Críticas Magazine

Adriana V. Lopez

Mr. Ask a Mexican's New Book
August 11, 2008

 Gustavo Arellano's syndicated column Ask a Mexican became the only place in town where anti- immigration folks could ask the questions they always wanted to ask the very immigrants that perplexed them. Questions like: What that song La Bamba was about? What part about illegal don´t Mexicans understand. Or why do they swim in the ocean with their clothes on or park their cars on the lawn?  Heavy on the racist tones, oh yes. But the column managed to soar above the low level rants and look at the immigration debate with acerbic humor and sociological intelligence. ¡Ask a Mexican! (Scribner) was later turned  into a book and will be published on September 30 in Spanish by Aguilar as ¡Preguntale al Mexicano¡.

Get ready for more. The witty Arellano also has a new book coming out in September entitled Orange County: A Memoir, that´s already getting the thumbs up by our sister magazine PW with a star review (see below). This time around Arellano is not taking questions, but offering his thoughts about Orange County and how this seemingly precious segment of Californian Americana is a microcosm for the multicultural future of this country.

Here´s Arellano discussing his new book:

And the PW review:

Orange County: A Memoir
Gustavo Arellano. Scribner, $24 (288p) ISBN 978-1-4165-4004-5

Readers get two stories for the price of one in this witty and informative memoir. Journalist Arellano (¡Ask a Mexican!) chronicles the sweet-and-sour story of his family's assimilation into American culture, while also recounting a historical narrative at odds with the bucolic ideal of a place that's been mythologized for decades. "We're so American, so Orange County, that we're even prone to romanticize a past that never existed." Arellano's structure keeps the narrative moving along at a snappy pace, alternating the threads of the story so "odd chapters constitute the memoir, even chapters tell the history, and one complements the other." Readers get solid background on the beginning of master-planned communities during the 1920s, the little remembered Citrus War, Orange County's embarrassing 1994 bankruptcy and special mix of conservatism coupled with a dollop of big-time religion. "A 2005 Harper's article named Orange County the country's second hotbed of evangelical Christianity after Colorado Springs," Arellano writes, and of the 100 megachurches in the U.S. with the largest congregations, four are in Orange County. Arellano explores a place he calls the "Petri dish for America's continuing democratic experiment" and delivers a prescient view of the new American landscape. (Sept.)

Posted by Adriana V. Lopez on August 11, 2008 | Comments (0)