Lisa Alvarez’s first collection of short stories couldn’t have come out at a better moment.
For 33 years, she’s been “happily teaching” at Irvine Valley College, all the while publishing the occasional poem, essay or story. The release of “Some Final Beauty and Other Stories,” though, coincides with her final year in the classroom.
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“In some ways, I think this book comes at a perfect time for me as I’m heading into what some people call the third act: retirement,” she says on a recent video call.
But the book’s inadvertently impeccable timing goes beyond Alvarez’s upcoming retirement.
In “Some Final Beauty,” the author crisscrosses decades, and a large swath of Southern California, in slice-of-life tales of characters who are, to varying degrees, impacted by the politics of the day.
“When [publisher] the University of Nevada picked it up a couple years ago, I thought it was going to be a nice little nostalgic book about activists from World War II to Reagan to the first Trump term,” she says. But in the past year, the themes that Alvarez explores, about social consciousness and looking out for local communities, remain relevant.
“I feel like everything is in place for my small collection of stories about people trying to do what they can with what they have,” she says, “these small, and not so small, actions that people take.”
Born in Inglewood, Alvarez grew up in and around Los Angeles. In the late 1980s, she headed to UC Irvine for graduate school and has remained in Orange County. Her homebase, Modjeska Canyon, makes multiple appearances in the story collection.
“We’re often overlooked in Orange County, unless we’re on fire,” says Alvarez of the unincorporated community. “Then everyone is interested in us.”
It’s this eye for overlooked and long-forgotten details that makes Alvarez’s stories so engaging. Several of her characters grew up in South Bay cities, like Gardena and Torrance, and get around town by bus. They frequent restaurants and shops that shuttered many years ago. Some stories are informed by 1980s-era activist work in Los Angeles, including protests,
solidarity movements and mutual aid networks.
“I’ve been thinking of those days recently and all the solidarity work that folks did. The first story [“Everyone Was Singing ‘Freiheit’”] sort of talks about that, the solidarity work folks did with the immigrant community in Los Angeles,” says Alvarez. “The ’80s get this kind of pop culture gloss. I notice that with my students when I mention the ‘80s, and I’m like, Ronald Reagan, folks. The Cold War, all of that.”
Initially, Alvarez considered writing stories solely about the 1980s. That changed as she continued to write, but the decade still permeates stories like “A Pretty Penny” and “Ocean Park #12.” Alvarez notes that an inspiration for her own work is the late writer and activist Grace Paley.
“I got to work with her at a writing conference once,” she says. “I just adore her work and love her focus on women and on the immigrant community and on people who are committed to trying not just to help themselves, but to help others.”
“Some Final Beauty” was published in August as part of the University of Nevada’s New Oeste series of books by Latinx authors from the American West. Alvarez celebrated the book’s release with an event at LibroMobile in Santa Ana, which was founded by author and educator Sarah Rafael Garcia, who happens to be one of Alvarez’s former students.
“If you teach in an area for 33 years, eventually, your students are everywhere,” she says.
As a teacher, Alvarez has clearly made an impact on her students. Garcia took Alvarez’s Intro to College Writing course in 1993.
“Now, some 32 years later, I still give credit to Maestra Alvarez for my success in life,” says Garcia in an email.
So, the reading at LibroMobile was a cause for celebration that went beyond the book itself. “Although she has said it took all these years to write it, edit it, and find the right publisher, I say it was because Lisa gave so much more to her students and community than she would take for herself,” says Garcia. “It was an honor to honor Lisa’s writing — I only wish I had read her back in 1993, too.”
Alvarez estimates that more than a hundred people were in attendance at the event, which included many former students. “It felt like a wedding,” she says.
“I’m enjoying my farewell tour of the college. I’ll be teaching one last year, and the book is part of that. Now I know where I’m going after this,” Alvarez adds. “Back to my writing desk.”
Lisa Alvarez with Adolfo Guzman-Lopez and Daniel Olivas
When: 7:30 p.m., Sept. 5
Where: Beyond Baroque, 681 Venice Blvd., Venice
Information: www.eventbrite.com/e/la-book-launch-lisa-alvarez-daniel-olivas-adolfo-guzman-lopez-tickets-1528148596589
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