5 Questions with Sesshu Foster, Co-Author of ELADATL
Sesshu Foster taught composition and literature in East L.A. for over 20 years, and at the University of Iowa, the California Institute for the Arts, and the University of California, Santa Cruz. His work is published in The Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry, Language for a New Century: Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond, and State of the Union: 50 Political Poems. His most book recent is ELADATL: A History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines, co-authored with Arturo Ernesto Romo and published by City Lights. His other books include City of the Future, World Ball Notebook, and Atomik Aztex.
Sesshu and Arturo are in conversation with Carribean Fragoza celebrating the book launch of ELADATL in our City Lights LIVE! discussion series on Tuesday, April 27
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Where are you writing to us from?
I’m writing you from Tongva land, facing east over the San Gabriel Valley, east of the L.A. River.
What’s kept you sane during the pandemic?
Same things as always—my family, friends, and people. Poetry and books. I’m grateful for all you folks doing what you do best. I only do good if other people are doing well. And we’re always walking and hiking. Yesterday we hiked to Owen Brown’s gravesite on a hilltop in the San Gabriel Mountains. Owen Brown, son of John Brown, was one of the only survivors of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry. He and his brother Jason kept a low profile after the Civil War as sheepherders, living in a mountain cabin. When he died in Pasadena in 1889, two thousand people attended his funeral. His tombstone was stolen once, recovered and is temporarily replaced by peeling plywood signs. But his bones are there.
What are 3 books you always recommend to people?
One size doesn’t fit all. For four year olds and their parents, I might recommend Niño Wrestles the World by Yuyi Morales. For hungry intellectuals and young writers, I could recommend Compression & Purity by Will Alexander. For people who don’t know them, what about America Is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan, or the Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman?
Which writers, artists, and others influence your work in general, and this book, specifically?
I like the University of California edition of Moby Dick by Herman Melville. The nautical illustrations by Barry Moser (page 74 includes a diagram of sections of a whaling ship, page 106 presents a “windlass turned by handspikes” for the reader who lacks a mental image of a windlass, page 147 depicts porpoises referred to in the text, etc.) which are helpful to the 21st century landlocked reader. Some features of ELADATL are analogous to these. Of course, airships are analogous to sailing ships, which are themselves also metaphorical.
Of course, the main influence on ELADATL is the work of my collaborator, artist Arturo Ernesto Romo, whose ideas of folding (prismatic or origami-like), resistance or interruption, and the active participation of the viewer (or, in this case the reader) format the structure of this narrative. Also present, folded into and prismatically reflecting the narrative are images and art work by Arturo Romo. Arturo told me that his illustrations that grace each chapter were influenced by Hugo Gellert, and I know the collaborative practice of public performances Arturo and I did—-and our community-based aesthetics, which is refracted in ELADATL—-have been influenced by the Chicano collective Asco (Harry Gamboa, Gronk Nicandro, Patssi Valdez, Willie Herrón and others). As well as by the muralists of East L.A. and other artists of the Chicano movement.
If you opened a bookstore, where would it be located, what would it be called, and what would your bestseller be?
You know, I don’t want to touch this question. I’m already found mostly inside books I’ve written. I’d be frightened of having my own bookstore, I might wander into the stacks of my own bookstore and never be seen again. Even though Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Larry McMurtry did it! Recently I was in Bellingham, Washington state, and found the Alternative Library, co-founded 14 years ago as a free anarchist lending library, by “Future” (he told me his name was, as he welcomed a new volunteer starting her first day). Santa Ana writer Sarah Rafael Garcia stocks several “Libromobile” book carts around Orange County in Southern California, which gives me the desire to take that idea on the road, with a step van full of books I’d drive to places like the Coachella Valley, or anywhere where people—especially kids—need books. There’s a lot of book deserts. I don’t know what I’d call it. I’d call it all kinds of names if it broke down and didn’t make it to the next place. The best seller? Everyone Poops by Taro Gomi? Niño Wrestles the World by Yuyi Morales? Little Fur Family by Margaret Wise Brown? Make them readers and let the kids decide.