Deep California

California has been invaded by three imperial powers: Spain, Mexico, and the United States. Deep California examines in depth the lingering psychological traumas and motifs emanating from that long history of conquest. These unhealed events have not been left in the past: they recur symbolically again and again, growing in intensity as the overbuilt land and its distracted occupiers unconsciously but definitively demonstrate that environmental justice and social justice can no longer be thought of as separate.

Pacing crusaders and colonizers from county to county along El Camino Real, Deep California studies the lingering impact of continuous oppression of people and places as images and themes of displacement and exile filter down into architecture, agriculture, politics, art, culture, psychology, and even folklore and dream. Yet within the shadows cast over California also dwell resistance, humor, irony, tragedy, and hope for more heartfelt and soulful connections to this story-rich "land of the sundown sea."

"History" is an inadequate term for such a sweeping and deep discovery of how the past informs the present. This work deserves to be read widely by all Californians and Americans, and taken to heart, and the hard lessons applied to all places we inhabit on this stolen land.

-Lesley Thomas, author of Flight of the Goose (Far Eastern Press, 2005)

"A monumental and much-needed study in depth of the conquest, occupation, traumatization, and animation of the mission cities and counties of coastal California, places which have worked their way into our unsuspecting psyches."


-Linda Buzzell, MA, MFT, co-editor of Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind (Sierra Club Books, 2009)