Inter State: Essays from California

by José Vadi

A "must read" debut collection of poetic, linked essays investigating the past and present state of California, its conflicting histories and their impact on a writer's family and life (Los Angeles Times).California has been advertised as a destiny manifested for those ready to pull up their bootstraps and head west across to find wealth on the other side of the Sierra Nevada since the 19th century. Across the seven essays in the debut collection by José Vadi, we hear from the descendants of those not promised that prize. Inter State explores California through many an aging obsessed skateboarder; a self-appointed dive bar DJ; a laid-off San Francisco tech worker turned rehired contractor; a grandson of Mexican farmworkers pursuing the crops they tilled. Amidst wildfires, high speed rail, housing crises, unprecedented wealth and its underlying decay, Inter State excavates and roots itself inside those necessary stories and places lost in the ever-changing definitions of a selectively golden state.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, History, Travel, Memoir

224 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 14, 2021

About the author

José Vadi is an award-winning essayist, poet, playwright, and film producer living in Oakland, California. José received the San Francisco Foundation’s Shenson Performing Arts Award for his debut play “a eulogy for three” produced by Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s Living Word Project. He is the author of SoMa Lurk, a collection of photos and poems published by Project Kalahati / Pro Arts Commons. His work has been featured by PBS NewsHour, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Daily Beast while his writing has appeared in Catapult, McSweeney’s, New Life Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review of Books, SFMOMA’s Open Space and Pop-Up Magazine.

Reviews

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

INTER STATE: Essays from California by José Vadi is a great collection! I really enjoyed this book and read it in one day! It was interesting to read about a life and place different from my own. He writes about his family and the changing state of California. I enjoyed all of the essays and my fave was Inter State which discusses his grandfather, who was a migrant farm worker, and going back to the farmland. These essays made me reminisce about my own home as I’ve lived in Vancouver my whole life and how I’ve seen it change over the years. I’d definitely love to visit California one day!
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Thank you to Soft Skull Press for my gifted review copy!

[Ethan Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a San Franciscan and Californian, I've found it particularly difficult for myself to express the multitude of complex feelings that comes with the burgeoning changes of our hometowns and rapid assimilation of our microcultures across the Bay Area, and few writers can truly capture them in a jar and let them glow long enough for us to fully understand. And yet, José Vadi seems to have unlocked that special power of catching these figurative fireflies, eloquently articulating these very sentiments of a love for a home and a community in California, alongside a burdensome lamentation of bearing witness to what can seem like a dissolution of that identity that tethers us to this land. Through eight prosaic, vignette-like personal essays, Vadi explores and demonstrates an understanding of the ever-changing and uncertain California identity in the Information Age, one defined by immigrant farm worker communities and organizations in Palmdale, spot-checking skaters in the SGV and Bay Area, commuting copywriters swimming amongst techies in San Francisco, and bar-hopping, sentimental city adventurers in Downtown Oakland. What is comes first and foremost in Vadi's writing is the level of levity and respect he pays to the past and present of California, a burning desire and curiosity to discover, reveal, and celebrate its history by means of his personal relationships and interests in skating, writing, music, and community, traits that perhaps qualify his willingness to engage in the California discourse that exploring so may also imply. While at times it may come off as cynically nostalgic and bitter, his writing is likewise encouraging, always willing to uncover pockets of culture that can serve as reminders and reflections on why we still call this place home when others will easily discard it, despite it all.

[Zibby Owens · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of eight personal essays about the author's relationship with his home state of California. This book was the author's attempt to answer the many questions he had about himself, his family's history, and their relationship to California, a state he loved dearly. The reader gets to see Jose go through the personal stages of his life in the Golden State, including when he was a skateboarder, a grandson of a migrant farmworker, a son, and a husband.

The book captures the ever-changing definitions of the state through fires, gentrification, and politics. It records a distinctive perspective on the golden state's past, present, and future.

To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
https://zibbyowens.com/transcript/jos...

[Nancy Lewis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unremarkable stories about this guy's life in San Francisco

[Glen Helfand · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yes, California is a state of mind. And our moods here are changing, along with everything else. There is a whole library of essays on the Golden State's illusory nature. While a quick read, José Vadi's collection of essays is a frustrating entry into this arena. In the longest piece, he goes on a road trip to get closer to his late grandfather's geographical history as a migrant farm worker. It's a merger of the sociological, historical, and personal, though the mix doesn't quite gather much trenchant force. Same for the tales of working in tech addled SF, family and class-fraught LA, and the unique ingredients of Oakland. Vadi mentions crippling anxieties, but only in passing. It's a theme that could add some fascinating nuance. Instead, he goes for enumeration, like when he tracks skateboarding spots in SF. As most of the essays were written prior to the pandemic, Vadi adds a postscript, which already comes across as musty, mostly because it is a laundry list of the tumult of this era rather than a full-bodied personal experience. It's caught up in a particular moment that seems bypassed in the fast mutating world of COVID. There's also something strange about Vadi's writing style. I found myself having to reread sentences, not for their exquisiteness but for clarity-- his word choices were odd and didn't resonate with me. Go figure. The perspective he does bring just isn't revealing, vulnerable, or yet defined as a unique voice.

[Zack Ruskin · Rating 3 out of 5]

My review for SF Chronicle: https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/book...

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Do you ever feel dependent on someone else’s movements to define your next step? In your childhood home, were there more places to store books or beer? Do you float between or outside the cultures of either of your parents, unsure of what belongs to you but rooted in a where that’s yours alone? If so, check out Inter State, a collection of geographically linked essays by writer, poet, playwright, and film producer José Vadi about unanointed life in the seductively, if selectively, “golden state.” Whether tracing his own family history, visiting the favorite skate hubbas of his youth, or observing the view from endless same-but-different commutes, Vadi will transport you from your reading nook to his corner of California dreaming, “in the dead of afternoon promising the dawn of whatever the night bears.”

[Ivette · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't think you need to see yourself in a book to enjoy it. But I do think that I enjoyed this collection of essays mostly because I saw myself and people I know. From growing up in (South) LA around skater boys (but also having left a decade ago), to living in the exact same Oakland neighborhood (in and around the same time he was), to also seeing your father sort of come to terms with his own father's shit, and then to wondering if you'll ever (want to) leave this state or if you'll be able to afford it--I saw myself reflected back and it was a trip. I ended up making a playlist from his jukebox set because, to no surprise, I also grew up on Art Laboe.

[Andrea Janov · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have not been this in love with a book in a long while. Vadi's sentences are beautiful (you can tell that he was/is a poet) but that is not what made me fall in love. Vadi is able to show us the things that he cares deeply about, the things that shaped him and his outlook on life, his history (and ancestry) and he writes in a way where we too can connect with his experience. He pulls the veil back and lets us into some very intimate parts of his heart and human experience. Maybe it feels like a kindred spirit, the details are all different, yet the emotions are aligned.

My copy has bookmarks and notes, I will tell everyone about it, cannot wait until his next book comes out.

[Anlan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perfect set of essays to read after having just moved to San Francisco. Vadi's narration -- like commutes to work with context via-a-vis the dot com boom or how he read paintings at the Getty -- captivated me, and he used turns of phrase and descriptions for places and feelings I had never read before.

[kylee samaripa · Rating 1 out of 5]

this book hurt my feelings, i felt like this was dishonorable to the people whose families have resisted and fallen victim to the rise of the cost of living in california and all of its natural disasters, this was the complete opposite of a love letter to california, it’s history and it’s people’s history will be forgotten if there is more media like this in the world

[Audrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

An uneven, meandering collection of essays. Which I get is the point, but a bit too much stream of consciousness for my taste. The last essay/afterward, was the strongest for me.

I received an arc from the publisher but all opinions are my own.

[Ed Kazyanskaya · Rating 2 out of 5]

A mixed bag of essays, with the elements focusing on the authors family and personal life vastly superior to those requiring a detailed knowledge of California geography or skateboarding techniques. If you're familiar with the latter two, you may appreciate them far more than I could.

[Emme Lund · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of essays that follows the author as he traces his ancestral roots through California. Vadi writes about skateboarding, gentrification, California, and family in a deeply profound way, a wonderfully talented essayist.

[Lacy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the essays interesting to read

[Juan · Rating 2 out of 5]

There’s some interesting bits in the first third of the book but the author seems to think skateboarding is some kinda political ideology

[David Zhao · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really great collection of essays - heavy on capturing the VIBES, heavy on skateboarding (reminded me a lot of the documentary "Minding the Gap"), also heavy on California history.

[OGEE Substack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Always appreciate hearing the perspective of a native Californian.

[Hilary · Rating 4 out of 5]

especially enjoyed 2nd half

[David Allen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Raised in Pomona in Southern California, Vadi uprooted himself to relocate to Oakland in the Bay Area, two outsider cities perfect for an outsider like him, an aging skater and mixed-race thinker, unsure where he belongs other than that it's got to be in California. He likes to lurk, to bear witness, whether it's to skater spots, dive bars, SF's tech transformation, Oakland's gentrification or his farmworker grandfather's journey, as he seeks to grasp "this disjointed mosaic of a state."