Wednesday, June 13 - Gustavo Arellano

Welcome back to regular programming.  Tonight on our first post-Fund Drive edition of Bibliocracy it seems right to feature GUSTAVO ARELLANO, frequent KPFK on-air host and my editor at the OC Weekly.  Many have read his political commentaries on education and politics, and previous nonfiction work, as well as followed his hilarious column “Ask a Mexican,” or benefited from restaurant reviews at the OC Weekly where he is lately the Editor-in-Chief.  Gustavo Arellano is the Dear Abby of cultural reconciliation, the Studs Terkel of food, the Ann Landers of the gustatory. When not launching investigative journalism he is dining at restaurants, food trucks, hole in the wall places, or otherwise teaching and boostering all things culinary.  His newest book is Taco USA:  How Mexican Food Conquered America, in which he goes at his subject con gusto in the tradition of John McPhee and Calvin Trillin:  immersion, investigation, history and, of course, eating well.  Arellano is author of a compilation of his “Ask a Mexican” columns and of a seminal literary memoir called Orange County:  A Personal History.  With Taco USA Arellano mixes up a satisfying blend of revisionist history and a foodie’s appreciation.  For a second helping of Taco USA, see my recent review at OC Bookly, the Bibliofella's weekly lit blog:  http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2012/04/taco_usa_book_gustavo_arellano.php. Thanks for listening live on the radio, online or as a free download from the station’s archives.  And thanks for your continuing support of Bibliocracy and, to evoke The Clash, the only radio station that matters!