga
Richly layered and movingly felt, East of East is a collaborative history of a seemingly ordinary place revealed as a crossroads of the local and the global. A remarkable interleaving of scholarship and the intimacy of memory. --D.J. Waldie author of Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir East of East makes several important interventions. First, it is part of an exciting movement to reclaim the histories and geographies of cities from the bottom up. Second, it focuses on a vital but completely overlooked part of LA history - El Monte. Essential reading for all those interested in southern California. --Laura Pulido co-Author of, A People's Guide to Los Angeles Welcoming Boom's New Editorial Team mention of East of East https: //boomcalifornia.com/2019/08/07/welcoming-booms-new-editorial-team/--Boom California
Welcoming Boom's New Editorial Team mention of East of East https: //boomcalifornia.com/2019/08/07/welcoming-booms-new-editorial-team/--Laura Pulido Boom California Richly layered and movingly felt, East of East is a collaborative history of a seemingly ordinary place revealed as a crossroads of the local and the global. A remarkable interleaving of scholarship and the intimacy of memory. --D.J. Waldie author of Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir East of East makes several important interventions. First, it is part of an exciting movement to reclaim the histories and geographies of cities from the bottom up. Second, it focuses on a vital but completely overlooked part of LA history - El Monte. Essential reading for all those interested in southern California. --Laura Pulido co-Author of, A People's Guide to Los Angeles Who owns history? New book reconsiders San Gabriel Valley's pioneer past, Greater LA hosted by Steve Chiotakis https: //www.kcrw.com/news/shows/greater-la/lausd-police-el-monte/sgv-el-monte-history-book--Laura Pulido Greater LA, KCRW East of East digs up the dirt of greater El Monte to find what is left of 'us' -- for the authors and contributors born and raised there, and for the Indigenous, immigrant, multiracial, multicultural and transnational communities brought to vivid life in these pages. It writes 'us' back into the narratives that erased us and writes new ones to remind us that white pioneer settlers are just part of the story, not the center of it. --Laura Pulido KCET.org San Gabriel Mission fire provokes deep, conflicting reactions, by Gustavo Arellano https: //www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-07-13/san-gabriel-mission-fire-morning-mass --Laura Pulido Los Angeles Times For 100 Years, El Monte Has Celebrated a Blatant Historical Falsehood. Why? A Southern California City Has a Rich, Multi-Ethnic Past That Its Foundational Myth Erases, by Romeo Guzman https: //www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2020/08/19/el-monte-end-of-the-santa-fe-trail-true-history/ideas/essay/--Laura Pulido Zocalo Public Square
Author Information
ROMEO GUZMÁN is the co-director of the South El Monte Arts Posse and an assistant professor in US and Public History at Fresno State, where he is the founding director of the Valley Public History Initiative: Preserving our Stories. CARRIBEAN FRAGOZA is a journalist, fiction writer, and artist from South El Monte. She is the founder and co-director of the South El Monte Arts Posse. ALEX SAYF CUMMINGS is an associate professor of History at Georgia State University and the author of Democracy of Sound: Music Piracy and the Remaking of American Copyright in the Twentieth Century. RYAN REFT is a historian of the Modern United States in the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress.
