Greetings from What is California? HQ, where we are basking in the glow of a loving shout-out this week from the LA Times’ “Essential California” newsletter. I’ve been reading EC for a long time, and it’s a thrill to get such a reassuring nudge from this much-respected California resource. If you’re new here based on the recommendation, welcome!
And your timing is great: This week the podcast welcomes Jaime Lowe, the journalist and author whose latest book Breathing Fire chronicles the lives of female inmate firefighters battling wildfires and the criminal justice system in California. Not an easy task. The book grew out of Jaime’s reporting for the New York Times Magazine, and it examines the ways California has historically used inmate labor to do some of the most hazardous work in the state—building mountain roads, erecting prisons, and extinguishing wildfires—with little emphasis on how (or even if) these highly skilled people who’ve risked their lives can reenter society with jobs in place and dignity intact.
The women featured in Breathing Fire are heroes, and Lowe’s sharp perspective on their experience reveals a tension at the core of so much of modern California life: The Golden State’s mythical opportunity and fortune excludes the vast lower class who sacrifice the most to achieve it. Throughout Lowe’s work, these efforts to sustain the unsustainable—whether in Venice or Topanga Canyon or the Central Valley—take on the shape and texture of new myths for our uneasy new era.
In our chat, we discussed how this all came to be, and where it all might go. We also talked about the strange luck of being a native Californian, Lowe’s earliest memory of the state, and her surprising choice for her favorite Californian.
Meanwhile, thank you for your ongoing listenership and readership! Please continue to share and refer folks to the show, and if you feel like chipping in a few shekels to help keep the lights on and the cat fed at What is California? HQ, you can become a supporter at Patreon. I’d be terrifically grateful.
Enjoy the show, and remember: Keep your eye on the bear! 🐻
Episode Notes
Jaime Lowe is the author of Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines of California's Wildfires and a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine.
For a long time, a stereotypical idea of what California might be would have this Hollywood glamour. Now it’s this Silicon Valley glamour, and it’s this sheen of wealth and success and privilege and manifest destiny and gold. And I think that we need to acknowledge that that is actually absolute destruction. For the majority of people, that is a detrimental vision and not even something that really exists. [...] I think finding the people who are actually making the state work is much more useful in terms of finding ideals.
Notes and references from this episode:
@kicklikeagirl1, Jaime Lowe on Twitter
Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines of California's Wildfires, by Jaime Lowe
“Ten Sessions,” by Jaime Lowe, This American Life
“The Incarcerated Women Who Fight California’s Wildfires,” by Jaime Lowe, NY Times Magazine
“Essential California newsletter - Nov. 17, 2021,” by Justin Ray, LA Times
“The Super Bowl of Beekeeping,” by Jaime Lowe, NY Times Magazine
City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771–1965, by Kelly Lytle Hernández
“Los Angeles Goes to War With Itself Over Homelessness,” by Jaime Lowe, NY Times Magazine
Mental: Lithium, Love, and Losing my Mind, by Jaime Lowe
“Deputy cliques in L.A. County Sheriff’s Department likely growing, study finds,” by Alene Tchekmedyian, LA Times
“‘Our Origin Story’: Queen Calafia Returns to California in New Theatre Production,” by Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman, KQED
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Episode 11: Jaime Lowe