Indigenous: Growing up Californian [Paperback]

Cris Mazza (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2003

Cris Mazza delivers a spirited rebuttal to pop-culture stereotypes about growing up female in Southern California. Coming of age in the 1970s and ’80s, Mazza’s memories aren’t about surfing, cheerleading or riding in convertibles. Though her story has its exotic elements—her family hunts and -gathers food in the semi-arid coastal hills well into the early ’70s—she sets herself in the context of familiar Americana. Repeating motifs—gender issues, the California landscape, dogs, musicians, plus the perplexing melancholy of a sexless marriage—thread through these very personal essays, as Mazza confronts madness, disability, sexual dysfunction and death, speaking to the drama of ordinary lives.

Cris Mazza’s most recent novel was Girl Beside Him, and she is the editor of Chick-Lit: Postfeminist Fiction.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Her tales of her native California expertly excavate an always surprising and always rewarding experience cache." -- Michael Martone, author of The Flatness and Other Landscapes

"INDIGENOUS will appeal to those who enjoy memoirs and are interested in the broader idea of place." -- Bust Magazine, Fall 2003

"Mazza's... experience is rooted not in image but in a primal connection to the land itself. " -- Chicago Tribune

"The California existence Mazza describes is not of Annette-and-Frankie-type parties on the beach and gleaming hot rods tearing down the boulevard. It's a tale of a middle-class existence, starting with her childhood in the 1960s......these accounts of her youth are well-written." – San Francisco Chronicle -- Review

... Mazza reveals a normality beneath the California myth that seems all the more... exotic with the passage of time. -- Los Angeles Times, Sunday, May 18, 2003

You can trust Mazza to level with you and entertain you with her stylish prose; this is an engaging collection. -- Phillip Lopate, editor of Writing New York: A Literary Anthology

About the Author

Cris Mazza is the author of numerous story collections and novels, most recently, "Girl Beside Him", and she is the editor of "Chick-Lit: Postfeminist Fiction".

Product Details

• Paperback: 248 pages
• Publisher: City Lights Publishers; First Edition edition (May 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0872864227
• ISBN-13: 978-0872864221
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,220,570 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

In the first decade of the 21st century, Cris Mazza's work as a novelist expanded as she has continued to consider psychological and emotional complexities of contemporary life, but began to do so with the contributing complication of place: How regions or localities that still have their own unique characteristics of landscape, society, and culture impact the human experiences (sexuality, family, authority, gender) that Mazza explores in fiction. Her 9th book in 2001, Girl Beside Him, inhabits rural Wyoming. Homeland, (2004) involves a woman and her elderly father grappling with a 30-year-old family tragedy while they also find themselves homeless, living in the canyons of suburban Southern California alongside migrant agricultural workers. Indigenous / Growing Up Californian (2003), Mazza's collection of personal essays, deals with place as it anchors memory and the reconstruction of experience. Waterbaby (2007) looks at how local 19th century legends still live and grow in a seacoast town in Maine. 2009's Trickle-Down Timeline married time and place, returning to Southern California in the Reagan era 80s. Mazza's forthcoming novel, Various Men Who Knew Us as Girls continues her unrelenting look at sexual anxiety, now expanding into the nearly unmapped world of outdoor sex slaves in Southern California, as a troubled woman trying to rescue one of them admits her horror has blended with envy.

In 1984 Cris Mazza's first novel (and 3rd book), How to Leave a Country, while still in manuscript won the PEN / Nelson Algren Award for book-length fiction. The judges included Studs Terkel and Grace Paley. Some of her other notable earlier titles include Disability and Is It Sexual Harassment Yet? which was reviewed in the Wall Street Journal.

A native of Southern California, Cris Mazza grew up in San Diego County. Her BA and MA were completed at San Diego State University, then she crossed the country to finish an MFA in writing at Brooklyn College before returning to San Diego where she lived several years training and showing her dogs, completing her first 4 books, and teaching at various local colleges and universities, including UC San Diego, and was Writer in Residence at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, TN, then at Allegheny College in Meadville, PA. Currently she is professor and director of the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intimate, intelligent, and thought-provoking, June 25, 2003

By 

Debbie Lee Wesselmann (the Lehigh Valley, PA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (2008 HOLIDAY TEAM)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Indigenous: Growing up Californian (Paperback)

INDIGENOUS is a rare book: a memoir that offers both intimacy and a sharp-eyed look at a variety of social issues. Cris Mazza grew up in southern California outside of San Diego as one of five children, but, as she makes clear from the first page, she is not a stereotypical Californian. She is not blonde, does not surf, has no interest in acting. Her California is a gritty terrain - scrubby land populated by ant lions, bird dogs, and sand crabs. The daughter of educators by vocation and scavengers by avocation, she grew up hunting, clamming at the beach, searching through the landfill for soda bottles to redeem for spending money, and playing with and studying the indigenous creatures she encountered. Her views on ecology come from knowing both the before and the after, and by attempting to understand the forces that come into play. But Mazza is not an environmentalist; she is a fiction writer who has set out to share the complexity of her experiences. In these personal essays, Mazza uses her life as a touchstone to pose questions we should all be asking. In the chapter on her failed marriage to a San Diego symphony musician, she explores the reasons behind - as well as the repercussions of - America's view on the arts. As she discusses both her mother's stroke and her own volunteer work in the children's wing of a nursing home, she poignantly evokes the difficult role of being a caregiver while exploring what it means when the body cannot perform the most basic of human activities - walking and talking. She conjures up her preteen days of wanting to be a boy in the 1970's when the male gender seemed to have all the fun and advantages. She writes of raising her Shetland sheepdogs to be champion show dogs, thus examining the intricate relationship between humans and animals. All the essays are punctuated by black-and-white photographs of Mazza and her family. These images serve as anchors to Mazza's writing; they add to the atmosphere and wonder of what is written within these pages.

Mazza writes with clear-eyed passion for her subject matter. Under her touch, ordinary subject matter becomes extraordinary. Her story contains none of the sensationalist topics of many high-profile memoirs; instead, it revels in the quiet details of an unconventional life. This book is exactly what a memoir should be: intimate, intelligent, and thought-provoking. Certainly fans of Mazza's fiction should read INDIGENOUS to understand the background from which her stories and novels spring. However, even those without a familiarity of her work will enjoy Mazza's stories about growing up in rural California and then taking that experience into a much larger world.