Leave With More Than You Came With

Too often, class and poverty are ignored in writing about life in America and specifically in the diaspora that leads people to California. Leave With More Than You Came With is a moving odyssey of mixed-race and multi-ethnic working-class families through other displaced communities. In this collection of fine poems, we travel through the South, Hawai'I, San Francisco and end in San Pedro, "on the hill next to Bukowski." A must-read for anyone who wants to understand the longings of those who come to the Pacific West.

-Naomi Hirahara, Edgar Award-winning author of the Mas Arai mystery series and co-author of Terminal Island: The Lost Communities of Los Angeles Harbor. Christian Lozada and Steve Hendrix aim to help you leave with more than you came with. Through the process of coming to terms with the years that must be forgotten, these poems offer geographic lessons and explain why we are all immigrants. Circling the South Bay and San Pedro and over the ocean to Maui, Lozada and Hendrix grapple with racism, dementia, and identity in order to transform worry and doubt into a book of beauty.

-Mike Sonksen, author of Letters to My City