Planting L.A. Seeds in Phoenix

Whichever Way I’m Driving on I-10, I’m Heading Home

My aunt Marta asks, When are you coming back home?

She means Los Angeles: Long Beach, Lynwood, Lakewood, Norwalk, Azusa. L.A. County. She even means Orange County. “Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Ángeles” is as widespread as my family, just as populated too.

My great-grandmother arrived in the city’s center as a teenager, dragging a suit trunk and memories of her dead parents from the old country. She arrived by train before Prohibition and began work in the garment district at a sewing factory off Broadway and 7th. She ate from …

More In: The Voyage Home

Bako, My Beloved

Outsiders May Scorn My Hometown. But It Is Mine.

The headlights of my father’s car illuminate the road to Meadows Field Airport like something out of a Hitchcock movie. The fog swirls and eddies about us as we move …

To Be a Man

Space, Silence, and a 21-Gun Salute for My Grandfather

1.

In 1941, my grandfather drove across the country from Detroit to California to deliver a car and see the World’s Fair in San Francisco. There were no highways, the car …

Cold and Divided

How Did the Minnesota of My Parents Become Like the America of Today?

I live in L.A. and New York, but I was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and I go “home” often. My daughter, born in L.A., loves Minnesota, especially the cold …

A Different Thanksgiving

On Growing Up and Not Going Home

In an age of radically changing pop-culture phenomena, technological breakthroughs, and economic downturns, I find it’s becoming increasingly difficult to rely on anything staying constant from year to year. By …

Refried Turkey Tortas

My Family’s Thanksgiving Tradition

It’s 4 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon, and my brother, sister and I have gathered around the table to discuss serious business: this year’s Thanksgiving menu.

Last year our older sister …