José Vadi, INTER STATE: Essays from California
[0:01]Hi, I'm Sivi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast,
[0:05]Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:07]If you like this podcast, you will love my new anthology called Moms Don't Have Time to Have Kids.
[0:12]Check it out, and you'll hear from 49 authors about all sorts of things
[0:16]Moms Don't Have Time to Do. All the authors have been on this podcast.
[0:19]Also, check out my TikTok at with Sivi and Tracy.
[0:22]My other podcast, Sex Talk with Sivi and Tracy.
[0:25]Check out Moms Don't Have Time to Write on Medium.
[0:28]And of course, my new publishing company called Sivi Books.
[0:32]And now back to our daily author interview site and a quick hello from some of my kids.
[0:37]Hi, hello.
[0:38]Enjoy the show.
[0:41]Happy New Year, everyone.
[0:42]I hope you all had a great break.
[0:44]I wanted to let you know about something that I've been talking a lot about on social media at Sivi Owens,
[0:49]which is the hashtag 22 and 22 challenge.
[0:53]We are at Sivi Books.
[0:55]We are encouraging everybody like all of you to visit 22 bookstores in 2022.
[1:01]And we're going to provide a whole series of incentives for every five visits.
[1:05]And you'll be entered to win a $500 shopping spree.
[1:08]And you'll get fun things like bookmarks and all the rest.
[1:11]Plus, you'll be part of a great community of people all helping support bookstores,
[1:16]authors, and more.
[1:17]We're really, really excited about it.
[1:18]If you want to join sign up, you just go to 22 in 22.net.
[1:23]That's 22 in 22.net and click I'm in and put your information.
[1:28]And then every time you go to a bookstore, you just quickly go back on the site and click log a bookstore visit.
[1:33]And then we'll be keeping track and we'll be following up with all of your different achievements and awards and everything.
[1:39]So please sign up, spread the word 22 and 22, get your friends to join and start visiting bookstores.
[1:46]And it'll be really fun and exciting.
[1:49]So here's to a wonderful 2022.
[1:51]I'm so excited that you're listening to my podcast and doing all the fun things that I have been trying to bring into the world.
[1:58]So here we go, 2022, hashtag 22 in 22.
[2:03]Jose Vade is the author of Interstate Essays from California, an award winning essayist, poet, and playwright.
[2:09]Jose Vade is the author of this debut collection of essays.
[2:13]Welcome Jose. Thank you so much for coming.
[2:15]I'm almost done having time to read books to discuss Interstate Essays from California.
[2:20]Oh, thanks for having me.
[2:21]Nice pleasure.
[2:22]Okay, tell listeners why you decide to write all these essays about California and what the general theme of them is and why.
[2:31]The whole thing, give them the whole thing.
[2:33]That's literally well, I, you know, being born and raised in California, I've always had a lot of questions about this state and my family's history connected to it.
[2:42]And this book was through, you know, a collection of essays and attempting to answer a lot of questions about me, my family's history and our relationship with California, a state I love dearly.
[2:54]So, you know, as a skateboarder, as a grandson of a migrant farmworker, as a, you know, as a son, as a husband, you know, you kind of see me going through all these different stages across, you know, the Golden State.
[3:08]Wow, love that.
[3:09]Which piece of the puzzle where you've most surprised to have come out in the book, like I feel like sometimes when you're collecting all of your past work, you can.
[3:18]I was just actually talking to Susan Arlene about this, like a minute ago about her book on animals and that's her collection of stories and I was wondering, like when you analyze or looking back of over all of them, like the themes that come out or like, do you realize anything new about yourself when you're, when you find out what you're writing, you know,
[3:37]like backwards detective work.
[3:39]Yeah, that's a good way to phrase it.
[3:42]You know, it's, it is kind of like a backwards, you know, you are thinking about why these historical moments in your life are so significant to you, why they are still like you're still kind of unthreading them and unspooling them and, you know, really trying to understand why these things matter what you're holding on to.
[3:58]And, you know, that delicate balance between memory and nostalgia, you know, revisionist history, you know, and everything in between, you know, like what is authenticity when we're thinking of in these kind of context.
[4:10]So that was, you know, it was definitely trying to, I think a way of tackling that for me for in this book was trying to just stay honest to how I'm reacting who I am in these moments reacting to the subject material at hand, you know, in these different roles that I'm playing in different moments.
[4:26]And some of those roles I'm putting myself in and other roles are kind of projected onto me. So it's, it was interesting writing this book and seeing like why these things matter to me and how my kind of understanding it through my own experiences.
[4:39]Interesting. And so when like when did you like just to back up a lot, when did you start writing like when did you know you wanted to be a writer when did this all begin and did you know you always want to be a writer.
[4:54]I, you know, it's like I got into poetry first that was for some reason, maybe I wasn't a good MC or a good rapper and I was just like poetry.
[5:02]So it's like very young.
[5:06]Filled rapper, right.
[5:08]You know, and poetry was the first spark that got me into it when I was like 13 when I started getting some work published really early, you know, in college I grew up in something California and moved to Berkeley.
[5:22]For college and got pretty wrapped up into the spoken word and the poetry seen there.
[5:27]And, you know, sorry working for literary nonprofits and stuff like that and, you know, got into plays and writing plays and really just getting different artistic opportunities while, you know, becoming a student and getting some professional shops underneath me.
[5:41]So I guess around that time, like especially writing your first play and kind of getting your first grant when I was like 2425 and just doing like temp work nine to five stuff in between in the financial district in the city, San Francisco.
[5:55]You know, I was like, this is kind of a hustle that might be the rest of my life.
[5:59]You know, essentially, you know, but, you know, understanding how that could come about, you know, to took a lot of time.
[6:06]I didn't really get into writing essays and so I went to Mills College in Oakland for creative not fiction.
[6:12]And that two years just kind of gave me an understanding of, oh, this is the type of format I've always been trying to get at and understanding what an essay can do for you as a writer.
[6:25]Just use the form, you know, it was invaluable.
[6:29]I read the essay you wrote about Oakland and how you said that like nobody wants to go back to Oakland.
[6:35]Yeah, the relationship between or at least like folks from San Francisco not wanting to go to Oakland.
[6:43]That that that that dichotomy is probably still still at hand. You know, I was just so you didn't describe the area in which you lived as somewhat or maybe it's not where you live.
[6:54]But the area in which you were at the time of writing or as somewhere like people wanted to pass by or that they're, I don't know.
[7:02]But yeah, there you were. So yeah, downtown Oakland at a time when I was moving there was kind of pretty bare and you know, or developing I guess you could say, and now it's a totally different.
[7:15]You know, it's changed a lot of different ways. So, but you know, Oakland is a very unique one of a kind of city, much like San Francisco.
[7:22]Yeah. Well, I'm in New York. I feel like that's pretty unique.
[7:27]California is okay, I guess.
[7:30]Yeah.
[7:31]So when you started writing essays and figuring out that like that form was really working well for you.
[7:39]What was that publication journey like and then how did that like how does it feel to you when you have something like in the Atlantic or something versus a book out?
[7:49]It's a real, it's a real trip, you know, like coming from more performing arts side of things too, you know, even just having your show documented in any capacity is is a miracle, you know, is there a photographer on site, you know.
[8:02]So that's sort of have like a written, you know, this thing that we can hold and point at is a trip.
[8:08]And it started with this with my relationship with Mensa to Mary at soft school. He's now the editor in chief of soft school press, but he started as a editor for catapults web magazine.
[8:17]And I started, he threw it kind of through the slush pile of a different publication.
[8:22]He basically kindly rejected me and then kept me in the loop and invited me to submit pieces for catapult and that turned into getting to Susie's, which is included in the collection as well as I'm standing in the shadows of brands.
[8:37]And another piece of sonic collection about going to see the band, the Mars Volta at the Greek theater in Berkeley.
[8:42]And when I submitted a California inquiry, that's when in 2017 these pieces are kind of between 2015 to 2017 is when this stuff started at 2017 is when he's like, maybe we should consider collecting collection about California.
[8:57]So I'm seeing a thread here about all these things about, you know, very much the Bay Area and starting local.
[9:03]But around that time too, I digitized a tape about of my grandfather that I filmed years ago when I was still an undergrad.
[9:10]And you know, just documenting a story just a straight up visual oral history of his life.
[9:15]I'd never digitized it and I wanted to preserve it knowing that tapes expire and much like hard drives.
[9:21]And, you know, that was a huge catalyst for writing the USA interstate and those trips around 2018 2019 tracing some of the fields and paths through which my grandfather migrated in California.
[9:36]You know, that that changed the whole kind of scope of this project.
[9:40]It is kind of crazy to think. I mean, when you were talking about saving things and drives like I recently did not have full on oral history, but I like interviewed my grandmother two years before she passed away.
[9:51]And her birthday this year I played it for our whole family and they hadn't seen it before and I had it as like a little video and I asked her about like how she felt about dying.
[10:00]And she's like, don't worry, I'll be watching over you.
[10:02]Anyway, we were all like crying, it was so sweet.
[10:04]But I think to myself, what am I gonna do with this thing?
[10:06]It's on my phone.
[10:07]Like it's the most important thing.
[10:09]Where am I supposed to put it?
[10:11]I keep like, I don't know.
[10:13]I have drawers of all these discarded hard drive thing.
[10:17]I don't know.
[10:18]The only thing that will not get lost
[10:20]is when you write and you print it out, right?
[10:23]That's the only way.
[10:24]No picture, well, pictures can be lost.
[10:27]But when you have a whole book,
[10:28]you have a whole, like, I don't know.
[10:30]That's the only way that no technology is gonna take that away
[10:33]unless you only digitally print it.
[10:35]But this is not so profound, but I've had no sleep.
[10:37]So the sounds for a fan to me, but anyway.
[10:40]Oh, you presented it though.
[10:41]You presented it to an audience, so to speak, you know.
[10:44]So in that way, you kind of created this artistic relationship
[10:47]and you passed it on.
[10:49]You know, other people were able to witness it.
[10:51]So that's that's huge to create that that testament
[10:54]and that testament and kind of, you know,
[10:56]a lot of the book is about monuments too.
[10:58]And, you know, these things that we do to iconography
[11:01]or otherwise to just preserve and remember is, you know,
[11:04]this is really interesting, especially at a time
[11:06]in our American history where we're taking down
[11:09]other types of monuments that were about, you know,
[11:12]darker types of art history as well.
[11:14]So it's, it's interesting to think about all that
[11:16]in the context of when I was writing this book.
[11:19]That sounds like you definitely had a lot of different
[11:21]things in mind and objectives.
[11:23]This is like, these are not just essays.
[11:26]These have lots.
[11:27]This is, yeah, it didn't just like,
[11:29]with these out.
[11:30]There's lots of thought behind every single one.
[11:32]I'm kidding, because of course, but anyway.
[11:35]But are you working on now?
[11:36]I'm still, you know, definitely writing a lot about California.
[11:39]Some different, actually some different preservation efforts
[11:41]going on in California.
[11:43]I'm writing a lot about skateboarding, actually.
[11:45]And, you know, my relationship with it,
[11:47]I've been skating since 1996 and I can still walk,
[11:51]which is amazing.
[11:52]And, you know, I'm still able to, to skate
[11:55]in my later 30s now.
[11:57]So it's, you know, just talking about the impact
[12:00]inside of my life and through, you know, like essays,
[12:04]but also just like, you know, pros and poetry
[12:06]and kind of like approaching it from all different angles.
[12:09]You know, one thing I miss in the pandemic
[12:11]is the ability to just walk around cities
[12:12]and take photos more frequently.
[12:14]And not just photos of like boarded up buildings, you know,
[12:17]but people, I mean, I see, you know,
[12:21]let alone skateboarding.
[12:22]So yeah, that's when I'm focused on right now,
[12:24]writing wives.
[12:25]So what moves can you do?
[12:27]Oh, it's nothing impressive.
[12:30]It's all low impact skateboarding.
[12:32]Very much to like all impressive to make.
[12:34]If it's more than just like getting down the block,
[12:36]can you do like jumps and all that stuff?
[12:38]And, you know, sitting all that like in clueless.
[12:42]More so the, more so the curbs,
[12:45]more so that more so curbs skating, very low impact,
[12:48]you know, stuff.
[12:49]But heel flips have been the new trick
[12:51]as of like, they're pretty, they're pretty fun.
[12:54]I'm gonna have to Google what a heel flip is after that.
[12:57]I don't know, put it in the show notes or something.
[13:01]So aside from spending your time writing and skateboarding
[13:04]and delving deeper into California history,
[13:07]like what are some things that you like to do?
[13:10]Well, I just moved to Sacramento after many, many years
[13:13]in the Bay Area.
[13:13]So I'm getting to know the Sacramento Valley
[13:16]and the whole area out here, you know,
[13:18]I'm a big wanderer.
[13:20]Like I love just kind of going on public transportation
[13:23]and just, you know, going to different like galleries
[13:27]and bookstores and stuff like that.
[13:28]Like my wife and I are actually kind of love distracting
[13:31]ourselves with action movies.
[13:33]That's kind of like a random thing that we like to do
[13:35]at night, let alone on my side.
[13:37]Like obsessing over the NBA and basketball
[13:39]is a nice healthy distraction lately.
[13:42]I was very thankful for the bubble and all that stuff
[13:44]as well as the WNBA.
[13:45]I wanna shout them out as well.
[13:48]Subscribe to their league pass as well.
[13:50]So it's been nice seeing how the WNBA has been holding it down.
[13:54]My husband watches football.
[13:55]I mean, I'm sorry, well, he does watch football,
[13:57]but he also watches basketball.
[13:58]And there are just so many games.
[13:59]Like, yeah, he follows the Lakers and I mean,
[14:02]there's just like always a game on.
[14:04]It's like, come on, that's like that.
[14:07]Never ended games.
[14:09]But yes, so that will definitely be captured anyone
[14:12]to just for a while, I guess.
[14:14]And what books do you like to read?
[14:15]Like when you reading them?
[14:16]Oh, wow, I'm reading a lot of fiction.
[14:19]I actually like, I love Percival Everett.
[14:21]I love his novels.
[14:22]I'm, you know, the trees that just came out this year
[14:24]is a phenomenal work.
[14:26]I'm a big Hanifa Bureau of Cube fan, you know,
[14:28]since his, I don't wanna say early days,
[14:30]but like, you know, since his days kind of starting
[14:32]in the poetry scene.
[14:33]Can't say enough about Anthony So's collective
[14:36]after parties, beautiful work,
[14:37]a year as a piece.
[14:38]Jaime Cortez's Gordo was another fantastic worth
[14:41]that came out this year.
[14:42]I actually got to present with him in San Francisco
[14:45]for Lickquake on the literary festival out there.
[14:47]So those are a couple and Sam Sacks, an amazing poet,
[14:50]just phenomenal, but I always enjoy reading their work
[14:53]as well as Solmav Sharif.
[14:55]Awesome.
[14:56]Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
[14:58]It always helps to write, you know,
[15:00]and it always helps to have work to wrestle with
[15:04]versus an idea, you know, ideas are really great,
[15:07]but, you know, fleshing it out can ever, you know,
[15:10]giving it a crack.
[15:11]So, you know, give it a try, you know,
[15:14]stay sharp and just, I compared to not to belabor
[15:18]the basketball metaphor, but it's kind of like a jump shot.
[15:20]Like, you get better the more you try.
[15:22]Not that I have a good one, but I'm trying to.
[15:25]Or working on your heel kicks, you know.
[15:27]Yeah, the heel flips, you know, there you go.
[15:30]That's my struggle right there.
[15:31]That's right.
[15:32]Yes, definitely helped to have something to write
[15:36]if you want to be a writer.
[15:37]Sounds obvious, not so obvious.
[15:39]So anyway, well, thank you so much
[15:43]for coming on momstone time to read books.
[15:45]Just discuss your beautiful collection
[15:46]and enjoy Sacramento.
[15:49]Thank you for having me.
[15:50]Really appreciate it.
[15:51]No problem.
[15:52]Take care.
[15:53]Bye-bye.
[15:54]Thanks for listening to this episode of momstone
[15:56]have time to read books.
[15:58]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, at Zebioans
[16:01]and at momstone have time to read books.
[16:03]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebioans.com
[16:06]and sign up for my virtual book club
[16:07]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[16:10]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[16:12]for the Sound Editing.
[16:14]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[16:16]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.