East of East

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. CARRIBEAN FRAGOZA is a journalist, fiction writer, and artist from South El Monte. She is the founder and co-director of the South El Monte Arts Posse. ALEX SAYF CUMMINGS is an associate professor of History at Georgia State University and the author of Democracy of Sound: Music Piracy and the Remaking of American Copyright in the Twentieth Century. RYAN REFT is a historian of the Modern United States in the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress.    

Contents

Introduction: Burn the Wagon: Finding Silenced Histories, Lost Intersections, and Radical Possibilities in Greater El Monte

Romeo Guzmán, Carribean Fragoza, Alex Sayf Cummings, and Ryan Reft
 

Part I   Origins and Departures

1          The Tongva People

Aurelie Roy

2          Toypurina: A Legend Etched in the Landscape

Maria John

3          From Alta California to American Statehood: Race, Change, and the Californio Pico Family

Ryan Reft

4          Here Come the El Monte Boys: Vigilante Justice and Lynch Mobs in Nineteenth Century El Monte

Karen Wilson and Dan Lynch
 

Part II  Social and Political Movements

5          Rise, Fall, Repeat: El Monte’s White Supremacy Movements

Daniel Cady

6          Ricardo Flores Magón and Anarchist Movement in El Monte

Yesenia Barragan and Mark Bray

7          Bitter Fruit: The El Monte Berry Strike of 1933

Melquiades Fernandez

8          Schools for All: The Desegregation Campaign in El Monte

Rachel Newman

9          City of Achievement: The Making of the City of South El Monte, 1955-1976

Nick Juravich

10        La Lucha Continua! Gloria Arellanes and the Women of the Chicano Movement

Juan Herrera

11        Toward a Radical Arts Practice: Theater and Muralism during the Chicano Movement

Carribean Fragoza

12        American Dreams and Immigrant Realities in a South El Monte Shoe Factory

Adam Goodman

13        Dreams of Escape and Belonging: The Making of Asian El Monte

Alex Sayf Cummings
 

Part IIINature and the Built Environment

14        Hicks Camp: A Mexican Barrio

Daniel Morales

15        Life at Marrano Beach: The Lost Barrio Beach of Los Angeles

Daniel Medina

16        From Small Farming to Urban Agriculture: El Monte Subsistence Homesteading

Ryan Reft

17        A Community Erased: Japanese Americans in El Monte and the Greater SGV

Andre Kobayashi Deckrow

18        Whittier Narrows Park: A Story of Water, Power, and Displacement

David Reid

19        Transportational El Monte, From the Red Car to the Freeway

Ryan Reft

20        The Starlite Swap Meet

Jennifer Renteria
 

Part IVPopular Culture

21        El Monte’s Wild Past: A History of Gay’s Lion Farm

Michael Weller

22        Memories of El Monte: Art Laboe’s Charmed Life on the Air

Jude Webre

23        El Monte’s Wildweed: Biraciality and the Punk Ethos of The Gun Club’s Jeffrey Lee Pierce

Troy Andreas Araiza Kokinis

24        The Punk and the Seamstress

Apolonio Morales

25        A Gay Bar, Some Familia, and Latina Butch-Femme: Rounding out the Eastside Circle at El Monte’s Sugar Shack

Stacy I. Macías

26        All the Zumba Ladies: Reclaiming Bodies and Space through Serious Booty-Shaking

Carribean Fragoza
 

Part V  Literary Cartographies

27        1181 Durfee Avenue: 1983 to 1986

Michael Jaime-Becerra

28        Train versus Pedestrian on Valley Boulevard

Alex Espinoza

29        Epiphany Catholic Church

Toni Margarita Plummer

30        Rush Street

Carribean Fragoza

31        Durfee Avenue

Salvador Plascencia

Epilogue: East of East: Suburban Cosmopolitanism in the San Gabriel Valley

Wendy Cheng
 

Acknowledgments

Selected Bibliography

Notes on Contributors

Index