“Are we in danger—or perhaps it’s not really a danger at all—of becoming Los Angeles?”
Former CNN anchor Aaron Brown posed the question to a panel of Phoenicians to discuss before an ...
by Jeff Oaks
Of course the point is to be hidden, isn’t it?
To seem like nothing, to be forgettable,
to hold still. Lonely little things now,
the size of my fist and with a lid of snow...
Today I passed the house
we rented last summer.
It was only a glimpse
as I drove by—
blue door,
adobe arch painted with flowers
In memory
your dusty van is parked on the gravel
and you’re standing at the stove
while I curl
on the couch with a book,
pretending to read
Bestselling author Michelle Goldberg came by Zócalo’s offices while she was in Los Angeles to speak at Aloud. Her latest book, The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World, explores the global status of women, particularly their reproductive rights. Below, she discusses what the Cold War had to do with feminism, where the movement stands today, and what the left and the right won’t talk about….
Kal Raustiala may be a native New Yorker, but he’s grown to love his new city. The UCLA Law and UCLA International Institute professor said he opted to move to California for graduate school. “I’ve been happy, and I actually prefer it here,” he said.
Wangari Maathai was the third Nobel laureate to visit Zócalo in the last year. Maathai, author of The Challenge for Africa, won the Peace Prize in 2004 for her efforts promoting democracy and environmental conservation. The first woman to receive a doctorate degree from East and Central Africa, Maathai launched the Green Belt Movement in 1976. Since then, 20 million trees have been planted.
Mother is drinking to forget a man
Who could fill the woods with invitations:
Come with me he whispered and she went
In his Nash Rambler, its dash
Where her knees turned green
In the radium dials of the ’50s.
When I drink it is always 1953….
The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America
by Mae Ngai
Hyphenated cultures seem to be a natural part of California’s landscape today, but it wasn’t always so. The Lucky Ones by Mae Ngai offers a fresh look at California history by reconstructing the lives of immigrant and second generation pioneers who lived between cultures when it was not such a common phenomenon. Ngai’s narrative brings Chinese Americans into a richer tradition of historical storytelling by humanizing an ambivalent, middle-class immigrant family, situating their lives within the more well-known histories of Chinese laborers and those who suffered from the 1882 Exclusion Act.