From immigration rights to climate change, California has been ground
zero for the most crucial questions of our time. In a bravura essay,
Rabih Alamdeddine remembers bartending during the worst years of the
AIDS crisis. William T. Vollmann visits the Carr fire and discovers that
gas masks are the new normal. Natalie Diaz describes growing up in the
desert and remaking her body on the basketball court. Award-winning
journalist Lauren Markham revisits her family's tales of their arrival
in a town built by a con man on stolen land. Karen Tei Yamashita tells
of a Japanese-American man going to Hiroshima after the bomb dropped,
writing letters home. Reyna Grande witnesses her mother never adapting
after migrating from Mexico. Tommy Orange conjures a native man so lost
and broke he's either going to rob a bank or end his life--but love
might rescue him. Rachel Kushner sings a hymn to the danger and beauty
of cars. And since the Beat movement, California has also given birth to
an explosion of poetry. New poems by Frank Bidart, Robin Coste Lewis,
D.A. Powell, and recent poet laureate Juan Felipe Herrera join newcomers
Mai Der Vang and Javier Zamora in this investigation and celebration of
California writing. Featuring new work from Héctor Tobar and Jennifer
Egan, Oscar Villalon and Anthony Marra, Geoff Dyer and Elaine Castillo,
Freeman's: California will become a benchmark for California
anthologies before and to come.
