Olivia: Jackson, what’s the first thing you think of when you hear "Los Angeles"? Jackson: Sunshine, Hollywood, traffic. The usual postcard stuff. Maybe that Randy Newman song. Olivia: Exactly. But what if the real L.A. is a city built on an illusion, waiting for its great quake, where the only beauty is in letting go? A place where a single orange can start a war. Jackson: A war over an orange? Okay, you have my attention. That is not on the postcard. Olivia: It's the chaotic, brilliant world of Tropic of Orange by Karen Tei Yamashita. And what's incredible is that Yamashita herself embodies this theme of displacement. Her parents were survivors of the WWII Japanese-American internment camps, which deeply informs the book's exploration of identity and belonging. Jackson: Wow, so that personal history is baked right into the DNA of the novel. That adds a whole other layer of weight to it. Olivia: It absolutely does. The book is this wild, genre-bending ride that's been called everything from magical realism to speculative fiction. It’s critically acclaimed, but also polarizing for some readers because it’s so ambitious. Jackson: I can already tell. A war over an orange sounds pretty ambitious. Olivia: And today we'll dive deep into this from three perspectives. First, we'll explore how Los Angeles itself becomes a surreal, living character. Then, we'll discuss the incredible mosaic of human stories fighting for survival and identity within that chaos. And finally, we'll focus on how the book uses magical realism as a powerful tool for social critique, culminating in an apocalyptic symphony.

Jackson: Alright, let's start there. How does a city, a physical place of concrete and steel, become a character? Where do we even begin with that? Olivia: We begin on the freeway. Yamashita introduces us to a character named Manzanar Murakami. He’s a homeless man, a former surgeon, who stands on a freeway overpass every day. But he’s not just standing there. He’s conducting. Jackson: Conducting? Like, with a baton and everything? Olivia: With a baton and everything. He sees the endless flow of cars on the Harbor Freeway not as noise, but as music. The cars are his strings and oboes, the traffic is his symphony. He believes the freeway is, and I quote, "the greatest orchestra on Earth." Jackson: That is such a powerful image. Instead of being a victim of the city's noise, he’s its maestro. He’s finding order in the absolute peak of L.A. chaos. Olivia: Precisely. He’s transforming it. But the city isn’t just a symphony; it's also a place with a memory, often a violent one. The book’s introduction, written by Sesshu Foster, points out these deep, erased histories. Jackson: What do you mean by erased histories? Olivia: He gives these stark examples. The vibrant Chicano neighborhood of Chavez Ravine was completely bulldozed to build Dodger Stadium. The original Chinatown was razed in the 1930s to make way for Union Station. Entire Mexican American neighborhoods were paved over for the freeway system. Jackson: Whoa. So the city's progress is literally built on top of buried communities. It's like the city has a dark subconscious, and the freeways Manzanar is conducting are built on its ghosts. Olivia: That’s a perfect way to put it. The city has ghosts, and Yamashita is the one who can see them. The book argues that you can't understand L.A. without understanding the violence and displacement that it tries to hide beneath its shiny surface. It’s a city of profound contradictions. Jackson: And that’s where the "illusion" part you mentioned in the intro comes in. The postcard image of L.A. versus the hard, buried reality. Olivia: Exactly. It’s a city named after angels, in a state named after a mythical paradise, that got famous filming fantasies. But its reality is one of constant struggle, and that’s where the real story is.

Jackson: That makes sense. And a city with that much history and contradiction must be filled with incredible people. You said the book is a mosaic of human stories. Olivia: It is. The city’s ghosts are matched by its incredibly alive and resilient population. And Yamashita gives us this stunning cast of characters who are all trying to survive and find their place in the chaos. Let's start with Buzzworm. Jackson: Buzzworm. Great name. Olivia: He's this seven-foot-tall Vietnam vet with dreadlocks who walks his South Central neighborhood every day. He’s described as a "walking social services." He carries cards with numbers for rehab clinics, legal aid, shelters. He's a street philosopher, a community anchor, and Gabriel's—the main journalist character's—source for the "real stories" of the city. Jackson: So he's like an unofficial mayor of his neighborhood, the one who actually knows what's going on, block by block. Olivia: He is. He carries the stories of his community. There's this amazing part where he tells the story of a man's watch, and how the ghost of the man's father came back from the dead to reclaim it from a pawn shop. For Buzzworm, every object and every person has a deep, often mystical, history. He represents that deep-rooted, local wisdom. Jackson: I love that. He’s the opposite of the erased histories. He’s a living archive. Olivia: He is. And on the complete other end of the spectrum, you have a character like Bobby Ngu. He embodies the city's transnational, fluid identity. The book describes him perfectly. He’s, quote, "Chinese from Singapore with a Vietnam name speaking like a Mexican living in Koreatown." Jackson: Wow. That’s the L.A. experience in a sentence. Everyone is from somewhere else, a blend of a dozen cultures. It’s not a melting pot; it’s a mosaic, and the pieces don't always fit smoothly. Olivia: And his story is heartbreaking. He came to America as a child refugee, leaving his family behind, and now he works relentlessly—two jobs, no sleep—to support them and build a life. He represents that immense pressure and sacrifice of the immigrant dream. Jackson: You know, some critics, like Kirkus Reviews, have said the book can feel "cluttered" or "chaotic" with so many characters and plotlines. But hearing you describe it, it sounds like that's the whole point. Olivia: I think it is. The city is cluttered. Life is chaotic. Yamashita isn't trying to give us a neat, tidy narrative. She’s mirroring the overwhelming, multi-layered reality of a global metropolis. The "clutter" is the story.

Jackson: Okay, so we have a chaotic city and a mosaic of characters. But then things get... weird. Really weird. Let's talk about the magic. Olivia: Yes, let's. Because this is where the book's genius really shines. Yamashita uses magical realism, but not for escapism or fantasy. She uses it as a razor-sharp tool for social critique. Jackson: Give me an example. Because I'm still stuck on the orange starting a war. Olivia: It all starts with that orange. In Mexico, on the Tropic of Cancer, a single, out-of-season orange grows on a tree. But there's a mysterious, invisible line, a "thread," attached to it. One day, the orange falls from the tree, rolls under a fence, and begins a journey north. Jackson: Just a regular orange? Olivia: A very special orange. Because at the same time, the Tropic of Cancer itself—the actual geographical line on the globe—is physically moving north, creeping towards Los Angeles. Jackson: Hold on. You mean the actual line on the globe is migrating? Like, on a map, it's just... moving? Olivia: Exactly. It's this brilliant, surreal metaphor. The line that separates the tropics from the temperate zones, the global South from the global North, is dissolving. The border is literally blurring. And this orange, this piece of the South, is heading right for the heart of the North. It eventually gets into the L.A. food supply and is suspected of being "spiked," causing a massive city-wide panic, a media frenzy, and a public health crisis. Jackson: So the orange becomes this symbol of foreignness, this invading object that throws the entire system into chaos. That's incredible. Olivia: It is. And the magical realism gets even bolder. We meet a character named Arcangel. He's this timeless, ancient performance artist who has, according to the story, actual wings growing from his back. Jackson: Real wings. Okay. Olivia: He travels north with the migrating Tropic of Cancer and the multitude of people following it. When he gets to L.A., he becomes a professional wrestler. His stage name is "El Gran Mojado." Jackson: "The Great Wetback." That is... provocative. Olivia: Extremely. And his opponent in the ring? A symbolic villain, a giant in silver, named "SUPERNAFTA." Jackson: He wrestles a trade agreement. He's literally fighting NAFTA in a wrestling ring. Olivia: Yes! It's this spectacular, absurd, and deeply political performance. It turns this abstract economic policy that affects millions of lives into a tangible villain that can be fought. It’s satire at its most creative and powerful. Yamashita takes these huge, overwhelming forces—globalization, border politics, media hysteria—and uses these magical, surreal events to make us see them in a completely new and visceral way. Jackson: It’s like the absurdity of the magic is the only way to truly capture the absurdity of the real world. A wrestling match against NAFTA feels just as surreal as the actual effects of these trade policies on people's lives. Olivia: That's the core of it. The book is an apocalyptic symphony, and these magical notes are what make the critique so resonant.

Jackson: So after all this chaos—the moving tropics, the wrestling matches, the freeway symphonies—what's the big takeaway? Is it just a portrait of a city falling apart? Olivia: It's more than that. I think Yamashita is showing us that in our globalized, chaotic world, the lines we draw—between countries, between cultures, between "legal" and "illegal"—are ultimately illusions. And in a world that constantly tries to erase people and their histories, the most powerful act of resistance is to tell our own stories, to create our own music from the noise. Jackson: The book is a "symphony of chaos," but it's also a call to listen. To listen to the voices that are usually drowned out by the traffic. Olivia: Exactly. It’s a reminder that even in a city that seems to be on the brink of apocalypse, there is incredible resilience, connection, and humanity to be found. You just have to know how to look, and how to listen. Jackson: It really makes you look at your own city differently. What are the "erased histories" where you live? What are the invisible lines that define people's lives? Olivia: That's a perfect question. And it’s one we’d love for our listeners to think about. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Find us on our social channels and share a story about your city that most people don't know. Jackson: This is Aibrary, signing off.