Upcoming through FlowerSong Press 2023
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"Old California Strikes Back is that rare thing: a truly original work. An inventive blend of history, hilarity, and outlandish fabrication, Scott Duncan interrogates our collective dreams about California and wakes us up to its complex realities."
Cristina Garcia
A unique voice, telling a unique version of California—a mix of fantasy, history with a post-modern look at Zorro, Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona, and Joaquín Murrieta. Laced with sharp insights, bold critiques and acerbic humor, this book is crazy fun. Should be required reading for every Californio.
-Alejandro Murguía, San Francisco Poet Laureate Emeritus
Old California Strikes Back is a modern Ramona Diary, the record tourists kept of the sites of Old California and the book Ramona and Hollywood movies that renamed and transformed them. A mix of fantasy and memoir, the author SRD’s Ramona Diary tour turns surreal as he enters the myths of the Californios with the talking head of the Chicano folk hero Joaquin Murrieta.
They race a gringo, self-styled Zorro, to get the spurious “Jewels of Ramona” while the media is convinced SRD and Joaquin are the serial killer dubbed Two Heads. Ultimately, SRD records his truth and recreates a dream where he may exist.
Cristina Garcia
A unique voice, telling a unique version of California—a mix of fantasy, history with a post-modern look at Zorro, Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona, and Joaquín Murrieta. Laced with sharp insights, bold critiques and acerbic humor, this book is crazy fun. Should be required reading for every Californio.
-Alejandro Murguía, San Francisco Poet Laureate Emeritus
Old California Strikes Back is a modern Ramona Diary, the record tourists kept of the sites of Old California and the book Ramona and Hollywood movies that renamed and transformed them. A mix of fantasy and memoir, the author SRD’s Ramona Diary tour turns surreal as he enters the myths of the Californios with the talking head of the Chicano folk hero Joaquin Murrieta.
They race a gringo, self-styled Zorro, to get the spurious “Jewels of Ramona” while the media is convinced SRD and Joaquin are the serial killer dubbed Two Heads. Ultimately, SRD records his truth and recreates a dream where he may exist.