LACC Book Program

The mission of the LA City College Book Program is to advance the cause of literacy and literature and to encourage the reading of books that foster intellectual exchange. For fifteen years, the book program has brought to campus authors and scholars that provoke thoughtful and inclusive discussions of relevant issues. Founded as a sub-committee of Staff Development in 2001, under the skillful leadership of its founder and first chair, Rosalind Goddard, the Book Program became a vital part of the campus. We are dedicated to reaching students at LACC who traditionally have had little access to literary culture and to curating events that support all disciplines and departments. By providing the chance to interact with writers, the Book Program inspires our community to read regularly, critically, and adventurously.

Upcoming Events

Book Program-2024 10-Xia, Rosanna-California Against the Sea

Rosanna Xia

California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline

Wednesday, October 23

1 p.m.

Student Union Building | 3rd Floor Multipurpose Room

Map

Event Highlights

Book Reading
Q & A
Book Signing
Limited number of book copies available for free to LACC students

Wherever land meets sea, global warming is wreaking havoc. As the ocean absorbs heat generated by human industry, its waters swell into higher-than-high tides and city-leveling storms. Venice sinks, Louisiana shrinks, Indonesians flee their seaside capital, and North Carolina’s beaches are disappearing like a time lapse with no end. For the last hundred years, California’s 1,200-mile Pacific coastline has enjoyed relative calm due to a rare confluence of atmospheric factors. But shifting tides exacerbated by climate change are bringing this serene century to a screeching close. In California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline, Pulitzer finalist Rosanna Xia dives deep into the stakes, stopgaps, internecine struggles, and potential paths forward for the 27 million people who call this coastline home.

Voyaging across the state, Xia—a veteran coastal reporter for the Los Angeles Times—pulls the curtain back on the trepidations of scientists, the tenacity of activists, and the pitched battles intensifying in more than 20 communities dotting the California coast as they grapple with rising waters. These waters, which could surge by as much as 6–7 feet by century’s end, threaten to push the shore inland by a measure of multiple football fields. This anticipated surge imperils tens to hundreds of billions of dollars of human settlement—seawalls notwithstanding—to say nothing of the risk posed to human and non-human life. The scale of this prospective destruction and displacement could rival the impacts of the state’s raging wildfires.

The challenge, Xia says, is How do we get more people to care? How do we convey urgency? How do we tell them it’s now, not later? Through graceful, in-depth reporting Xia addresses herself to these questions, exploring how development and other vested interests have trumped science, how low-income communities bare the disproportionate brunt of environmental catastrophe (and are poised to do so again), how an attitude of human supremacy has hobbled our imaginations to envision what the coast could be, and how we may yet forestall impending devastation if we can find the way to embrace our collective capacity for change—in time.

About the Speaker

Rosanna Xia

Rosanna Xia is an environmental reporter for the Los Angeles Times, where she specializes in stories about the coast and ocean. Her work spans feature writing to investigative reporting and engages themes of climate and social justice. Xia’s reporting has uncovered the dumping of toxic DDT waste off the Los Angeles coast; set the record straight on the seizure of Bruce’s Beach from its Black proprietors (prompting an unprecedented reparative land return in 2022); explored the impacts of coastal gentrification; and articulated the dangers posed to shorelines by pollution and heating oceans.  She was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2020 for explanatory reporting on sea level rise, which inspired the work that culminated in California Against the Sea. Her writing has been anthologized in the Best American Science and Nature Writing  series.

More Upcoming Events

November 20 | Héctor Tobar

Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of "Latino"

In Our Migrant Souls, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Héctor Tobar delivers a definitive and personal exploration of what it means to be Latino in the United States right now. Composed as a direct address to the young people who identify or have been classified as “Latino,” Our Migrant Souls is an account of the historical and social forces that define Latino identity. Tobar translates his experience as not only a journalist and novelist but also a mentor, a leader, and an educator. He interweaves his own story, and that of his parents’ migration to the United States from Guatemala, into his account of his journey across the country to uncover something expansive, inspiring, true, and alive about the meaning of “Latino” in the twenty-first century.

Tobar is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and novelist. He is the author of the critically acclaimed, New York Times bestseller, Deep Down Dark, as well as The Barbarian Nurseries, Translation Nation, and The Tattooed Soldier. He has written for The New York Times opinion pages, The New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications. His short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, L.A. Noir, Zyzzyva, and Slate. The son of Guatemalan immigrants, Tobar is an associate professor at the University of California, Irvine, and a native of Los Angeles.

Programming is made possible by the LACC Foundation and the Margaret Garth Steinert Greene and Charles Richard Greene Endowment

The Story of Richard and Margaret Greene

From Robert Greene, Son of Richard Greene

My father was an English professor at LACC for many years and really enjoyed the diversity of students in his classes. He married Garth (Margaret) in the 80’s. She was also a teacher at Hamilton High School. They both enjoyed helping others. My father was big on making sure his kids were great spellers, and to this day I thank him!