Spring Has Sprung—and So Has West Coast Review's Spring 2025 Issue No. 1

By SAFIYA MOHAMED

The newly released Spring 2025 West Coast Review Number 1 is a vibrant collection of fiction and art curated to stir the imagination and challenge the boundaries of storytelling. This year’s volume features work from an impressive lineup of acclaimed writers and artists, including Karen Pierce Gonzalez, D. Harlan Wilson, Johnny Payne, Hannah Thorsell, Andrew Joron, K. L. Johnston, Lance Olsen, Gerrie Paino, Karen An-hwei Lee, JoAnna Novak, and Sam Szanto.

West Coast Review Spring 2025 #1

This edition includes the following standout pieces:

• Palm Frond Mardi Gras by Karen Pierce Gonzalez

• Inventing the Sky by D. Harlan Wilson

• The Rooster Thugs by Johnny Payne

• Hail to The Chief by Hannah Thorsell

• The Swerve Collector by Andrew Joron

• Savannah Harbor by K. L. Johnston

• Terminal Lucidity in The After & Beyond by Lance Olsen

• Paint the Sky by Gerrie Paino

• The Bureau of Misidentification by Karen An-hwei Lee

• The Third Time by JoAnna Novak

• Ex Machina by K. L. Johnston

• Moments of Aloneness by Sam Szanto

From award-winning authors and artists to playwrights, poets, essayists, editors, and creative writing directors, these contributors bring a wealth of creative depth to every page.

Inside, you'll find a range of provocative and emotionally resonant stories: a drug-dazed dream of a soldier and his volatile, murderous companion; a love-struck graduate student on a quixotic quest to win back his high-maintenance ex; a woman self-appointed as the "Minister of Loneliness," trapped under a dystopian ban and longing for her pastry-filled past; and a newlywed who uncovers a shocking secret about her husband’s international escapades while she lays recovering in a hospital bed.

The Spring 2025 West Coast Review Number 1 is a stunning mosaic of voices—unafraid to be daring, tender, political, surreal, or deeply human. Just $15.95, It’s a must-read for fans of contemporary fiction and literary experimentation. 

  

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ISBN-10: 1300635681

ISBN-13: 978-1300635680

The Living Voices of the Kumeyaay: A Trilingual Journey Through Story and Memory

By SAFIYA MOHAMED

Footsteps From The Past Into The Future: Kumeyaay Stories of Baja California

Footsteps From The Past Into The Future: Kumeyaay Stories of Baja California is more than just a book—it's a testament to resilience, cultural sovereignty, and the enduring power of storytelling. This beautifully curated trilingual collection—written in Kumeyaay (or Kumiai), Spanish, and English—features the voices of Zeferina Alana Cuero, Jovita Aldama Machado, Aurora Meza Calles, Emilia Meza Calles, and Jon Meza Cuero, with editing by Margaret Field.

This remarkable collection is the result of over a decade of collaboration with fluent Kumiai speakers from Baja California, an area where the Kumeyaay language is still spoken daily in some communities. Grounded in the principle of rhetorical sovereignty, a concept coined by Scott Lyons, the stories were selected and shared by the Kumeyaay community themselves. That means the storytellers—not outsiders—decided what to preserve, how to tell it, and in whose voices—offering a powerful counter to colonial retellings of Indigenous histories.

Footsteps From The Past Into The Future: Kumeyaay Stories of Baja California

The book highlights stories from two Kumeyaay communities: Juntas de Nejí and La Huerta. Storyteller Jon Meza Cuero, who has lived on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, provides unique insight into the shared but diverse experiences of the Kumeyaay people across regions.

One of the most powerful aspects of this collection is that many of the stories are told by Kumiai women—elders who retained their native language by growing up on their traditional lands, with limited exposure to formal education or Spanish until later in life. Their words carry generations of memory, culture, and ancestral knowledge.

The collection draws primarily from two families: the Meza Calles family of Juntas de Nejí and the Aldama family of La Huerta. With the help of Aurora, Emilia, Norma, and Yolanda Meza Calles, several traditional stories were translated and preserved—including Los Gemelos del Mar (The Twins from the Sea), El Rescate de Kuri Kuri (The Rescue of Kuri Kuri), and Esta Tierra Aquí (This Land Here). The moving autobiographical narrative Ollas Rotas (Broken Pots), narrated by Emilia Meza Calles, shares the life story of her great-aunt Genoveva Calles-Cuero. Their uncle, Jon Meza Cuero, also shares the playful story Sapo Enamorado (Frog in Love). 

Linguist Margaret Field works with three of the Meza-Calles sisters

From La Huerta, conversations recorded between Zerefina Cuero and her great-aunt Jovita Aldama—preserved by Josefina Muñoz Aldama—bring to life both traditional and autobiographical stories. Highlights include Gato Montes (Mountain Lion) and Cuatro de Octubre (Fourth of October), narrated by Jovita and translated by Zerefina.

What makes this book especially important is its trilingual format, which mirrors the complex linguistic landscape of today’s Kumeyaay communities. While Kumeyaay people in the U.S. often speak English, and those in Mexico mostly speak Spanish, Kumeyaay remains the shared heartbeat that connects them all.

Footsteps From The Past Into The Future: Kumeyaay Stories of Baja California

Footsteps From The Past Into The Future is not only a cultural preservation project, it's an invitation. An invitation to listen, to learn, and to witness Indigenous voices reclaiming their stories in their own words.

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ISBN-10: 193853784X

ISBN-13: 978-1938537844

Reinventing Poetry After the War: Guillermo de Torre’s Propellers

By SAFIYA MOHAMED

Propellers

Propellers: A New English Translation of Guillermo de Torre’s Hélices, translated by Willard Bohn and co-edited by Daniele Corsi, brings a groundbreaking work of European avant-garde poetry to English-language readers for the first time in nearly a century. Written between 1918 and 1922, these poems explode with the energy, urgency, and experimentation of the post–World War I period; drawing from Italian Futurism, French and Chilean Creationism, and the radical vision of Spain’s Ultraist movement.

De Torre, co-founder of Ultraism and a towering figure in the Spanish avant-garde, famously declared, “Motors sound better than hendecasyllables.” In Propellers, first published in 1923, he set out to reinvent poetry for the machine age. The result is a visually stunning collection that merges text and design through what he called his “spatial propeller procedure,” in which words radiate across the page like the blades of a spinning engine. These kinetic poems challenge linear reading and invite readers to engage with poetry as a visual, spatial experience. 

Propellers

This new edition stays true to the radical spirit of the original. Bohn and Corsi not only preserve de Torre’s bold typography but also offer sharp, illuminating commentary that situates the work within its rich artistic context. The poems pulse with a fascination for speed, technology, and modernity—qualities inherited from Futurism—but also resonate with the inventive power of Creationism, where the poet is not a mirror of reality but a maker of new worlds. 

With Propellers, readers are invited into a thrilling moment in literary history—when poetry took flight, shattered conventions, and captured the rhythm of a world in motion.

Propellers

Propellers

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ISBN-10: 0916304116
ISBN-13: 978-0916304119

What "How the West Was Juan" Can Teach Us About Connection, Culture, and Opportunity

By SAFIYA MOHAMED

How the West Was Juan

What if we’ve been looking at the U.S.-Mexico border all wrong? In How the West Was Juan: Reimagining the U.S.-Mexico Border, author and legal scholar Steven W. Bender offers a bold new perspective on one of the most contentious dividing lines in modern politics—not by digging into the usual debates, but by completely reframing the conversation. 

Bender introduces us to Alto Mexico—a sweeping region that includes present-day California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of several other U.S. states that were once part of Mexico. Rather than obsessing over fences and enforcement, Bender challenges us to consider the deep cultural, historical, and economic ties that still bind the U.S. and Mexico today. His message is clear: real progress lies not in separation, but in connection.

More than a history lesson, How the West Was Juan is a powerful meditation on identity, belonging, and shared legacy. Bender explores how Spanish language, Mexican heritage, and cross-border labor have shaped the American Southwest—not as something foreign, but as something foundational. This isn’t a book about “them.” It’s a story about us.

At a time when demographic shifts are transforming everything from politics to consumer behavior, How the West Was Juan offers a strategic lens for understanding what comes next. Bender makes a compelling case for viewing the Southwest as a zone of cultural convergence—where bilingual, bicultural realities are the norm, not the exception. It’s a must-read for anyone thinking about the future of community, immigration, or cultural storytelling in America.

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For readers interested in social justice, history, or inclusive policy, this book offers a refreshing alternative to the usual narratives of division. And for marketers, brand strategists, or cultural commentators, it’s a valuable guide to understanding the roots—and the future—of one of the most dynamic regions in the U.S.

How the West Was Juan doesn’t just reimagine a border. It invites us to reimagine the possibilities of connection, shared culture, and a more compassionate future.

“Regardless of who owns and governs the U.S. Southwest, we are inextricably bound with Mexico in history, culture, and economy. This text imagines a different border than the current configuration, but at bottom, our connected destiny suggests that we should worry less about locating, marking, and securing our national border with Mexico, and more about recognizing, celebrating, and strengthening our shared connections with Mexico and Mexicans.” — Steven W. Bender. 

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ISBN - 10: 1938537939

ISBN - 13: 978-1938537936