Orange County: A Personal History (Hardcover)

by Gustavo Arellano (Author)
Key Phrases: Orange County, United States, Santa Ana (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Readers get two stories for the price of one in this witty and informative memoir. Journalist Arellano (¡Ask a Mexican!) chronicles the sweet-and-sour story of his family's assimilation into American culture, while also recounting a historical narrative at odds with the bucolic ideal of a place that's been mythologized for decades. We're so American, so Orange County, that we're even prone to romanticize a past that never existed. Arellano's structure keeps the narrative moving along at a snappy pace, alternating the threads of the story so odd chapters constitute the memoir, even chapters tell the history, and one complements the other. Readers get solid background on the beginning of master-planned communities during the 1920s, the little remembered Citrus War, Orange County's embarrassing 1994 bankruptcy and special mix of conservatism coupled with a dollop of big-time religion. A 2005 Harper's article named Orange County the country's second hotbed of evangelical Christianity after Colorado Springs, Arellano writes, and of the 100 megachurches in the U.S. with the largest congregations, four are in Orange County. Arellano explores a place he calls the Petri dish for America's continuing democratic experiment and delivers a prescient view of the new American landscape. (Sept.)
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Product Description
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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 1 edition (September 16, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416540040
• ISBN-13: 978-1416540045
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #364,939 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Expected Better - Boring Family History, October 21, 2008

By	S. Cronin - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I like Arellano, and expected better. The book is in 2 parts: (1) Arellano's family history; (2) Chapters on OC, such as religion, politics, and media attention.

The first part, on family history, was bloated, and -- surprisingly -- just not too interesting. It seemed like the middle school essays we all wrote about our families, cramming too many aunts and uncles into repetitive stories. True, there were a few good anecdotes, but nothing exceedingly interesting, historic, or memorable. And I didn't feel like I cared about any of his family members (except for him) by the end of the book.

The second part, in alternating chapters, concerned OC. It was interesting, but nothing amazing. OC religion, OC politics, and OC TV shows are inherently interesting, and it would have been hard to screw up this part of the book. Arellano did a good job of describing his vantagepoint. How his sheltered views about politics and the world changed, and how he became more progressive, activist, (while incurring the wrath of other activists), and famous was somewhat interesting.

If you need something light to read on a plane or the beach, and might not finish the book, I recommend Gustavo Arellano's Orange County.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gustavo does it again!, October 7, 2008

By	L. Agan (Orange County) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

OC Weekly's, Gustavo "Ask a Mexican" Arellano does it again! For those of us who live in the REAL OC, and even for those who don't - Gustavo flawlessly weaves a personal family history with the raw and interesting facts of this great county of ours. Amazing book, choc full of Arellano's brand of wit (as always). A must read!

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Acerbic columnist gives paradise a different spin, November 9, 2008

By	Daniel Olivas (West Hills, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Riding the crest of his wildly successful -- and controversial -- syndicated column "¡Ask a Mexican!" (and a best-selling book of the same name), Gustavo Arellano brings us a memoir, "Orange County: A Personal History (I've Been Taking Notes)" (Scribner, $24 hardcover).

If you were to ask a person on the street what Orange County stands for, you likely would hear such things as Disneyland, John Wayne, idyllic suburbia and expansive shopping opportunities.

If you ask Arellano, you would get a decidedly different answer. In fact, as a lifetime resident of Orange County, he felt that there was a need for a book that told the truth about his hometown. When I chatted with him recently, I asked which O.C. myth he most wanted to dispel with his memoir.

"That Orange County is Eden," he said. "It's not. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else on earth, but I acknowledge the corruption, the Mexican-bashing, the iron grasp developers have on county residents, the class warfare across O.C."

Not to worry. Despite this rather serious goal, "Orange County" is crammed with Arellano's mordant wit mixed with a healthy dose of personal and cultural history. The result is an often-funny, sometimes-moving tale that stands in stark contrast with the mythology of Orange County. The O.C. will never be the same.

Interestingly, Arellano relies heavily on his experiences growing up in an immigrant neighborhood that suffered from tough economic circumstances but which maintained family strong ties with Mexico. He touches upon his adolescent awkwardness, his father's drinking problems and other familial imperfections.

I wondered why Arellano decided to combine a cultural history with a memoir.

"The two books I always wanted to write were a history of Orange County and another telling the mass exodus of the ranchos of my mami y papi to Anaheim and points beyond," he explained.

"My agent was excited about the Orange County angle, but he was more enthralled by the tales of my family's four generations in Anaheim."

Arellano agreed to the double focus, but it took some work: "Guided by my editor Brant Rumble, I was able to accomplish the tricky feat of the hybrid that both told a serious history of a much-stereotyped region but also wove in the modern story of Mexican migration to los Estados Unidos."

Arellano sprinkles his book with little boxes that offer pithy descriptions of O.C. communities such as Buena Park ("One of our many cities with a stupid Spanglish name"), Newport Beach ("No ghettos here, but a lot of recovering-addict homes"), and Costa Mesa ("The city that wished it were like neighboring Newport Beach").

And because Arellano has been a food critic for the OC Weekly for the past four years, he includes food recommendations for each community, such as Abel's Bakery in Lake Forest -- which, he informs us, was once a Jewish bakery but is now run by a Mexican Mormon. Whether he's writing about Mexican, Greek, Korean, Cuban or Persian cuisine (to name a few), your mouth will water as Arellano describes local delicacies.

Arellano said he's finalizing details to publish another book for Scribner. The tentative title: "Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America (And Soon, the World)."

He asked me: "Did you know that tacos are all the rage in Sweden, except their tacos make Taco Bell look like the masterwork of a lonchera?""

I didn't know that. But I always learn something new from Gustavo Arellano.

[This review first appeared in the El Paso Times.]