Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Is California Part of the West?

1999; University of Nebraska Press; Volume: 34; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wal.1999.0076

1948-7142

Gerald Haslam, Janice Haslam,

Media, Communication, and Education

Promotional Kxiklet from the Union Pacific Railroad Company. 1913. Approximately 10" x 7". California State Railroad Museum, Sacramento. C a l if o r n ia D r e a m in g We initiated this conversation on California with the Haskins’ essay and the following guidelines: “We’re looking for a provocative, stimulating series of short ‘position papers,’ laying out what you see as significant new directions, or notable voices and books, for your field, however you want to define it. . . . We see these essays as an opportunity to write about our field(s) as they could or should be, perhaps, rather than as they are. Given the 1,500word limit, feel free to boldly assert as no one has asserted before Because we saw these short essays as a conversation, we encour­ aged an informal tone. Our use of what some might term postmod­ ern typography— numerals, casual abbreviations— was intended to capture the colloquial tone of many of the essays. Partially because we had a quick deadline, most writers provided no footnotes or cita­ tions so, for consistency’s sake, we omitted all of them. We’ve tried to include citations for all quoted material in the “Selected Biblio­ graphy” following the essays. I s C a l i f o r n i a P a r t o f t h e W e s t ? G e r a l d & J a n i c e H a s l a m Is California part of the West? Well, which California and when? In either case, the answer will be yes. But the question is fun, an aca­ demic version of “W ho’s on first?” After all, definitions of what’s West— and, indeed, of what’s California— are endlessly malleable and frequently self-serving. What is often unstated is the underlying reason for the question: dis­ comfort at how the West is changing, linked to a tendency to see California as symbolic of those changes. In the minds of some, the so-called Golden State stands for more— more people, more prob­ lems, even more excess. However, most folks— including most Cali­ fornians— really don’t know this state. For instance, the noted journalist Gary Wills asserted in Time that Fresno is “unCalifomian”— meaning what? No beaches? It’s hard to 1 4 0 W A L 3 4 ( 2 ) SUMMER 1 9 9 9 imagine a city more Californian than Fresno: growing too fast, multi­ ethnic, gritty, yet artistically rich. And at a meeting of the California Studies Association in Sacramento a few years ago, a scholar from Los Angeles complained, “I don’t see why this meeting has to be held clear up here in Northern California every year. It’s a real hardship.” From the back of the room, a voice responded, “This ain’t Northern California, pal, it’s Central California. Try Yreka.” That exchange among “experts” illustrates that our supposedly best-known and cer­ tainly most-publicized province is not at all well understood. California is the 3rd-largest, most geographically varied, and most heterogeneously populated state, so big and so diverse that no one can understand it without considerable study. If someone says, “I’ve lived in California all my life, let me tell you about it,” keep your malarkey-meter running, since living in one section of the state offers virtually no clue about another: Dunsmuir in the Cascades is so dis­ tinct from El Centro in the Colorado Desert as to suggest different continents. Bishop on the edge of the Great Basin shares little weather or scenery or attitude with Carmel on the cusp of the Pacific. The vast cattle ranches of Modoc Plateau of the Northeast are little connected to swishy coffee bars of Walnut Creek in midstate. Eureka and its environs are connected to the Northwest, while San Bernardino’s parched section remains part of the Southwest. . . and on and on. Wait a minute! California’s really a matter of attitudes, not places: Californians are laid back, sybaritic, soft . . . except that the state shelters enormous numbers of desperate immigrants and of sea­ sonal laborers; are those folks soft, or are we supposed to ignore...