About East of East: The Making of Greater El Monte

East of East: The Making of Greater El Monte, is an edited collection of thirty-one essays that trace the experience of a California community over three centuries, from eighteenth-century Spanish colonization to twenty-first century globalization. Employing traditional historical scholarship, oral history, creative nonfiction and original art, the book provides a radical new history of El Monte and South El Monte, showing how interdisciplinary and community-engaged scholarship can break new ground in public history. East of East tells stories that have been excluded from dominant historical narratives--stories that long survived only in the popular memory of residents, as well as narratives that have been almost completely buried and all but forgotten. Its cast of characters includes white vigilantes, Mexican anarchists, Japanese farmers, labor organizers, civil rights pioneers, and punk rockers, as well as the ordinary and unnamed youth who generated a vibrant local culture at dances and dive bars. (Rutgers University Press)

Romeo Guzmán is the co-director of the South El Monte Arts Posse and an assistant professor in US and Public History at Fresno State, where he is the founding director of the Valley Public History Initiative: Preserving our Stories. He is the coeditor at Boom California. 

Carribean Fragoza is a journalist, fiction writer, and artist from South El Monte. She is the founder and codirector of the South El Monte Arts Posse and coeditor at Boom California. Her short story collection is forthcoming with City Lights Publishers.

Wendy Cheng is an associate professor of American studies at Scripps College. She is the author of The Changs Next Door to the Díazes: Remapping Race in Suburban California and coauthor of A People’s Guide to Los Angeles.

Michael Jaime-Becerra grew up in El Monte, California. He received his MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and currently teaches creative writing at University of California, Riverside. His short-story collection, Every Night Is Ladies’ Night, was named one of the best of the year by The Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle. It was awarded a California Book Award, the Silver Medal for a First Work of Fiction

Vroman's Live presents "East of East: The Making of Greater El Monte"