Los Angeles

L.A.’s Unclaimed Dead

Each year, Los Angeles County sponsors a burial service for the those who have died within the county borders but whose bodies have gone unclaimed. Here is a reflection by writer Janet Kinosian, who attended the annual burial service in December 2017.

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Sweet Hope

Lynell George finds hope amid strife when she looks back to the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the journey her family made years before from New Orleans for a new life in Los Angeles.

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Chinatown

Lisa See ’79 spent lots of time in her grandparents’ family store in L.A.’s Chinatown. Here she remembers being entranced by Chinatown’s sights and aromas.

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This Is Indian Country

For most of the past century, a migration has been taking place within the United States: Native Americans have been moving from tribal and rural lands to America’s cities. Today, Los Angeles has become the “urban Indian capital of the United States.”

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Imagined L.A.: Brian Doyle on the City’s Past and Future

Brian Doyle says that of all literary forms the essay is “closest to the human voice at play; the most naked unadorned form, with none of the filters and often stilted self-indulgent vibe of the other forms; the essay is you and your friend having a pint and telling tales with glee and tears.” Doyle has never set foot in Los Angeles. But his song of this city, an original essay, describes a place we recognize.

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