THE MAIL
WELCOME TO CALIFORNIA

OCEANSIDE --
Roger Angell, in his piece on city-wide book readings, states that the city of San Francisco has picked "The Grapes of Wrath." In fact, it's the entire state of California that has been invited to read Steinbeck's novel. If we seem to have escaped the brouhaha in New York which Angell wittily recounts, it's not because we don't have a diversity of opinion here. California, like New York, is a state of immigrants. Since 1850, there has never been a time when more than half the people living in California were born here, so the immigrant's story is an important part of our shared experience. Our aim is not only to have Californians reading and talking about an archetypal California novel but to prompt them to tell their own stories over the next several years. We thought that by first asking Californians to read a great California story, they'd be encouraged to help write the next one.

-- Jim Quay, Executive Director
California Council for the Humanities
San Francisco, Calif