Talk to Compare Cultures of California, Holy Land

Gregory Orfalea, Westmont adjunct assistant professor of English, explores the cultures and peoples of California and the Middle East in a lecture, “Promised Lands: Literature and Poetry about California and the Middle East,” Thursday, Nov. 4, at 7

p.m. in the Darling Foundation Lecture Hall inside Winter Hall. The talk, cosponsored by the Westmont English Department and Intercultural Programs, is free and open to the public.

Orfalea has authored eight books, including “Angeleno Days: An Arab American Writer on Family, Place, and Politics,” which won the 2010 Arab American Book Award and was a finalist for a PEN USA 2010 Literary Award. Orfalea will read excerpts of his poetry, fiction and memoir that relate to Christopher Isherwood’s notion that “California is a tragic country, like all promised lands.”

“I will compare and contrast the ‘promised lands’ of the place of my birth (California) and the place I’ve addressed in terms of justice and spirit, what we call “The Holy Land,” Orfalea says.

Orfalea also wrote “The Arab Americans: A History,” which is the definitive study of that community in the U.S., and “Messengers of the Lost Battalion” about his father’s ill-fated paratrooper unit in World War II.

He is currently working on a book about the colonial encounter of Father Junipero Serra, the Spaniards and the Indians of the Pacific Coast, which gave birth to today’s California.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Georgetown University, where he received the Edward B. Bunn Award for Journalistic Excellence, and a master of fine arts degree from the University of Alaska.