María Ampara Escandón loves Los Angeles. More importantly, she understands it. Her novel, L.A. Weather, is about family and the subtle nuances within each relationship. It’s also about identity, the hold that secrets can have over us, and how we handle the crises that can face a family unit in any given year. Los Angeles is where the Alvarados happen to live in this story. This city I love is both the setting and a key player in the plot.
As Storygraph‘s personalized preview of the novel suggested in more polite words: this kind of yarn is my shit.
Throughout the novel, characters describe their visions of L.A.
Compared to New York, we’re like ducks in a pond.
“They glide effortlessly on the tranquil surface, but you can see they’re frantically paddling when you go underwater. […] To survive, you have to keep your cool. Angelenos only sweat in public at the gym.”
One of the Alvarado daughters, who thinks in Instagram captions, believes the city to have been developed horizontally so that it could be projected in Panavision. She goes to the Griffith Park Observatory frequently to remind herself:
“[T]hat because she lived in the wealthiest city of the wealthiest state of the wealthiest country in the world, she had been bestowed with the ultimate responsibility: to thrive in her endeavors many times over on behalf of all the immigrants who hadn’t been given a chance.”
The patriarch of the family shares my perspective on the City of Angels:
“Every race, religion, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, and food preference was well represented within Los Angeles County, and this is what [he] loved most about his city: how it welcomed everything and everyone.”
Threads has become my social media app of choice over the last year, and recently, there has been this regular drumbeat of new residents of L.A. starting conversations in which long-time Angelenos on the app feel the need to step in and correct their incorrect assumptions. I try my best to stay out of these engagement traps. Los Angeles doesn’t require you to love it. Few will demand that you give up your hometown allegiances or suppress that identity to succeed here. I’ve known people who have lived here for 20 years and still claim Chicago, New York, or wherever. And the city is cool with that.
But, as Escandón seems to know, magic happens if you fall in love with this place—with the parts of it that truly make this city and county shine. This place and its people will love you back. You will find a home. You will find family. You will believe anything is possible when we come together.
L.A. Weather is L.A. County Public Library’s summer read. If you’re a fan of women of color writing about complicated families, intriguing women, and how they make their way through seemingly impossible situations—usually with wit and humor—this is also for you.
