California Rewritten - A Journey Through the Golden State's New Literature

Dive into the revelatory worlds of California's most exciting writers, and discover how their books uncover our history and can help us imagine our shared future.
Percival Everett, Rebecca Solnit, Tommy Orange, Michael Connelly, Julie Otsuka: As John Freeman writes in California Rewritten, "Literature of so many kinds and so many genres from so many different types of people—at the highest level—has been coming out of California and from Californians for decades now." Freeman, one of the sharpest editors working today, has followed the evolution of California's literary life since his teenage years in Sacramento. In over fifty essays inspired by his hosting of Alta Journal's popular California Book Club, he offers an essential road map to California literature now. He shows us how the state's most exciting writers can unlock our understanding of the past, and how they can deepen our imaginations as we confront the most pressing issues that face our society: labor and inequality, migration and citizenship, technology and its limits, changing landscapes and climate catastrophe. Incisive and compulsively readable, California Rewritten will be a source of empowering discovery for any book lover who cares about the Golden State.

List of contents

Introduction: Anywhere but Here

I. Early Myths

• Bad Indians, Deborah Miranda


• Butcher's Crossing, John Williams


• How Much of These Hills Is Gold, C Pam Zhang 


• Woman Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston 


• A Paradise Built in Hell, by Rebecca Solnit

II. Arrivals & Migrations

• Devil in a Blue Dress, by Walter Mosley 


• A Place at the Nayarit, by Natalia Molina


• The Distance Between Us, Reyna Grande 


• America Is Not the Heart, Elaine Castillo 


• Solito, by Javier Zamora

III. Building Cities

• Clark & Division, by Naomi Hirahara 


• I Hotel, by Karen-Tei Yamashita 


• Southland, by Nina Reyvor


• There There, by Tommy Orange 


• The Swimmers, by Julie Otsuka

IV. Working the Land

• Under the Feet of Jesus, by Helena Maria Viramontes


• The Consequences, by Manuel Muñoz

V. Law & Order

• Bad Mexicans, by Kelly Lytle Hernandez 


• The Dark Hours, by Michael Connelly 


• Your House Will Pay, by Steph Cha

VI. How We Sound

• The Sellout, by Paul Beatty


• Gordo, by Jaime Cortez


• The Gangster of Love, by Jessica Hagedorn


• Less, by Andrew Sean Greer 


• Colored Television, by Danzy Senna 

VII. The State of Poetry

• On City Lights at Ferlinghetti's 100th


• Postcolonial Love Poem, by Natalie Diaz


• On Ada Limon


• On Gary Snyder
• On Kay Ryan

VII. Exploding Fantasias

• Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu


• Citizen, by Claudia Rankine 


• Voyage of the Sable Venus, Robin Coste Lewis 


• Barbarian Days, by William Finnegan

VIII. The Suburbs

• Holy Land, by DJ Waldie


• Mean, by Myriam Gurba


• Elsewhere, California, by Dana Johnson


• The Barbarian Nurseries, by Héctor Tobar

IX. Digital Dys/Utopias

• The Gold Coast, by Kim Stanley Robinson


• The Every, by Dave Eggers


• The Candy House, by Jennifer Egan 

X. Ruptures

• Stay True, by Hua Hsu


• Telephone, by Percival Everett 
• Goodybe, Vitamin by Rachel Khong


• The Wrong End of the Telescope, by Rabin Alameddine 
• Gold Fame Citrus, by Claire Vaye Watkins


• Dead in Long Beach, California by Venita Blackburn 

XII. Who is a Citizen?

• The Mars Room, by Rachel Kushner


• The Other Americans, by Laila Lalami


• The Backyard Bird Chronicles, by Amy Tan 

Acknowledgements
Appendix
About the Author
A Note on Type

About the author

John Freeman has hosted Alta's California Book Club since its founding in 2020. He is an executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf, and he edited Freeman's (2015–2023), a literary annual of new writing. His books include How to Read a Novelist and Dictionary of the Undoing, as well as the anthologies Tales of Two Americas, Tales of Two Planets, The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story, and Sacramento Noir. He is also the author of three poetry collections, Maps, The Park, and Wind, Trees. His work is translated into more than twenty languages, and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The New York Times. The former editor of Granta, he lives in New York.

Product details

• Authors: John Freeman
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 14.10.2025
• EAN: 9781597146920
• ISBN: 978-1-59714-692-0
• No. of pages: 400
• Illustrations: Illustrationen, nicht spezifiziert
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; LITERARY CRITICISM / Books & Reading, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 21st Century, LITERARY CRITICISM / American / Regional, Literature: history & criticism, Literary essays, Literature: history and criticism, Literary companions, book reviews & guides, Literary companions, book reviews and guides