Orange County: A Personal History (Hardcover)

~ (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: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #105,380 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #19 in	Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Ethnic & National > Hispanic & Latino
  #25 in	Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Special Groups > Hispanic American Studies
  #65 in	Books > History > Americas > Mexico

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 5 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 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Down and Out in Orange County, February 21, 2009

By	Dr. Valdo Herby "Jazz Prof" (Southern Oregon) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I had seen Arrellano interviewed on C-Span's "Book TV" before buying his book, Orange County. Though he seemed a bit contentious and tad chippy on the shoulder, he was clearly bright and witty.

The disappointment of the book is that the brightness of the person becomes the main issue. He'll say any damn thing to turn a phrase, and in turning his phrases, he becomes consistently smug and critical--of conservatives, of the wealthy, of the religious. He is a liberal writing for liberals and that generally results in a book that in pretty unreadable. In this case, too, the tedium of the history of his family obscures and delays the unravelling of the history of Orange County, which in itself is occasionally interesting and well wrought.

Hell, we all have colorful enough families to write about, but generally the public is spared these cute histories, as they are normally cranked out on a portable Smith-Corona by a sentimental grandson in his eighties who intends the chapter to be useful to those descendants crazy enough to be doing a family geneaolgy. In Arellano's case, the details of the comings and goings across the border of his grandfather and Dad, usually in a trench or the trunk of a car--and "everyone having to pee real bad"--and the minute details of street squabbles between persecuting Americanos and fleeing Mexicanos just don't ring true. This writer would have had no way to access the multiple yarns he passes off as "fact," and in the final analysis, who gives a hang?

Arrellano just can't get over how the Mexicans weren't allowed to win the Citrus Wars of 1936. A powerful combine of farmers, newspaper magnates, and politicians quelled the strike by the workers in the Orange fields. That incident, returned to several times, bespeaks the mind-set of the author and the spirit which pervades this book. After reading half of this mixed tale, I realized the everything I was really interested in, an expansion of my knowlege of Orange County, was to be found in the occasional paragraphs surrounded by a border, in which interesting facts about Orange county towns are highlighted. Thus I spent five days reading the first half of the book, trying to remember who Papa Je, Ezequiel and Mariana were, but happily I finished the second 125 pages in less than twenty minutes. And now I have a lot of information I probably didn't need: where in Orange County to find gays, MILF's, hookers, and lavish Gospel tents.

This book is from the hand of a young man who has everything, a proper education (albeit from Chapman), a decent home in a land of milk and honey, a better-than-decent job as an itinerant cuisine columnist, a young man is is going to spend his whole life viewing the world the the prism of the failed Citrus Wars of 1936. "Woe is me" books are a dime a dozen. And here is another.