"This extravagantly inventive, linguistically daring work skewers two different American cultures. Johnson, who is African-American, conjures the voice of a naïve young white student who arrives at the University of California, Berkeley, from the deepest of the Deep South."

"I just finished The Wayward Bus by John Steinbeck. A deep, dark psychological story about strangers stranded after a bus breaks down at a mid-California lunchroom. My favorite element is the way there is no 'main character' and everyone's inner dialogue is explored"

"She is my patron saint, and this collection of essays helped me understand the world I was not around for but that still shaped my life. Her truths are tiny knives, piercing the surface and bleeding out the illusions of life, especially life in California."

"Easy Rider was one I remember that just seemed to be the Peace and Freedom Party movement, in a way, reflected on screen. [Editor’s note: the Peace and Freedom Party was an organization founded in California in 1967 with the goal of ending the Vietnam War.]"

"The first album that I ever heard that made me realize that I wanted to make music was by a band called Joy Electric, and the album was called Melody. It’s like a really bizarre fairy tale synth pop from 1993 and they are out of Orange Country, California."

"I was really late to getting around to this. It wasn’t until a journalist related my art sensibility and writing to her that I finally stopped rebelling and started reading! I love her asexual voice, writing in a man’s world. Her essays about California are like no one else’s"