California has long been a bellwether state -- a place where crucial trends that eventually spread throughout the U.S. first take root. Its national and international influence is driven by one of the largest economies in the world, by its extraordinary technological and cultural innovations, and by a disproportionately affluent and activist population larger than that of entire countries. In short, the issues of California are the issues that are likely to have an impact on the rest of America, and college students in California are well served by studying, thinking, and writing about their home state in their composition courses. California Dreams and Realities is the one composition reader that allows students to do just that.
The coeditors are successful textbook authors who, between them, have over forty years of teaching experience in the California college classroom. SONIA MAASIK, a lecturer in the UCLA Writing Program, has taught writing from developmental to advanced levels. JACK SOLOMON, a professor of English at California State University, Northridge, teaches literature and critical theory and is often interviewed by the California media for analysis of current events and trends in the state. The two together also have published Signs of Life in the U.S.A.: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers, Fourth Edition (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2003).
Preface for Instructors
Introduction
California: The Bellwether State
[Developing Active Reading strategies: Jack Lopez, Of Cholos and Surfers]
1. California Dreaming: Myths of the Golden Land
Frontispiece: Sunkist CA Dream box label
James J. Rawls, California: A Place, a People, a Dream
Garci Rodriguez Ordonez de Montalvo, The Queen of California
IMAGE: William Grent, Map of North America showing California as an Island (1625)
Anonymous, Notes of a California Expedition
Denise S. Spooner, A New Perspective on the Dream
Joan Didion, Notes from a Native Daughter
Richard Rodriguez, Proofs
Deborah Miranda, Indian Cartography
IMAGE: Judith Lowry, Roadkill Warrior: Last of His Tribe
Michael J. O'Brien, Orange County Historian
2. The Great Migration: Immigrants in California History
Frontispiece: Dennis Keeley, Strip Mall, Los Angeles
Jewelle Taylor Gibbs and Teiahsha Bankhead, Coming to California: Chasing the Dream
Yeh Ling-Ling, State Needs a 'Time-Out' from Mass Immigration
IMAGE: Ricardo Duffy, The New Order
Editors, Contra Costa Times, Revamp Immigration
Connie Young Yu, The World of Our Grandmothers
Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, Manzanar, U.S.A.
IMAGE: Group of young Japanese girls
Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Maid in L.A.
William Langewiesche,Invisible Men
Donald E. Miller, Jon Miller, and Grace Dyrness, Religious Dimensions of the Immigrant Experience
Nayereh Tohidi, Iranian Women and Gender Relations in Los Angeles
Nancy Wride, Vietnamese Youths No Longer Look Homeward
Mario Garcia, My Latino Heart
3. The Best-Laid Plans: Education and the California Dream
Frontispiece: Paul Fell, Tuition Increase
Frank Norris, The 'English Courses' at the University of California
Mike Rose, A Visit to Edwin Markham Intermediate School
Carol Jago, Something There Is That Doesn't Love a List
Sylvia Fox, Testing, Anyone?
Sandra Nichols, A Win-win for the High School Exit Exam
Lesli Maxwell, Cuts Crush College Promise
Ruben Navarette, Jr., 'Well, I Guess They Need Their Minority'
John McWhorter, It Shouldn't Be Good to Have It Bad
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Yuba City School
4. The Geography of Desire: California and the Sense of Place
Frontispiece: New California State Quarter/John Muir at Yosemite
Dana Gioia, California Hills in August
IMAGE: Willard Dixon, Petaluma Fields
J. A. English-Lueck, Identified by Technology
KQED, The Castro Q & A
David Mas Masumoto, As If the Farmer Died
Gary Snyder, Cultivating Wildness
Ernesto Galarza, Barrio Boy
James D. Houston, In Search of Oildorado
IMAGE: Oildorado Days
Ramon Garcia, Suburbia
Judith Lewis, Interesting Times
Joel Garreau, Edge City: Irvine
Gary Paul Nabhan, The Palms in Our Hands
5. Exporting Culture: California and the Popular Imagination
Frontispiece: The Hollywood Sign
Blake Allmendinger, All about Eden
David Fine,Surviving Apocalypse
Nathanael West, from The Day of the Locust
IMAGE: Thomas Hart Benton, Hollywood
Dana Polan, California through the Lens of Hollywood
James J. Flink, The Automobile Age in California
Alice Kahn, Berkeley Explained
Patricia Leigh Brown, The New Chinatown? Try the Asian Mall
William McClung, Arcadia and Utopia
6. (Mis)Managing California: Politics, Environment, and the State of the State
Frontispiece: Monarch, California's Last Wild Grizzly and Symbol for State Flag
Andrew Murr and Jennifer Ordonez, Tarnished Gold
Mark Baldassare, Regional Diversity
IMAGE: Sunset Magazine Illustration, Life's Best Mixture -- Sun and Air and Gasoline
David Carle, Sprawling Gridlock
Gerald Haslam, The Water Game
Marc Reisner, Things Fall Apart
IMAGE: Warning Sign, Almeda Qucksilver County Park
Richard Steven Street, Battling Toxic Racism
Gary Soto, The First
Victor Davis Hanson,Paradise Lost
Anita Creamer, We're Only Confirming [California's] Flaky Image
Glen Browder, Guiding the Great Experiment: California's Recall and America's Democratic Destiny