Old California Strikes Back by Scott Russell Duncan (forthcoming 2023)
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 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 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 reality where he may exist.
Scott Russell Duncan, a Xicano writer, is senior editor at Somos en escrito Literary Magazine and Press and was editor on the first Chicano sci-fi anthology, El Porvenir, ¡Ya!, which was a finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. He is director of Palabras del Pueblo, a writing workshop for la raza. In 2016 his story “How My Hide Got Color” won San Francisco Litquake’s Short Story Contest. His nonfiction piece “Mexican American Psycho is in Your Dreams” won first place in the 2019 Solstice Literary Magazine Annual Literary Contest. He is at work on a collection of short stories called Plurality. His novel, Old California Strikes Back, a mix of the reality of growing up mixed-raced and of a fantasy tour of California with the head of Joaquin Murrieta will be published in 2023 through FlowerSong Press. www.scottrussellduncan.com