Gustavo Arellano – författare

One of the Top Urban Planning Books of 2022, PlanetizenThe full and fascinating guidebook that Orange County deserves.A People’s Guide to Orange County is an alternative tour guide that documents sites of oppression, resistance, struggle, and transformation in Orange County, California. Orange County is more than the well-known images on orange crate labels, the high-profile amusement parks of Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm, or the beaches. It is also a unique site of agricultural and suburban history, political conservatism in a liberal state, and more diversity and discordance than its pop-cultural images show. It is a space of important agricultural labor disputes, segregation and resistance to segregation, privatization and the struggle for public space, politicized religions, Cold War global migrations, vibrant youth cultures, and efforts for environmental justice. Memorably, Ronald Reagan called Orange County the place “where all the good Republicans go to die,” but it is also the place where many working-class immigrants have come to live and work in its agricultural, military-industrial, and tourist service economies.  Orange County is the fifth-most populous county in America. If it were a city, it would be the nation’s third-largest city; if it were a state, its population would make it larger than twenty-one other states. It attracts 42 million tourists annually. Yet Orange County tends to be a chapter or two squeezed into guidebooks to Los Angeles or Disneyland. Mainstream guidebooks focus on Orange County’s amusement parks and wealthy coastal communities, with side trips to palatial shopping malls. These guides skip over Orange County’s most heterogeneous half—the inland space, where most of its oranges were grown alongside oil derricks that kept the orange groves heated. Existing guidebooks render invisible the diverse people who have labored there. A People’s Guide to Orange County questions who gets to claim Orange County’s image, exposing the extraordinary stories embedded in the ordinary landscape.

From award-winning columnist and favorite talking head Gustavo Arellano, comes this explosive, irreverent, smart, and hilarious Los Angeles Times bestseller.¡Ask a Mexican! is a collection of questions and answers from Gustavo Arellano that explore the clichés of lowriders, busboys, and housekeepers; drunks and scoundrels; heroes and celebrities; and most important, millions upon millions of law-abiding, patriotic American citizens and their illegal-immigrant cousins who represent some $600 billion in economic power. At a strong eighteen percent of the U.S. population, Latinos have become America''s largest minority—and Mexicans make up a large part of that number. Gustavo confronts the bogeymen of racism, xenophobia, and ignorance prompted by such demographic changes through answering questions put to him by readers of his ¡Ask a Mexican! column in California''s OC Weekly. He challenges readers to find a more entertaining way to understand Mexican culture that doesn''t involve a taco-and-enchilada combo. From lighter topics like Latin pop and great Mexican food to more serious issues like immigration and race relations, ¡Ask a Mexican! ​runs the gamut. Why do Mexicans call white people gringos? Are all Mexicans Catholic? What''s the best tequila? Gustavo answers a wide range of legitimate and illegitimate questions, in the hopes of making a few readers angry, making most of us laugh, sparking a greater dialogue, and enhancing cross-cultural understanding.

Bestselling author of ¡Ask a Mexican! Gustavo Arellano returns with Orange County, a seamlessly woven history of California''s Orange County with Gustavo''s personal narrative of growing up within its neighborhoods.The story began in 1918, when Gustavo Arellano''s great-grandfather and grandfather arrived in the United States, only to be met with flying potatoes. They ran, and hid, and then went to work in Orange County''s citrus groves, where, eventually, thousands of fellow Mexican villagers joined them. Gustavo was born sixty years later, the son of a tomato canner who dropped out of school in the ninth grade and an illegal immigrant who snuck into this country in the trunk of a Chevy. Meanwhile, Orange County changed radically, from a bucolic paradise of orange groves to the land where good Republicans go to die, American Christianity blossoms, and way too many bad television shows are green-lit. Part personal narrative, part cultural history, Orange County is the outrageous and true story of the man behind the wildly popular and controversial column ¡Ask a Mexican! and the locale that spawned him. It is a tale of growing up in an immigrant enclave in a crime-ridden neighborhood, but also in a promised land, a place that has nourished America''s soul and Gustavo''s family, both in this country and back in Mexico, for a century. Nationally bestselling author, syndicated columnist, and the spiciest voice of the Mexican-American community, Gustavo Arellano delivers the hilarious and poignant follow-up to ¡Ask a Mexican!, his critically acclaimed debut. Orange County not only weaves Gustavo''s family story with the history of Orange County and the modern Mexican-immigrant experience but also offers sharp, caliente insights into a wide range of political, cultural, and social issues.