Heyday Books

No Place for a Puritan: The Literature of California's Deserts

admin — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 17:01:00 +0000

Possibly some magnetic force field that beckons people to its promises of adventure, wealth, and sun blazed days, there is a pull toward California. Be it a fight for survival, a lost treasure, or ability to inspire, California and its sacred deserts are full of mysticism and brighter futures. On the other hand, California's offerings are in no way a given. The obstacles, being weather related or competitive in nature, are likely to break a person's soul. Being able to say you have survived it's land is almost like saying you have won the game; you took a chance with death and you have proven your worth. No other state has inspired so many forms of art. Iconic by design, this land is the perfect backdrop, and main character, for many written works.

The poetry, prose, and excerpts in No Place for a Puritan prove the obsession that humankind has for life on the edge in pursuit of some greater good while in the desert. The glimpses into desert life this anthology contains are of the truest embodiment of human existence; we live to struggle, and struggle to live.

Writers seem to find a freedom in the stillness that extreme quiet in the desert provides. W. Storrs Lee mentions the antagonist the desert provides in an excerpt of his 1963 novel, The Great California Deserts. How convenient and true is his statement. How ideal to set your characters in such a place where even vegetation can't pull though!

By including authors of long ago and authors of present standing, Nolan has encapsulated the trance that the desert can have on any point of time. An excerpt of Hunter S. Thompson's cult classic, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, brings to mind the drug-addled culture that the Californian desert hides.

The beautiful stories, recollections, and poems shared here are all too beautiful to name. The romanticism amongst trailer parks and treacherous landscape only encourages the reader to see it for oneself. Ruth Nolan has done a spectacular job gathering the pieces contained in this book to point out all of the deserts' offerings and takings to those who dare to encounter it. The desert still stands a mystery; centuries after humankind started writing about its splendors.

Another decadent plus to this anthology is that I've been reading it during one of the coldest spells in recent history. There is nothing better than the warmth fueled by the reminders of the sun and the land it graces on a continual basis. I miss the desert even more now.

Written by: A. Mariel Westermeyer, March 13th 2010

Wherever There's a Fight: How Runaway Slaves, Suffragists, Immigrants, Strikers and Poets Shaped Civil Liberties in California

admin — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:00:00 +0000

By Elaine Elinson, Stan Yogi

Heyday Books

On June 16th, 2008 Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin made headlines as the first same-sex couple legally married in the state of California. The couple, who first met in the ‘50s, spent the majority of their adult lives advocating for equal rights for homosexual couples and lived to see their goal realized. Although Californians have fought the battle for same-sex marriage most visibly in the past ten years, activists such as Lyon and Martin have been addressing the issue of discrimination against homosexuals in California for several decades. Lyon and Martin’s story is just one of the many civil rights struggles highlighted in Wherever There’s a Fight, an anthology of activism in the Golden State.

Each story carries with it a delightful tinge of tension, and as I read I found myself anxiously awaiting to hear how ordinary citizens had confronted their various struggles. Elinson and Yogi, both writers with close professional ties to the California ACLU, document civil liberties struggles from abortion rights to workers rights to the right to dissent. The stories demonstrate how many Californians became lifelong activists after fighting for rights that so vitally affected their access to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Ed Roberts was such a person. Roberts was infected with polio as a boy, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down. After his mother lobbied the local school board to allow her son to graduate high school (the principal had denied Roberts a diploma because he was unable to complete the district’s physical education and drivers education requirements) Roberts decided he would attend college to secure a meaningful livelihood. In 1962 he became the first severely disabled student admitted to the University of California at Berkeley, although the administration was unaware when they admitted him that the straight-A student was disabled. Thus began a fight for equal access and protection that Roberts would fight for the rest of his life that made California into the birthplace of the disability rights movement in the United States.

As the fight for civil rights becomes more visible, and more progress is gained, perhaps a second edition of this wonderful book will include some exciting new stories. I can’t wait!

Written by: Janice Formichella, January 13th 2010

A Community Organizer's Tale: People and Power in San Francisco

admin — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 01:00:00 +0000

By Mike Miller

Heyday Books

A Community Organizer’s Tale: People and Power in San Francisco is a radical history with a heap of theory folded in and a touch of imagery. It would be fascinating and informative to anyone interested in community organizing, housing issues, ethnic and labor struggles, civil rights, the history of San Francisco, or community-friendly city planning. The author, a San Francisco native, has been deeply involved in community organizing in the area for most of seventy-two years. He has a long resume of primary and supportive positions with communities, many central to famous movements and connected to famous organizers in San Francisco and other cities. He touches on details of his experience during the '60s in significant famous events in the civil rights and labor movements and the climates that developed into one another consecutively.

Major connections are revisited several times, which was helpful for me since I am a reader without a lot of previous understanding of the timing or significance of all the events, as well as terms like urban renewal and model cities. Strategies of urban renewal and model cities, for example, have had different outcomes for each city, depending on how the greater number of individuals and cohesive organizations in the communities responded. If you are wondering what Miller’s opinion of those strategies is, it’s not all good, at least not historically. He presents the simple, logical, and real reasons why.

In addition to describing what was going on nationally and how the top organizers worked, Miller tells of his experience as an organizer, emphasizing his various organizations goals and what political and economic decisions meant for middle class workers, minorities, unemployed, and homeowners and tenants in various communities. If you live in or are familiar with San Francisco, you might be tickled or heartbroken by truths revealed about causes of change in particular neighborhoods. Individual churches, blocks, restaurants, and business people are painted in a favorable light. One of my favorite lines depicting neighborhood politics is where he states, “We were regulars there, so the owner didn’t mind his cook taking breaks to be a community leader.” My other favorite line is a quote before the introduction, a former New York Governor on community organizing: “[Barack Obama] was a community organizer... I don’t even know if that’s a job.”

This would be a great educational piece for interested students, or workers in the field. That is, anyone wanting to get up to speed on what has happened in community organizing in San Francisco, Chicago, and nationally. I recommend it to anyone wanting to be part of the future of this movement, because history really does inspire greatness.

Written by: Heather Irvine, December 23rd 2009

Woman of Ill Fame

admin — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 22:36:00 +0000

By Erika Mailman

Heyday Books

Nora Simms is a prostitute who comes to San Francisco in 1848, during the Gold Rush. She starts as a "crib girl," working in a row house with several other prostitutes. One of Nora's aims is to work in a parlor house. Parlor houses are more upscale bordellos, frequented by men with more education than the miners Nora serviced. To achieve this goal, Nora begins speaking with a fake French accent. She takes lessons from another crib girl and meets a professor who sweeps her off her feet. Nora also wins the affections of Abe, a gentle, mildly retarded man. After several prostitutes are murdered, Nora begins to fear that the killer may be after her. Her quest to find the killer, and to keep herself and her fellow hookers safe, provides much of the action in the latter part of the book.

I found this book interesting because it mixes genres so well. It is historical fiction, painstakingly researched by Mailman. It is also a sort of mystery book, and there are elements of romance. The book is told from Nora's point of view and explores some of the problems facing American women during the nineteenth century. I found it hard to read at times because the dialogue is all in the colloquial language of the era where it is set. This did not prevent me from following the story, however. I found the story compelling enough to go on reading. Nora is torn between her life of prostitution and her desire to be wealthy. Mailman does a good job of chronicling that conflict. This is Mailman's first novel. She has another forthcoming this year, and I look forward to following her work.

Written by: Steve Watson, February 10th 2007