East of East

"Combining creative nonfiction, oral history, and traditional scholarship, the various writings here reclaim the histories and geographies of the urban fringe these writers call 'east of east.' What makes this area so significant is that it’s been a point of 'contact between farmworkers, punks, white supremacists, suburbanites, Zumba dancers, and civil rights activists.'” 

— L.A. Taco

"East of East makes several important interventions. First, it is part of an exciting movement to reclaim the histories and geographies of cities from the bottom up. Second, it focuses on a vital but completely overlooked part of LA history - El Monte. Essential reading for all those interested in southern California."

— Laura Pulido, co-Author of, A People’s Guide to Los Angeles

"Best of all, East of East is both chronicle and challenge to all of us: Know your local history, document it and spread its gospel to the world, no matter how seemingly small."

— Los Angeles Times

"A tale of two cities: El Monte’s battle to preserve its Latinx history," by Erik Adams

— University Times

"The 10 best California books of 2020: Featuring 32 essays by writers including Alex Espinoza, Salvador Plascencia and Fragoza, this anthology seeks to restore the 'silenced histories' of El Monte, the small working-class city in eastern Los Angeles County, while also re-imagining its future as a community in its own right. 'The future will not happen in the cities or the suburbs,' the editors write, 'but in the middle, and El Monte and South El Monte have always been in the middle.'"

— Los Angeles Times, The 10 best California books of 2020

"The editors of East of East see deeper truths. Greater El Monte, it turns out, is the setting for a story as rich and tangled as the flora that still covers the Whittier Narrows Recreation Area, a patch of parkland that lies, relatively unspoiled, in the watershed the El Montes call home."

— Los Angeles Review of Books

"Scholars and regular people will find something to enjoy in East of East. Tourists and Locals alike will have a refreshingly informed understanding next time they go cruising through the streets of Aztlán and find themselves on Durfee in El Monte, remembering novelist Salvador Plascencia’s description of Durfee Avenue. What a great gift, or textbook. East of East is scholarship done right. Órale to the publishers and especially lead editors Romeo Guzmán and Carribean Fragoza."

— La Bloga

“East of East digs up the dirt of greater El Monte to find what is left of ‘us’ — for the authors and contributors born and raised there, and for the Indigenous, immigrant, multiracial, multicultural and transnational communities brought to vivid life in these pages. It writes ‘us’ back into the narratives that erased us and writes new ones to remind us that white pioneer settlers are just part of the story, not the center of it.” 

— KCET.org

"Ethnic Studies Comes Into The Classroom And Onto The Streets," by Julia Barajas

— LAist

"How Authors Are Reaching Book Lovers in the Age of COVID-19," by Teena Apeles

https://www.kcet.org/shows/southland-sessions/how-authors-are-reaching-book-lovers-in-the-age-of-covid-19

— KCET.org

"It can and should be an inspiration for likeminded collaborative and multi-disciplinary projects seeking to redress the many wrongs of exclusive historical memory. As stated in the epilogue, localized areas like greater El Monte are often active in national and transnational operations of many kinds 'in broader networks of trade, work, kinship, culture and migration.' This book provides a solid grounding in better understanding these interrelationships, even as 'the rest of its stories have yet to be told.'"

— The Public Historian

"Welcoming Boom’s New Editorial Team" mention of East of East

https://boomcalifornia.com/2019/08/07/welcoming-booms-new-editorial-team/

— Boom California

"Your history-buff friends all want this magical book for Christmas."

— The Press-Enterprise

"Who owns history? New book reconsiders San Gabriel Valley’s pioneer past," Greater LA hosted by Steve Chiotakis

https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/greater-la/lausd-police-el-monte/sgv-el-monte-history-book

— "Greater LA," KCRW

"Richly layered and movingly felt, East of East is a collaborative history of a seemingly ordinary place revealed as a crossroads of the local and the global. A remarkable interleaving of scholarship and the intimacy of memory."

— D.J. Waldie, author of Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir

"San Gabriel Mission fire provokes deep, conflicting reactions," by Gustavo Arellano

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-07-13/san-gabriel-mission-fire-morning-mass

 

— Los Angeles Times

"For 100 Years, El Monte Has Celebrated a Blatant Historical Falsehood. Why? A Southern California City Has a Rich, Multi-Ethnic Past That Its Foundational Myth Erases," by Romeo Guzmán

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2020/08/19/el-monte-end-of-the-santa-fe-trail-true-history/ideas/essay/

— Zócalo Public Square