East of the River
A Memoir of Los Angeles Girlhood
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East of the River
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About this listen
Guadalupe Rosales's East L.A. is full of delight and danger: backyard raves and boulevards made for cruising despite constant threats from gangs, crushes and cops. With evocative, intimate prose, Rosales captures the freedom and fear pulsing through her teenaged nights.
After losing a cousin to violence in 1996, Rosales moved across the country to New York City. That was the beginning of a journey that took her away from her beloved hometown and closer to herself. She came out. She became an artist. When she finally went back, her relationship to the city of angels had changed: still tender but much more clear-eyed.
While Rosales was in New York, a stack of starshots from her youth became a lifeline and eventually inspired her to create two digital archives that celebrated 90s East L.A.. Today, Rosales has 325,000 engaged followers across two IG accounts: Veteranas and Rucas celebrates 90s L.A. women, while Map Pointz focuses on the party crew scene of that era.
Now, this beloved artist deepens her project of collective memory by sharing her own story: adolescence in a treacherous time, finding herself far from home, and returning transformed, pulled back to connect IRL with the community she’d conjured on Instagram.
While the book is rooted in Rosales’s own experience, it also includes voices of friends and family. Elegantly designed, the text is interspersed with photos, flyers and social media conversations.
Online, Rosales has built a vibrant, life-giving space; with this memoir, she tells her own story of the loss and healing that motivated her to build a living temple to women like her younger self. East of the River is an unforgettable offering from one of the most remarkable voices of her generation.
Critic Reviews
“A vibrant and wild time capsule of a ’90s girlhood in East L.A., assembled by a chronicler who lived it, breathed it, danced it . . . Guadalupe Rosales has turned the American archive on its head. Her evocative pics and tenderly witnessed stories are a treasure trove.”—Quiara Alegría Hudes, author and playwright
“Before language, before love, there is memory. Reading this book, I gasped. I laughed. I cried. This book will make you wonder: How is memory at once so private and such a communal experience?”—Daisy Hernández, author of Citizenship
“Guadalupe Rosales captures Los Angeles’s wondrous Eastside like no other: the air, the flavors, the relationships. The way creation cuts through the illusions and gets you into the collective truth that we all belong, we all matter.”—Luis J. Rodriguez, author of The Republic of East Los Angeles
“These pages are full of 1990s Brown Los Angeles—parties, style, music, heartbreak, joy. Guadalupe Rosales takes us through the yearbooks of her life, honoring a generation that made something beautiful out of what we were given.”—Yosimar Reyes, poet
“In East of the River, Guadalupe Rosales comes of age as a groundbreaking artist and returns home to preserve a city and its intimate stories before it’s too late. . . . A vital account enlivened by the handmade flyers and dusty photo albums that she has lovingly rescued from the trash can of history.”—Matt Wolf, filmmaker of Teenage
“Through a gallery of memories Guadalupe Rosales demonstrates how our lives are worthy of being archived. Here, tragedies and triumphs live side by side, intentionally curated to highlight every moment that makes a life worth living.”—Elisabet Velasquez, author of When We Make It
“Before language, before love, there is memory. Reading this book, I gasped. I laughed. I cried. This book will make you wonder: How is memory at once so private and such a communal experience?”—Daisy Hernández, author of Citizenship
“Guadalupe Rosales captures Los Angeles’s wondrous Eastside like no other: the air, the flavors, the relationships. The way creation cuts through the illusions and gets you into the collective truth that we all belong, we all matter.”—Luis J. Rodriguez, author of The Republic of East Los Angeles
“These pages are full of 1990s Brown Los Angeles—parties, style, music, heartbreak, joy. Guadalupe Rosales takes us through the yearbooks of her life, honoring a generation that made something beautiful out of what we were given.”—Yosimar Reyes, poet
“In East of the River, Guadalupe Rosales comes of age as a groundbreaking artist and returns home to preserve a city and its intimate stories before it’s too late. . . . A vital account enlivened by the handmade flyers and dusty photo albums that she has lovingly rescued from the trash can of history.”—Matt Wolf, filmmaker of Teenage
“Through a gallery of memories Guadalupe Rosales demonstrates how our lives are worthy of being archived. Here, tragedies and triumphs live side by side, intentionally curated to highlight every moment that makes a life worth living.”—Elisabet Velasquez, author of When We Make It
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