Deborah A. Miranda’s classic memoir Bad Indians is the California Book Club’s November 2023 selection. Hosted by Alta Journal, the California Book Club celebrates the Golden State’s vibrant literary landscape, with book club selections culminating in a livestream conversation between the author, Alta Journal, and an online audience of book lovers.

With Bad Indians Miranda forges a vivid and urgent memoir of abuse and love. Her personal history is inseparable, as she presents it in Bad Indians, from fragments of the haunting tribal history of her Ohlone–Costanoan Esselen family and the story of her parents’ tumultuous mixed union. The resulting book is an unforgettable pastiche of personal reflection, oral histories, poems, photographs, diagrams, class lessons, thought experiments, and stark news clippings, including the titular headline about a purportedly “bad” Indian who responded to cruelty by going on a rampage. Tracing a line of structural violence, Miranda frames her critique of painful missionary mythology with the now mostly defunct mission project that Californians for decades constructed in fourth grade in public schools.

On Thursday, November 16 at 5 pm PST Miranda joins editor John Freeman for a free hour-long conversation with Miranda, which will include a reading by her and questions from the audience. Produced by Alta Journal for streaming on Zoom.