Gayle Wattawa

“That might be the story of Riverside. Tying to fit in with the big boys by accommodating their oversized posteriors.
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That's how we say it. We say, 'This is a horsey area.'
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That means go slow. We have feed stores and tack shops and desert, a really beautiful desert. It's the desert that has me here in 909.

Technically, the Badlands is chaparral. The hills are filled with sage, wild mustard, fiddleheads and live oaks. Bobcats, meadowlarks, geckos, horned lizards, red tailed hawks, kestrels, coach whip snakes, king snakes, gopher snakes. Rattlesnakes and coyotes. We don't see rain for seven months of the year and when we do we often flood. In the spring, the hillsa re green. They are layered and gorgeous. This is in contrast to the rest of the year when the hills are brown and ochre and layered and gorgeous.
~ 909, Percival Everett”
― Gayle Wattawa, Inlandia: A Literary Journey Through California's Inland Empire

“Of course she came from somewhere else, came off the prairie in search of something she had seen in a movie or heard on the radio, for this is a Southern California story.
~ Joan Didion, Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream”
― Gayle Wattawa, Inlandia: A Literary Journey Through California's Inland Empire