Susan Straight
Susan Straight was born in Riverside, where she still lives. Her latest novel is "Between Heaven and Here." She teaches at UCRiverside and works with photographer Douglas McCulloh to document the Inland Empire.
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I unexpectedly spent the afternoon at an "Ambush Wedding Reception."
Chicano and Mexican-born and white and black and Asian and Muslim young people performed in drill teams and bands and cheerleading displays, from Riverside Poly, JW North, from Bryant Park and from churches and social clubs. It's not only Black History...
Sometimes we look up at the same sky and branches we've seen for decades, and we wonder if we were not adventurous enough, because we chose to stay in the same place.
This is how we began. I looked out at the 300 faces before me and said, "How many of you in this classroom are often asked, in a bar or a store or at a party, What are you?" Maybe a hundred young people raised their hands, and they couldn't believe t...
The tumbleweed. Even the name is round and rolling off the tongue. We are not meant to think they are beautiful. But right now, they are unique explosions of hidden beauty, growing lush and abundant in the vacant lots and roadside acreage and not-ye...
The intensity required to open your own business in 2013 forces you to think creatively.
They came here because of war, though no one might think of it that way when sitting down to get a massage or their nails painted.
This year I spent time with four men who changed education here, back in 1965 when de facto segregation was the norm in California, when violently-enforced segregation was the law of the South.
There are a few other tamale festivals in California, but this one has a unique purpose.
Susan Straight recalls the history of Riverside's Our Lady of Guadalupe and introduces the people who have kept the parish alive all these years.
The Nova, primer-gray like raincloud, was an icon that everyone wanted to see, to honor the owner who would never finish restoring it. Officer Crain was sitting in the passenger seat of his patrol car 32 days ago when he was shot and killed by former ...