Title

The State of the State: Regional Writing About the Past, Present, and Future State of Planet California

Authors

Keenan Norris, San Jose State UniversityFollow

Files

Description

In this presentation, Dr. Norris will discuss his representation of the Oakland/Bay Area and California more broadly in his fiction and non-fiction writing. Norris’ novel The Confession of Copeland Cane (2021) takes place in a near future East Oakland battered by gentrification, environmental degradation, and a draconian police state. Meanwhile, the essays from his collection-in-progress Classroom California looks at the state from San Diego to San José through the lens of our vast community college system. Several essays in this collection have been published individually, including “One Coyote” and “A Complicated Relationship: How California’s Community Colleges Educate Future Police and Why Our Curriculum Needs to Change.” The essay-in-progress “Transparent California” begins from the claim that “California’s community colleges constitute vast, multiperspectival prism on to California” and then takes the reader on a cross-state journey where he meets with college presidents, professors, and students at several community college campuses.

About the Author

Dr. Keenan Norris (pronouns: he/his) teaches American literature and creative writing at San José State University. His latest novel is The Confession of Copeland Cane. Keenan’s essay “One Coyote” was a finalist for a 2021 National Arts Entertainment Journalism Award. His debut novel Brother and the Dancer won the 2012 James D. Houston Award. In November 2022, Keenan’s collective memoir Chi Boy: Native Sons and Chicago Reckonings will be published by Ohio State University Press. His editorials and essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Review of Books, San Francisco Chronicle, Alta, and LitHub.

https://www.keenannorris.com/

Date of Event

Fall 9-14-2022

Keywords

Community colleges, Class issues, Sustainability, Gentrification, Inequality

Disciplines

Civic and Community Engagement | Higher Education | Natural Resources Management and Policy | Social Justice | Sustainability

Comments

1 streaming video file (59 min.) : digital, sound, color. Closed-captioned for the hearing impaired.

Recommended Citation

Norris, Keenan, "The State of the State: Regional Writing About the Past, Present, and Future State of Planet California" (2022). University Scholar Series. 50.
https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/uss/50