Becoming Los Angeles nails the city in ways big and small, as only D. J. Waldie can. … Because Waldie’s breadth of knowledge is so vast, his opinions so sharp and his loyalty so deep, he is especially articulate about what we have lost.
— Nathan Deuel, Los Angeles Times (2020)
Becoming Los Angeles, a new collection by the author of the acclaimed memoir Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir, blends history, memory, and critical analysis to illuminate how Angelenos have seen themselves and their city. Waldie’s particular concern is commonplace Los Angeles, whose rhythms of daily life are set against the gaudy backdrop of historical myth and Hollywood illusion.
Becoming Los Angeles is a further account of how Waldie gained a sense of place, which James Mustich, author of 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die, described as “an almost sacramental act of attention.” Becoming Los Angeles is ultimately a book about learning how to fall in love with wherever it is you are.
In his exploration of sprawling Los Angeles, he considers how the city’s image was constructed and how that image fostered willful amnesia about the city’s conflicted past. He encounters the immigrants and exiles, the dreamers and con artists, the celebrated and forgotten who became Los Angeles. He measures the place of nature in the city and the different ways that nature has been defined. He maps on the contours of Los Angeles what embracing-or rejecting-an Angeleno identity has come to mean.
Becoming Los Angeles draws on a decade of Waldie’s writing about the intersection of the city’s history and its aspirations. He asks, what do we talk about when we talk about Los Angeles today? In a global, cosmopolitan city, is there value in cultivating a local imagination? And he wonders how to describe a city that is denser and more polarized and challenged by climate change, homelessness, and economic disparity. There will always be romance in the idea of Los Angeles, but it requires a renewed sense of place to sustain.
In conversation about Becoming Los Angeles
▪ With Carribean Fragoza (Los Angeles Times) at Vroman’s Bookstore (25 August 2020) Watch here
▪ With Thomas Curwen (Los Angeles Times) at Skylight Books (22 September 2020) Watch here
▪ With Robert Petersen (Hidden History podcast) Listen here
Order Becoming Los Angeles from:
▪ Los Angeles Public Library Bookstore
▪ Amazon