How to Read Now

by Elaine Castillo

He exists to be the soothing voice on the end of a phone number, the capable arms hauling the dead body to the car; like many characters of color in such works, he operates primarily as a satellite to the central white narrative, the way queer characters will often function as reflective handmaidens in central hetero narratives, with those narratives expecting readers and viewers to be grateful for the existence of those characters at all.

That it was paramount for white settler colonials to believe the lie that the land they were occupying was “a blank page waiting to be inscribed,” that it was this lie that allowed America to tell the story of itself

Who is this writing for? What vision of California and the West is it upholding, and why?