Sesshu Foster

I really like this book of poetry (published in 1996) about Los Angeles environs, California and Mexico locations and not exclusively about City Terrace. I don't think I've ever seen a book with City Terrace in the title before. City Terrace is an enclave east of Downtown Los Angeles commonly grouped with other older neighborhoods as "East LA". I would categorize this work as historical revisionism, or fictional prose poems. Most of the poems display paranoia, clinical depression, nightmares, schizophrenia, PTSD, and moral skepticism. Because of the politically incorrect terms and misogyny, this couldn't be published today. There is plenty of white racism blamed here although today the critique of the dominant culture has to be absolute. These poems are imaginative and aim towards self-critique but usually conclude with narrative self-hatred.
The author is trying to deal with his own feelings which are legion and the fact that his place in the world is limited with so little prospect for advancement. These dark reveries sometimes end in mystical insights not of Truth present but with sadness stilled and sadness momentarily managed.
Because this is often profane fiction, it is not for young adults nor children. Here is a short quotation: ...I walked down the big steps of of the hospital into sunshine, a little padded around the edges with cotton gauze, glad to be alive. I had to head back downtown sooner or later and let my people know I was out of work again. The sunshine felt warm and peaceful so I took a walk. I crossed the Southern Pacific tracks and spit on them and laughed, then walked across Alhambra Road...White women in hats were having picnics with children on the grass, lovers were paddling rented boats out on the water at Lincoln Park...I went over an sat under a tree. It was nice to look over at the big white hospital building rising in the heat as a freight train with empty flatcars crossed Mission and headed toward the Chinatown yards. Wind rustled the big palm fronds, the smell of eucalyptus tangy, sharp...Two tamales from a guy with a cart cost me a nickel and I experimented eating them one-handed. Then I fell asleep, the grass soft as fur beneath me, sun warm on my face."

Notes, Index to first lines, Cover photos.… (mais)

Th
The East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines (ELADATL) is the fictional history of a Transport Line that never existed but in its telling feels like it did exist, must exist, and may one day exist again.

ELADATL is a like Murakami's IQ84 but it's a fictional history. A cast of Latin/Latino/Latinx characters in a parallel Los Angeles that intersects and then separates from the real.

Its a serious fictional-history but also a tale of high-level absurdity and written with real humor. The book shifts from history to scenes back to history and then to illustrations and back again to history book style interviews and evidence from this real-fictional history novel.

ELADTL is like nothing you have ever read. It is a glorious mess of a history. Like the city of Los Angeles itself ELADTL is absurd, real, fictional, messy, and all at once earnest.… (mais)