Description
An exploration of the full diversity of California writers and their writings. The second edition of this general-interest anthology adds ten new authors and their works plus five new selections from some favorite writers, including Carolyn See, Al Young, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, and David Mas Masumoto.

Reviews
"Many Californias offers a broad sampling of writers representing the entire range of California writing. Every region of California finds a place in Haslam’s superb new collection. . . . Of the many California collections that have appeared over the years, this one, to my knowledge, is the first that tries to do it all, the first to embrace the broad range of poetry, fiction, nonfiction and drama." —David Fine, Westways, October 1992

“Anthologies often tease with promised delights but leave the reader unsatisfied: sort of like dancing with too many different partners. Many Californias, however, has a strikingly high success rate, a whole bunch of

Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction

EARLY CALIFORNIA
Native Voices
Hispanic California
American Incursion and the Gold Rush
Richard Henry Dana | from Californios
Louisa Smith Clapp | from Life at the Mines
John Rollin Ridge | from Joaquín
Bret Harte | “The Society Upon the Stanislaus”
Bret Harte | “Dickens in Camp”
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) | Baker’s Blue-Jay Yarn
Ambrose Bierce | The Bubble Reputation

THE RISE OF REGIONS
Greater Bay Area
Jack London | South of the Slot
Frank Norris | from Shootout
Ina Coolbrith | “The California Poppy”
Joaquín Miller | “Dead in the Sierras”
Edwin Markham | “The Man with the Hoe”
Toshio Mori | Slant-Eyed Americans
Southland
Helen Hunt Jackson | from Sheep-Shearing Time
Harry Leon Wilson | from Out There Where Men are Men
Lawrence Clark Powell | Land of Boyhood
Hildegarde Flanner | “Noon on Alameda Street”
Hildegarde Flanner | “The Snake at Shingle Springs”
Ross Macdonald | In the First Person
Heartland
William Saroyan | Guggenheim’s Water Tower
William Saroyan | Fresno
John Steinbeck | from The Squatter’s Camps
William Everson | “The Residual Years”
William Everson | “Muscat Pruning”
William Everson | “Winter Plowing”
Arnold Rojas | The Watch
Wilderness California
John Muir | from The Range of Light
Mary Hunter Austin | from My Neighbor’s Field
Robinson Jeffers | “Vulture”
Robinson Jeffers | “Autumn Evening”
Robinson Jeffers | “Hurt Hawks”
Fantasy California
Garci Ordóñez de Montalvo | An Island Called California
Walt Whitman | “Facing West from California’s Shores”
Nathanial West | from Adore

INTERLUDE: THE SAN FRANCISCO RENAISSANCE
Allen Ginsberg | “A Supermarket in California”
Jack Kerouac | from Dharma Bums
Lawerence Ferlinghetti | “Dog”
Kenneth Rexroth | “Spring Rain”
Robert Duncan | “My Mother Would Be a Falconress”
Bob Kaufman | “I Have Folded my Sorrows”

A CONTEMPORARY SAMPLER
Gary Snyder | “Marin-An”
Gary Snyder | “Above Pate Valley”
Gary Snyder | “Hay for the Horses”
Carolyn See | from The Opium of the People
Robert Hass | “On the Coast Near Sausalito”
Robert Hass | “Palo Alto: The Marshes”
Joan Didion | from Los Angeles Notebook
Floyd Salas | “To Sergie My Sweet Old Dog Who Died in Old Age”
Floyd Salas | “Wyoming in an Indian Name”
Maxine Hong Kingston | The American Father
Cyra McFadden | from Dealing with the Whole Child
Leonard Nathan | “Crop Dusting”
Leonard Nathan | “Fields in Light”
Wallace Stegner | Coming of Age: The End of the Beginning
Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel | “Letter from a Friend in Monterey”
Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel | “Dead Valley Town”
Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel | “Sleeping in a Truck”
Hisaye Yamamoto | My Father Can Beat Muhammad Ali
Gerald Locklin | “weightlifting”
Gerald Locklin | “The Best Year of Her Life”
Gerald Locklin | “happy hour”
Luis Valdez | Soldado Razo
Wanda Coleman | The Screamer
Leonard Gardner | from The Tomato Field
Gary Soto | “Thinking Like a Kid”
Gary Soto | “Magnets”
Gary Soto | “A Red Palm”
Gina Berriault | Wilderness Fire
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni | Grocery Shopping with Aunt Geeta
Al Young | “Aunt”
Al Young | “The Art of Benny Carter”
Al Young | “In Marin Again”
Al Young | “A Sunday Sonnet for My Mother’s Mother”
Kate Braverman | “10 PM”
Kate Braverman | “You Ask About Madness”
Kate Braverman | “Softenings”
Gerald Haslam | Upstream
Charles Bukowski | “a radio with guts”
Charles Bukowski | “the red porsche"
Charles Bukowski | “eulogy to a hell of a dame—“
Molly Giles | The Planter Box
Ella Leffland | The Linden Tree
David Mas Masumoto | from Wildflowers
Diane Wakoski | “The Ring”
Diane Wakoski | “The Photos”
Diane Wakoski | “Precision”
Oakley Hall | San Francisco I: Mary Temple
James D. Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, John Korty | from Farewell to Manzanar
Amy Tan | Two Vignettes
Richard Rodriguez | American’s Wild Child
The Fresno Poets:
Victor Martínez | “Don’t Forget”
DeWayne Rail | “Death of a Hog”
Dixie Salazar | “Scars”
Jon Veinberg | “Last Shot”
Ernesto Trejo | “Today I’ll Sit Still”
Roberta Spear | “Graffiti”
Luis Omar Salinas | “My Fifty-Plus Years Celebrate Spring”

Selected California Bibliography
Credits
About the Editor