Literary Tourism: California Archives

The Mistress of Spices

by Chitra Divakaruni

Divakaruni's first novel tells the story of Tilo, a young Indian girl trained in the magical powers of spices and their blends. She disguises herself in a run-down spice shop in Oakland, California, where she uses her powers to improve the lives of the immigrant Indians who come to her for spices, but her longing to find a love of her own tempts her to leave her magical post in search of her own fate.

Last Night at the Telegraph Club

by Malinda Lo

This coming-of-age tale for mature YA readers (and grown-ups!) is set at a lesbian bar in 1950s San Francisco Chinatown. When seventeen-year-old Lily Hu meets Kathleen Miller outside the Telegraph Club, her world tilts on its axis. This isn’t a safe time for two girls to fall in love, especially given the Red Scare and Lily’s father’s looming deportation. Her parents urge her to do whatever she can to stay safe, but Lily believes some risks may prove to be worth it. This book reads as a celebration of romantic and familial love, and a love letter to the city of San Francisco.

The Joy Luck Club

by Amy Tan

Amy Tan’s 1989 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction multi-generational saga follows four mothers and four daughters, examining complicated family dynamics, gender, race, class, and more. In 1949, four recent Chinese immigrants meet every week to play mahjong and discuss their new lives in San Francisco. They call themselves the Joy Luck Club. While the women share their personal stories with each other, they don’t tell their daughters and their daughters in turn disregard their advice, thinking it won’t apply to their second generational American lives. Their interpersonal relationships are complex and ever changing, which means there’s so much to talk about here.

The Ex Vows

by Jessica Joyce

This second chance contemporary romance centers on Eli and Georgia, a couple who met and fell in love when they were teenagers, but broke up five years ago under painful circumstances. Now they're back in California to celebrate the wedding of their mutual best friend Adam, and for his sake, they've resolved to pretend that everything is fine and they're both at peace with how things ended. But the truth is they never got over each other. When they're brought back into each other's lives for a week to help pull off the wedding, sparks fly. This was a delightful, smartly-written read with heart and depth; I flew through it. (Open door.)

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

by Joan Didion

Didion’s first work of nonfiction, this essay collection published in 1968, remains a classic. She writes about figures like John Wayne and Howard Hughes, her experience growing up in California, and the birth of the 1960s counterculture movement in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury. Didion drew her title from the W.B. Yeats poem “The Second Coming” (“things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”) and wrestles throughout with the disruption and unease she sees at work in the culture around her.

Colored Television

by Danzy Senna

This darkly comic satire centers on a Los Angeles-based novelist named Jane who is tired of pouring herself into her work only to barely make ends meet. L.A. is expensive—especially with two kids—and novel writing just doesn't pay. Jane decides she wants to "sell out" like her friend Brett and become a screenwriter, with its predictable hours and paychecks. But when Jane makes one tiny lie in order to secure a gig, it leads to a bigger one, then a bigger one—and it's only a matter of time before her precarious house of cards comes crashing down. This was smart, funny, and packed with insider-y publishing mischief. Fun fact: Senza is married to novelist Percival Everett, and she draws on her own life experience in sooo many ways in this (fictional) story. I initially tried this in print and it just didn't stick but once I switched to the audiobook narrated by Kristen Ariza, I breezed right through it!

Goodbye, Vitamin

by Rachel Khong

This debut got all kinds of buzz. Reviews used words like "quirky" (NPR) and "darkly funny" (PopSugar). From the publisher: "Freshly disengaged from her fiancé and feeling that life has not turned out quite the way she planned, thirty-year-old Ruth quits her job, leaves town and arrives at her parents' home to find that situation more complicated than she'd realized. Her father, a prominent history professor, is losing his memory and is only erratically lucid. Ruth's mother, meanwhile, is lucidly erratic. But as Ruth's father’s condition intensifies, the comedy in her situation takes hold, gently transforming her all her grief."

What Kind of Paradise

by Janelle Brown

This thrilling family tale wrestles with questions of identity, loyalty, and our complicated relationship with technology. Jane grew up in rural Montana with only her father for company. She loves him unquestioningly, and eagerly absorbs everything he teaches her about self-reliance (good) and technology (bad). But one day when she’s seventeen, he surprises Jane by bringing home a computer that she stealthily uses to connect to the outside world. What she learns—about the world and her own existence in it—shakes her faith in the father she loves. Jane longs to break free, but even as she takes big steps to build her own life, she can’t turn her back on him. This central tension had me racing though the pages, as did the complex family dynamics and irresistible 90s nostalgia.

There There: A Novel

by Tommy Orange

Orange’s multigenerational, multivoiced novel offers a nuanced glimpse into contemporary Native American life in Oakland, Calfiornia through the experiences and perspectives of twelve wide-ranging characters. As they prepare for the city’s first Big Oakland Powwow at the Oakland Coliseum, the lives of Orange’s diverse characters become intertwined: an aspiring filmmaker, a man who’s taught himself traditional Native dance with YouTube videos, a woman traveling to meet her grandchildren for the first time—on the condition that she remains sober. Orange says he wrote this novel to “try to honor and express fully all that it entails to be Native and be from Oakland,” and the early reviews say he nailed it.

Bug Hollow

by Michelle Huneven

Huneven’s kaleidoscopic latest begins with a road trip: in 1970s Northern California, eldest son Ellis heads up the coast with his friends to celebrate their high school graduation. He doesn’t return on schedule. His parents set off to find him and bring him home, and the aftershocks of that misguided attempt then echo through four fraught decades of family life. Through the years, Huneven takes us inside the minds of Ellis’s family members—his sisters, prickly mother, and easy-going father—plus other key figures in their lives. Even across wildly disparate timelines the themes remain steady and universal: love and grief, art and solace, alcoholism and abandonment. The story unfolds primarily in California, with brief interludes in Saudi Arabia and Oaxaca. I was constantly surprised at the leaps and pivots Huneven took while laying out their history, but enjoyed every stop along the way.

Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table

by Ruth Reichl

Ruth Reichl is one of our greatest food writers and it all started with this 1998 coming-of-age memoir. She chronicles her chaotic upbringing, in the home of a workaholic father and a mother living with undiagnosed bipolar disorder. Her mother’s penchant for serving rotten food led to Reichl learning how to cook. She went on to become a part of the 1970s organic food revolution in Berkeley and document her continuing cooking adventures in memoirs, essays, and novels.

A Place for Us

by Fatima Farheen Mirza

This slow-burning debut about an Indian-American Muslim family skillfully probes themes of identity, culture, family, and generational change. "I am to see to it that I do not lose you," reads the epigraph (Whitman), and the story wonders if, despite our best intentions, one might nevertheless wound someone they love deeply enough to lose them forever. The story opens with the oldest daughter’s wedding: the bride scans the crowd for her beloved yet rebellious brother, hoping he'll appear despite being estranged from the family for years. Through a series of flashbacks, and in rotating points of view, Mirza examines the series of small betrayals that splintered the family, skillfully imbuing quotidian events—a chance meeting at a party, a dinner conversation about a spelling test—with deep significance, showing how despite their smallness, they irrevocably alter the course of the family’s life. The last section is a stunner, but grab the tissues first. For fans of Khaled Hosseini’s And the Mountains Echoed and Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart.

The House of Broken Angels

by Luis Alberto Urrea

Considered to be Urrea’s masterpiece, this Mexican-American immigrant story follows the De La Cruz clan as they gather for patriarch Big Angel’s final birthday party at his home in San Diego. He has cancer and won’t live to celebrate another year. But before the party happens, his mother Mama America dies and he must plan her funeral. These two events occur on the same weekend, giving the family a chance to reconnect, mourn, reflect, and remember.

East of Eden

by John Steinbeck

This is Steinbeck's most ambitious novel, and in his opinion, his finest work. ("I think everything else I have written has been, in a sense, practice for this.") My high school English teacher assigned us The Grapes of Wrath instead, so I didn't read this until a few years ago. The title references the fall of Adam and Eve, and the subsequent embattled relationship between brothers Cain and Abel. Grounded thoroughly in its California setting, interweaving the stories of two Salinas Valley families, Steinbeck's magnum opus feels tragic, yet hopeful.

The Other Americans

by Laila Lalami

My husband Will is a longtime fan of Pulitzer Prize-finalist Lalami; this 2019 novel was the first of her now-many works I’ve read. The story begins when a Moroccan immigrant is hit and killed by a speeding car not far from his home in a small town in the Mojave Desert. What follows is part procedural, part family saga, part love story, and part American origin story, intriguingly told from nine different perspectives.

Stars in Your Eyes

by Kacen Callender

When bad boy Logan Gray and new talent Mattie Cole are cast as lead actors in a romantic film, they get off to a rough start. So rough, they wind up having to fake date to save the film’s publicity. Logan tends to push people away before they can get too close, while Mattie worries he could lose himself while trying to save Logan. But as they slowly get to know each other, real feelings develop. With epistolary elements like entertainment site articles, Calendar’s debut contemporary romance explores the effects of trauma, Hollywood’s movie industry, identity, and more. (Content warnings apply. Open door.)

The Library Book

by Susan Orlean

On April 29, 1986, a fire consumed part of the Los Angeles Public Library, destroying four hundred thousand books and damaging seven hundred thousand more. All these years later, it remained a mystery as to whether someone purposefully set the fire and, if so, who did it. Staff reporter for the New Yorker Susan Orlean puts her considerable talent toward unearthing the culprit, while also providing a deep dive into libraries and librarianship. It’s as much a love letter to books and the institutions that provide access to them as it is an account of arson and LA history.

Expiration Dates

by Rebecca Serle

In this contemporary and gently magical novel, every time Daphne Bell meets a new man, the Universe sends her a piece of paper containing his name and a number on it—the exact amount of time they’ll be together. It took her a while to figure out how those notes work, but once she did, she was able to see that they were never wrong. And this makes her feel occasionally hopeful, but mostly cursed—until she receives a note that says she’s found the relationship that will last forever. But Daphne finds herself unable to stop wrestling with the question of what she wants for her romantic future, even when she thinks she knows that future is certain. I read this in a day and appreciated the way Serle’s little injection of magic prodded me to think differently about my own life. As someone who’s never been to L.A., I especially enjoyed the strong sense of place: this book is set in many specific neighborhoods in L.A., and I googled every single one as I read!

Parable of the Sower

by Octavia Butler

I revisited this modern classic for the first time in over a decade this month! I'm stunned once again by how modern Butler's 1993 dystopian novel feels today. This series—a planned trilogy that was never completed—is the most realist of Butler's fiction. The setting is California, 2026, where a Black teenager named Lauren struggles for survival in a world gone to pieces, ravaged by climate change and drug abuse of epidemic proportions. Despite the overwhelming and terrifying obstacles she faces, Lauren isn't ready to give up yet, and bands together with a group of fellow travelers to head north in search of rumored safety, with the hopes of founding a colony for her Earthseed religion. Utterly gripping, and a great introduction to Butler's work.

The Guncle

by Steven Rowley

When Patrick aka Gay Uncle Patrick aka GUP is called in to take care of his nine-year-old niece Maisie and six-year-old nephew Grant after the death of their mother (and his best friend) at his brother’s request, he tries to get out of it. What does a former actor know about raising kids? But needs must and so to Patrick’s Palm Springs home they go. In the process, Patrick has to take stock of his fading career and finally grieve the past loss of his partner, all while shepherding Maisie and Grant through their new normal. A heartwarming exploration of grief and family.

Tell Me Three Things

by Julie Buxbaum

I read this ages ago and included it in my list of Unputdownable books I read in 24 hours, and was excited to talk to the MMD Book Club about it with author Julie Buxbaum—so I took the opportunity to read it again, for the third time. In this stellar YA novel, a girl-next-door type suddenly finds herself in an elite California prep school, and has to figure out how to navigate this new privileged world while still grieving her mother's death. When she gets an email from an unidentified boy who calls himself "Somebody Nobody" offering to be her guide to her new school, she doesn’t want to say yes—but she really needs his help. A sweet and fun teen romance, but also a pitch-perfect portrayal of the grieving process. I couldn’t stop myself from cheering for Jessie as she put her life together again.

The Nature of Fragile Things

by Susan Meissner

The deadly 1906 earthquake in San Francisco changes the fate of three women in this historical novel. Sophie is a mail-order bride and Irish immigrant who agrees to marry widower Martin, despite her misgivings, and care for his mute five-year-old daughter Kat. Belinda is pregnant and looking for her husband. Meanwhile, another woman grieves hundreds of miles away. As the devastation from the earthquake unfurls, the women must do their best to not only survive, but discover the truth connecting them all.

The Mothers

by Brit Bennett

I loved this book, an MMD Book Club flight pick and a book recommended on today's episode of WSIRN. Not an easy read, but so good, and one that I still think about even though I read it many moons ago. In this coming-of-age story, debut author Bennett shows us how grief predictably consumes a 17-year old girl growing up in a tight-knit community in Southern California, and how two friends get pulled into the tangled aftermath. Bennett tells the story through the eyes of the community's mothers—the community pillars who show up with casseroles when somebody's sick—but in this story, the mothers' vicious gossip causes nothing but trouble.

The Buddha in the Attic

by Julie Otsuka

Written in first person plural, this slim historical novel embodies the collective voices of a group of young Japanese women traveling to San Francisco as mail-order brides. Over the course of thirty years, we follow them on the boat to their first night as young brides and through the difficulties of assimilating to the US and raising children, culminating in their families being sent to internment camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore

by Robin Sloan

This fast-paced book is mystery, quest, and love letter to the written word, all rolled into one. In this rip-roaring adventure, the best secrets are hidden in plain sight, in the ancient volumes of a magical bookstore. It’s not technically brilliant, but plenty readable, engaging, and just plain fun. Book nerds, beware: you’ll want to climb Mr. Penumbra’s ladders and browse his shelves. Warm, friendly, and smart—and the cover glows in the dark. That’s hard to beat.

Chirp

Literary Tourism: California

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