Arellano: Short, beautiful Southern California reads for our doomscrolling times

Amid the fusillade of unspeakable headlines this year, 1 pierced my nerdy heart.

“Enjoying this headline? You’re a rarity: Reading for pleasance is declining ...” was the topper to a communicative by my workfellow Hailey Branson-Potts successful August. Pleasure speechmaking among American adults fell much than 40% successful 2 decades — a continuation of a inclination going backmost to the 1940s.

I get it. We don’t privation to work for amusive erstwhile we’re trying to wade done the sewer of accusation we find online and marque consciousness of our unspeakable governmental times. But arsenic Tyrion Lannister, the wily leader of George R.R. Martin’s “A Game of Thrones” series, said, “A caput needs books arsenic a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to support its edge.”

So for my yearly vacation columna recommending large books astir Southern California, I’m sticking to formats that lend themselves to easier speechmaking — bite-size jewels of intellect, if you will. Through essays, abbreviated stories, poems and pictures, each of my suggestions volition bring solace done the quality of wherever we unrecorded and connection inspiration astir however to treble down connected resisting the atrocious guys.

“California Southern: Writing From the Road, 1992-2025” by LAist newsman Adolfo Guzman-Lopez.

(Gustavo Arellano / Los Angeles Times)

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez’s lukewarm dependable has informed Angelenos astir arts, authorities and acquisition for 25 years connected what was agelong called KPCC and present goes by LAist 89.3. What astir listeners mightiness not cognize is that the Mexico City autochthonal archetypal earned acclaim arsenic a laminitis of Taco Shop Poets, an influential San Diego corporate that highlighted Chicano writers successful a metropolis that didn’t look to attraction for them.

Guzman-Lopez lets others delve into that past successful the intro and forerward to “California Southern: Writings from the Road, 1992-2025.” Reading the abbreviated anthology, it rapidly becomes wide wherefore his audio dispatches person ever had a prose-like prime often lacking among nationalist vigor reporters, whose transportation tends to beryllium arsenic adust arsenic Death Valley.

In mostly English but sometimes Spanish and Spanglish, Guzman-Lopez takes readers from the U.S.-Mexico borderline to L.A., employing the benignant of lyrical slope shots lone a writer tin get distant with. I particularly loved his statement of Silver Lake arsenic “two taxation brackets away/From Salvatrucha Echo Park.” Another item is contained successful “Trucks,” wherever Guzman-Lopez praises the migrant entrepreneurs from astir the satellite who travel to L.A. and sanction their businesses aft their hometowns.

“Say these names to praise the soil,” helium writes. “Say these names to papers the passage. Say these names to retrieve the trek.”

Guzman-Lopez has been doing readings precocious with Lisa Alvarez, who published her archetypal book, “Some Final Beauty and Other Stories,” aft decades of teaching English — including to my woman backmost successful the 1990s! — astatine Irvine Valley College.

The L.A. autochthonal did the intolerable for idiosyncratic who seldom delves into made-up stories due to the fact that the existent satellite is fantastical enough: She made maine not conscionable work fabrication but bask it.

Alvarez’s debut is simply a loosely tied postulation centered connected progressive activists successful Southern California, spanning a seismic sendoff for idiosyncratic who fought during the Spanish Civil War and a nonmigratory of O.C.’s canyon state tipping disconnected the FBI astir her neighbor’s information successful the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot.

Author, activistic and Irvine Valley College prof Lisa Alvarez holds a transcript of her abbreviated communicative postulation “Some Final Beauty and Other Stories.”

(Don Leach / Daily Pilot)

Most of the protagonists are women, brought to beingness done Alvarez’s taut, shining sentences. Memories play a cardinal relation — radical loved and lost, places missed and reviled. A nephew remembers however his uncle landed successful an FBI subversives record aft attending a Paul Robeson code successful South L.A. soon aft serving successful the Navy successful World War II. An L.A. politician who seems similar a stand-in for Antonio Villaraigoisa considers himself “the crafty and chill dependable of 1 who sees his past and aboriginal successful presumption of chapters successful a best-selling book” arsenic helium tries to person a faded movie prima to travel down from a histrion during a protest.

To paraphrase William Faulkner astir the South, the past is ne'er dormant successful Southern California — it isn’t adjacent past.

While Alvarez is simply a first-time author, D.J. Waldie has written galore books. The Livy of Lakewood, who has penned important essays astir L.A. past and geography for decades, has gathered immoderate of his caller efforts successful “Elements of Los Angeles: Earth, Water, Air, Fire.”

A batch of his subjects — L.A.’s parent tree, pioneering preacher Aimee Semple McPherson, the archetypal Hass avocado — are tried-and-true terrain for Southern California writers. But fewer of america tin crook a operation similar Waldie. On legendary Dodger broadcasters Vin Scully and Jaime Jarrín, helium writes, “The duplicate cities of Los Angeles and Los Ángeles, evoked by [their] voices … whitethorn look to beryllium incommensurate places to the unhearing, but the borders of the 2 cities are porous. Sound travels.”

Man, I privation I would person written that.

“Elements of Los Angeles” is worthy the purchase, if lone to work “Taken by the Flood,” Waldie’s relationship of the 1928 St. Francis Dam catastrophe that killed astatine slightest 431 radical — mostly Latinos — and destroyed the vocation of L.A.’s h2o godfather, William Mulholland. The author’s dilatory pain of the tragic chronology, from Mulholland’s celebrated “There it is. Take it” punctuation erstwhile helium unleashed h2o from the Owens Valley successful 1913 to slake the city’s thirst, to however L.A. rapidly forgot the disaster, compounds hubris upon hubris.

But then, Waldie concludes by citing a Spanish-language corrido astir the disaster: “Friends, I permission you/with this bittersweet song/and with a plea to heaven/For those taken by the flood.”

The eventual victims, Waldie argues, are not the dormant from the St. Francis Dam but each Angelenos for buying into the fatal folly of Mullholland’s L.A.

“Elements of Los Angeles” was published by Angel City Press, a helping of the Los Angeles Public Library that besides released “Cruising J-Town: Japanese American Car Culture successful Los Angeles.”

Cal State Long Beach sociology prof Oliver Wang offers a powerhouse of a java array publication by taking what could person easy sold arsenic a scrapbook of chill images and grounding it successful the past of a assemblage that has seen the committedness and symptom of Southern California similar fewer others.

We spot Japanese Americans posing successful beforehand of souped-up imports, reveling successful SoCal’s kustom kulture country of the 1960s, lasting successful beforehand of a car astatine a World War II-era incarceration campy and loading up their gardening trucks astatine a clip erstwhile they dominated the landscaping industry.

“One tin work full histories of American car civilization and find nary notation of Japanese oregon Asian American involvement,” Wang writes — but that’s astir arsenic pedantic arsenic “Cruising J-Town” gets.

The remainder is simply a delight that zooms by similar the remainder of my recs. Drop the doomscrolling for a day, marque the clip to work them each and go a amended Southern Californian successful the process. Enjoy!