Carribean Fragoza is an artist and writer from South El Monte. After graduating from UCLA, Fragoza completed the Creative Writing MFA Program at CalArts, where she worked with writers Douglas Kearney and Norman Klein. She co-edits UC Press's acclaimed California cultural journal, Boom California, and is also the founder of South El Monte Arts Posse, an interdisciplinary arts collective. From 2014 to 2016, she was the managing editor at KCET. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous publications, including Zyzzyva, Alta, BOMB, Huizache, Aperture, Harper's Bazaar, KCET, and Los Angeles Review of Books. She is the co-editor of East of East: The Making of Greater El Monte and the author of Eat the Mouth that Feeds You, which is a finalist for a PEN award.
Romeo Guzmán is an assistant professor in US history at Claremont Graduate University. His research and writing focus on Chicano/a/x history, Mexican migration, and California. Before arriving at CGU, Guzmán was an assistant professor at California State University, Fresno (2016 to 2020), where he founded and directed The Valley Public History Initiative: Preserving our Stories. Since 2012 he has co-directed, with Carribean Fragoza, the South El Monte Arts Posse's public history project "East of East: Mapping Community Narratives in El Monte and South El Monte," which has resulted in the publication of East of East: The Making of Greater El Monte, bike rides, Ethnic Studies curriculum, and a new mural. His public history projects have received funding from California Humanities, Los Angeles City Department of Cultural Affairs, National Performance Network, National Endowment for the Humanities, Whiting Foundation, and have been reviewed or featured on NPR, KCRW, The California Report, The Metropole, KCET, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Fresno Bee, and others. Guzmán co-edits Boom California, an open-access and public facing online journal of UC Press.
Their latest collaboration, along with Samine Joudat, is Writing the Golden State: The New Literary Terrain of California and they recently talked about it with Daryl Maxwell for the LAPL Blog.
What was your inspiration for Writing the Golden State: The New Literary Terrain of California?
Romeo Guzmán (RG): Inspiration came from a few different places. I am a historian and Carribean is a fiction writer and journalist. We're both committed to thinking, working, and writing about place in our own practice, so a book about creative non-fiction about cities and neighborhoods draws our interest and training. It also very much emerged from having co-edited a book about El Monte/South El Monte and our love for those cities.
Carribean Fragoza (CF): The book is also an expression of our desire to learn about communities that have been overlooked or marginalized, not just in L.A. but across the state. And, as co-directors of an arts collective, there was a strong interest in including art. One of the titles we played with was "Literary Postcards: Writing from the Golden State."
In your introduction, you describe Writing the Golden State as "the product of its editors and an open call," so I'm guessing that was your process for putting together this collection. What was your process in selecting the works that were included from the submissions?
RG: The book started out as a series called "Literary Postcards" at Boom California. We had two open calls. Samine Joudat joined us at Boom California when we moved from Fresno to Claremont. We all read the submissions and talked about them. The essays are different in their approach, style, and even form, but they all allow the reader to enter a place. So, that was a big thing for us.
Were there any surprises for you amongst the contributors (names you were not expecting to participate or writers you were certain would but were not able to contribute)? Are there any authors that you were hoping to include but were unable to for some reason?
RG: One consistent surprise for me was the art that Fernando Corona made for each essay. We had the authors provide Fernando with old photographs and archival documents related to their essay. When the art came in, it really added another component to the entire project. More than a visual representation, it created a conversation about text, images, and symbols.
Any cities/towns/areas in California that you were hoping to include but weren't covered by the submissions?
RG: My mother's family arrived in South El Monte in the 1960s, but I was born in Goleta and raised in Pomona. I would have loved an essay set in Pomona or Goleta.
Carribean and Romeo, you previously worked together on East of East: The Making of Greater El Monte, which seems like a collection similar in tone to Writing the Golden State, but much more tightly focused on the two California cities of South El Monte and El Monte. Can you tell us a bit about working on that?
CF: I founded SEMAP in 2012 and we published East of East in 2020. With East of East, we worked with community members, archivists, educators, and scholars to build a new archive in order to write an alternative and radical history of El Monte and South El Monte. In some ways, that project hasn't ended. Since then, we've led walking tours, painted murals, and built an Ethnic Studies curriculum with high school teachers and an Omeka digital archive. And, most recently, we operated C.A.S.A. Zamora, a cultural center, at Zamora Park. The C.A.S.A. Zamora crew was about ten people.
RG: I'll just add that East of East and SEMAP are collaborative projects that include a ton of folks. At our best, Carribean and I are working to provide folks with space and resources to create. I'm still mourning the end of C.A.S.A. Zamora, but the community that came together at the house still exists, and many of us continue to march together, work in solidarity with our communities, attend each other's events, and even family parties.
How did Samine join your established team?
RG: When I arrived at Claremont Graduate University, I bought Boom California, and CGU provided me with funds to hire an editorial assistant. We were fortunate enough to hire Samine, who worked at Boom California for about two years.
What are each of your favorite places in the state of California? Outside of California?
RG: Gulp. This is an impossible question to answer! I don't think I can give you a definitive answer, so here are a few places. I really love soccer fields—they are like sunsets to me, especially the humble pitches. In the fall, one of my favorite places is Mount San Antonio College's soccer pitch: sitting on the sidelines, with my five-year-old daughter and next to my godmother Gaby. We catch up, I ask for advice, and we watch Mt. Sac play. It doesn't get any better than that for me. During the holidays, a family party in a backyard—that used to be in South El Monte, but it's shifted lately. I love visiting Goleta: there are a lot of memories and family histories all over. And, Fresno: playing futsal with the futbolistas and following it up with a beer. Outside of California, it's Mexico City. I first went in 2005 for research, and some of my best friends live there and introduced me to the art of being a public intellectual.
Is there a theme/idea for another anthology that you would like to pursue or wish you had pursued in the past (and can talk about)?
CF: Romeo and I are increasingly interested in environmental justice. It appears some in East of East.
As an Editor, what do you wish writers, especially newer ones, knew or understood about the process of submitting a story for possible inclusion in an anthology on which you are working?
RG: Fit is really important, but it is often hard to explain. If you look at WTG, the essays are all really different, but they also all make sense together. So, my advice to writers is to read, if possible, what the editors are publishing and get a sense of the spirit of the project. I'm also open to talking with authors, so sometimes it can help to send out an initial email to gauge interest.
What's currently on your nightstand?
RG: My winter break is over, and my spring semester is here, so I have a weird mix of books. James by Percival Everett. I finished it over the break. Highly recommend it. I started The Luminous Novel, but I never finished it. It's a book I want to read and finish, but just can't. Claudio Lomnitz’s Sovereignty and Extortion: A New State form in Mexico. Caribbean is reading Vanessa Angelica's Magical Realism, which I have been sneaking into. We only have one copy. And then I have a ton of academic books about the education of Mexican migrants and Mexican Americans in the 20th century, and archives.
Can you name your top five favorite or most influential authors?
RG: This is another hard question, and the answer is different today than it was a few years ago or when I was a graduate student. I came to Juan Rulfo late, but Pedro Paramo is a book I re-read from time to time. I find myself reading the last 2-3 pages of Dana Johnson's Elsewhere, California when times are hard. There is a kind of heartbreak there that is also about resistance and us being OK, that I find comforting. As a historian, I regularly teach Michel Rolph-Trouillot and Emma Perez. I find, in their work, a kind of reminder to be attentive to power and imagining and thinking outside colonial paradigms. Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower is up there too. It's another book I came to late. I read it during COVID, when there were fires.
What was your favorite book when you were a child?
RG: I liked Shel Silverstein, but I wasn't a big reader as a kid. I spent a lot of time outside playing.
Was there a book you felt you needed to hide from your parents?
RG: No
Is there a book you've faked reading?
RG: Right now I am fake reading Julio Cortazar’s Hopscotch.
Is there a book that changed your life?
RG: I read Foucault as a community college student, then again as an undergraduate student, and again as a graduate student. So, more than a book, it was theory that really opened up new ways to view the world. Edward Said’s Orientalism is up there for me.
Can you name a book for which you are an evangelist (and you think everyone should read)?
RG: People of Paper by the El Monte writer Salvador Plascencia.
What is the last piece of art (music, movies, TV, more traditional art forms) that you've experienced or that has impacted you?
RG: Ima cheat here and give you two: Yaccaira Salvatierra’s Sons of Salt and José Vadi’s Chipped.
What are you working on now?
RG: I am working on a history book titled Orphans of the Nation: Mexican-Americans and Transnational Citizenship in Greater Mexico, which is under contract with UT Press. As soon as I finish that, I am going to return to a book of essays that is almost done. I have a title and table of contents. Carribean is very close to finishing her first novel.
