Coming of Age in California : Personal Essays

by Gerald W. Haslam

These 11 personal essays by Haslam explore the people and places that most influenced this popular California writer. Gerald W. Haslam has published six collections of short stories - most recently "That Constant Coyote" which was awarded the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Prize for Excellence in Literature. Haslam's career as a writer has been marked by his use of California's rural and small-town areas, its poor and working-class people of all ethnic backgrounds, to explore the human condition.
Pop
An affair of love
Coming of age in California
Reflections from an irrigation ditch
Brothers' boy
Portrait of a pal
Bloodrites
Homage to Uncle Willie
Denouement
Growing up at Babe's
Writing about home

Genres: Essays

90 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[Damian Solorzano · Rating 5 out of 5]

The California of my parents

I looked up Haslam on the recommendation of an acquaintance of mine. Reading, I was transported to a place, near the place that my parents were raised, with all of the characters that I knew as a boy.
I'd been pining for a writer like Jim Harrison, one who spoke of an outdoors childhood like my folks experienced, and here he is.

[Kimmie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started reading this book because my college professor assigned it. I personally would have not picked this book off the shelve otherwise. I don't want to give out that many spoilers but the book is NOT in chronological order. However, I did love the style of writing because they are personal essays written in the book. Haslam does talk about his childhood throughout the whole thing and it does get interesting at some points.

[Edward Weiner]

Read this book a long time ago. Well before I started a Good Reads list.

[Kristina · Rating 3 out of 5]

while the ones I read were good, I just don't think it was for me

[Jeffrey]

Intensely honest and upfront series of essays that does not necessarily cover every moment in Haslam's life, but definitely covers all of it in terms of how he has come of age over the years.
Regionalism is often filled with biting but honest critiques of ones homeland. Though many writers also romanticize where they come from, Haslam revels in it like a kid playing in a pile of raked leaves. The ways he interweaves his life and extremely personal stories such as those involving his aging and difficult mother with insights on writing about where one comes from, about love, about friendship, hardwork and race in California makes this a quick read that feels like a lifetime. You can read a one thousand page book that doesn't manage to make it to your heart in the way this hundred page book does. Essential to diving into the California and American ethose, into love, and into managing to actually feel good about what you've accomplished in life. He doesn't overlavish. Instead, he simply respects and potentializes what he has learned throughout his life, no matter from whom he learned or how big or small the lesson.