STATE LINES
What was California like before we Spanish-, Asian- and English-speaking people came to mix with the native tribes who thrived here? Rebecca Gaydos writes smartly, and with wit to boot, about the beauty and tension rising from that cultural mingling. I like how she presents history, and geography, too, as both communal and personal. Her own “natural” birth, described in the poem’s first three lines, pales in comparison to Paco’s lesson about naming in certain Mesoamerican folk cultures. These two origin stories, one mundane and suburban, the other mythical, create a third story that dwells on our geography, our colonial history and language itself.
“The Land Before Time”
I was born naturally in the 1980s in a birth center in Goleta, CA naturally is what happens if your mom doesn’t have an epidural but what’s the point of all these riddles
Paco’s history lesson had this joke — A name includes a nahual A nahual is whichever animal first crosses the baby’s path So Juan ended up Juan Bicicleta
“The Land Before Time” is from “Güera,” by Rebecca Gaydos, © 2016. Reprinted by permission of Omnidawn Publishing.
Rebecca Gaydos was born in Santa Barbara, where her mother and father worked as professional ballet dancers. She now lives in Berkeley. “Güera” is her first book. David Roderick is the co-founder of Left Margin LIT: A Home for the Literary Arts, in Berkeley. He is author of “Blue Colonial” and “The Americans.”