Photo by Chad Brady.
Natalia Molina is an American historian and Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. A 2020 MacArthur fellow, she is the author, most recently, of A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community. Before moderating “What Is a ‘Latino’?,” the 14th annual Zócalo Book Prize event, Molina joined us in the green room to chat book clubs, Mookie Betts, and Porto’s guava cheese pastries.
How do you decompress?
I keep a list of places I want to go to in L.A., and if I happen to be in that area, then I might try a new place. I have to admit, even on the way here, even though I know there’s going to be wonderful food, I was like, oh, yeah, Tacos 1986.
You’ve talked about the impact that writing an undergrad thesis at UCLA on the East Los Angeles freeway had on your career. What did you learn seeking out residents in East L.A. who were being displaced?
I did not think twice about going door to door. I just thought, oh, I have these addresses of people who were affected by the construction of the East Los Angeles freeway. Unfortunately, I never actually did the interviews, because as I got close to the addresses, I saw that their homes had been demolished to build the freeway. For me, it was a great lesson in the long reverberations of history. Why an event that happened 60, 80, 100 years ago is not something that stays in the past, but something that continues to affect our present.
You’ve written for Zócalo in the past about being a Dodgers fan. Who’s an athlete who inspires you?
Watching someone like Mookie Betts, who’s at the top of their game, start over by playing short stop—a position he hadn’t played since high school—and just saying, it’s okay, I’m gonna make mistakes, but I’m going to show up every day; and I’m going to work as hard as anybody can to perfect my craft. That is always inspiring to me.
Did you ever play any sports yourself growing up?
I ran. My brother was a cross-country runner. And I always wanted to emulate my big brother. So I decided that I would run a marathon one day. And it came about because I did a writing workshop, and the person who led the workshop said when you’re writing a dissertation, it can seem really hard, so why don’t you try something new, and so you’ll see that anything new is hard. And so I joined a marathon running group and ran my first marathon—the L.A. Marathon—in 2000. And it was the year I finished my dissertation.
You recently posted on Instagram that “The first rule of book club is to talk about book club!” What has been special about attending book clubs for A Place at the Nayarit?
We write a book for people to connect with that experience, even if it’s not their own experience. And book club shows you the many points of entry. In my case, my book is about my grandmother who started a restaurant that became an urban anchor in the neighborhood of Echo Park. People will talk about how the food was reminiscent of a food their grandmother made, how the type of person my grandmother was is the type of person their mother was, and they didn’t really end up fully understanding her until they read the book. People want to be seen. And they might get that from the book by talking about issues of gentrification, or that they never knew something about their parents’, their grandparents’ experience, because there’s silence in that family. There’s pain around immigration stories, and from reading the book they were able to get that. I also wrote the book because I wanted people to see that there’s joy in immigrant stories too. And so when you go to book club, people experience the joy. There’s sharing and connection and community.
Speaking of your grandmother’s restaurant as an institution of L.A., what’s one institution today in L.A. that has a deep meaning?
I think maybe I’ll answer it differently. I wrote the book because I wanted people to be able to highlight and lift up their own urban anchor in their community. So you know, it might be La Abeja in Highland Park. It might be Café de Leche in Altadena. But it’s a place where people feel seen and heard, and they can be themselves. So I’ve even developed curriculum around how teachers can do that. We often study the history of California from the perspective of missions, which are top-down institutions, formal institutions. I want people to see that the places and spaces that they go to on an everyday basis in their neighborhood where they feel comfortable are their own urban anchors that are deserving of being remembered.
If you had to pick though, do you have one you would raise up?
Porto’s. The owner just passed. It started as a mom-and-pop in Silverlake and moved to Glendale. Now they have, like, five; they sell online. And for me, it just brings me such joy. Like I’m at the Burbank Airport, and I see people’s carry-on is the Porto’s guava cheese. It brings me joy and fills me with envy.
You’ve written about how people need to think more deeply about their attachments to a place. What’s one unexpected thing that tethers you to Los Angeles?
One unexpected thing that tethers me to Los Angeles is not always seeing Latinos represented in images of Los Angeles—or Latino neighborhoods, neighborhoods of color. Oftentimes when we talk about the Eastside, they’re talking about east of Vermont. We have a whole county—East Los Angeles. There’s just a bit of privileging certain demographics of L.A. And so ironically, it’s that erasure that motivates me to tell our story, to say we’re here, too, and these stories matter. And not only do they matter, but they will make a difference in how you see all of L.A., if you pay attention.