785 Literature in an Age of Anti-Immigration Sentiment (with Daniel Olivas) | My Last Book with Janet Todd

Summary

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The History of Literature — Episode 785

"Literature in an Age of Anti-Immigration Sentiment" (with Daniel Olivas) | "My Last Book" with Janet Todd

Host: Jacke Wilson
Guests: Daniel Olivas, Janet Todd
Date: March 19, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode examines literature’s response to anti-immigration sentiment, featuring an in-depth conversation with Daniel A. Olivas—attorney, writer, and advocate—whose creative works confront issues of discrimination, identity, and belonging. Olivas shares his personal journey, reflections on balancing law and literature, and the origins and impact of works like Chicano Frankenstein and Waiting for Godínez. The episode closes with a touching cameo from Jane Austen biographer Janet Todd, who answers the “last book” question with characteristic warmth and wisdom.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Introducing Daniel Olivas: Legal Career and Literary Calling

[11:29–17:16]

• Dual Professional Life: Olivas discusses his 40-year legal career, currently as Senior Assistant Attorney General for Land Use and Conservation in California, supervising 50 attorneys and representing state agencies.
• Balancing Law and Writing: He credits his literary productivity to time saved by not watching sports or golfing and highlights the creative drive that finds its own time.
• On Making Time for Creativity:
  • "People who are artistic, there's a drive to do this and you'll find time no matter what." – Daniel Olivas [13:20]
  • He shares an anecdote about Isabel Allende and the idea that writing, like surgery or violin, is a discipline, not a hobby.
• The Nature of Writing: Olivas emphasizes that writing requires both periods of intense output and long gestation, and that his legal job "takes some pressure off of the writing that it doesn't have to provide" [16:08].

Becoming a Writer: Family, Grief, and Permission

[17:40–22:21]

• Family Influence: His father, a factory worker and aspiring writer, faced rejection and ultimately burned his unpublished novel.
  • "I know you wrote a novel. Can I read your novel sometime? He said, ‘No, I burned it.’" – Daniel Olivas [18:42]
• Catalyst for Creativity: Personal tragedy (miscarriages with his wife) led Olivas to write his first novella as a means of coping with grief, opening the floodgates to his literary career.
• Living the Dual Identity: Even as his books became widely taught and recognized, Olivas often hesitates to put “writer” on forms—sometimes opting for “attorney/writer.”

Literature and Immigration: Fighting Back Through Stories

[22:21–33:09]

• Early Activism: As a law student, Olivas protested factory raids and wrote legal scholarship arguing for Fourth Amendment protections, only to see the Supreme Court deny them.
• Writing as Resistance:
  • "Howling into the wind... When you write about injustice, you sometimes wonder, is anyone listening? Are you changing hearts and minds?" – Daniel Olivas [25:56]
• Purpose of Representation: Literature’s power, he says, is not just to change minds, but to let people know “they’re not alone” and that “their stories are important.”
• On Humiliation and Hope: Olivas recalls personal and systemic racism—being profiled by ICE, called derogatory names—and the ongoing need for his voice in both law and literature.

Audience, Preaching, and Change: Who Reads, and Why?

[33:09–36:20]

• Navigating the Echo Chamber: Olivas resists worrying about only reaching the “choir,” relying on engaging storytelling, humor, and multidimensional characters to broaden his work’s impact.
  • "I’m of the school that, you know, a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down." – Daniel Olivas [33:28]
• TV Optioning as Opportunity: He hints at his novel being optioned for television, potentially bringing its message to a wider, even resistant, audience.

On Chicano Frankenstein: Dystopia and the Immigrant Metaphor

[40:06–46:40]

• Origin: Inspired by anti-immigrant rhetoric during the 2022 midterms, Olivas sought to “go big” with a metaphor rooted in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
  • "Our country needs immigrants... but is repulsed by what it's created and rejects the creature—just like Victor Frankenstein." – Daniel Olivas [40:55]
• Plot Premise: In a near-future Pasadena, millions of “reanimated” people work in society, stripped of their identities. The protagonist, a brown-skinned man with visible differences, seeks to reclaim culture and connection.
• Political Parallels: The right-wing president’s slogan—"Make America Safe Again" (MASA)—layered with cultural irony.
• Metaphor & Reality: Drawing clear lines from dystopian fiction to contemporary reality, paralleling policies like FDR’s Japanese-American internment via executive orders.

On Waiting for Godínez: Absurdity as Protest

[46:57–54:10]

• Beckett’s Absurdity Recast: Olivas adapts Waiting for Godot, replacing nightly beatings with ICE detentions—cruel, absurd policies mirrored by the theater of the absurd.
  • "The type of cruel immigration enforcement tactics... was so cruel as to be absurd... It sounded like a Beckett play." – Daniel Olivas [47:00]
• Resonance & Emotion: Audience and actors, especially those from immigrant backgrounds, often respond to its mix of sorrow and humor with cathartic tears and laughter.

The American Dream, Belonging, and Everyday Exclusion

[55:44–60:47]

• A Family’s Progress: Olivas embraces the American Dream, with successive generations building on immigrant labor, education, and service.
• The Flip Side: Despite achievement, he is frequently “othered,” profiling and suspicion shadowing even his professional success.
  • "No matter how educated I am or how hard I work, I will always, to some, not belong." – Daniel Olivas [56:02]
• Language and Name: Humorous but telling moments—being complimented on speaking English, being questioned about his own son.

The Power of Books and Generational Legacy

[61:18–67:57]

• Literary Heirlooms: Olivas’ father cherished books such as Of Human Bondage, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Don Quixote; a treasured edition of Voltaire handed down as a gesture of acceptance.
• Memory and Presence: He movingly describes how his father's last-reading bookmark reminds him, "he's still present.”
  • "When someone passes, you say their name and say ‘presente,’ which means present." – Daniel Olivas [66:35]
• On Dedications: The last books Olivas published, he dedicated to his father, his earliest and biggest fan.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the drive to create:
  "You'll find time no matter what." – Daniel Olivas [13:20]
• On his family’s sacrifices and loss:
  "I said, you know, I know you wrote a novel. Can I read your novel sometime? He said, 'No, I burned it.'" [18:42]
• On rejection:
  "Why do you keep your rejections? Because they make me so mad, because they make me want to keep on writing and submitting." [18:54]
• On writing about injustice:
  "Howling into the wind... Are you changing hearts and minds?" [25:56]
• On humor:
  "A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down." [33:28]
• On the seductive myth of meritocracy:
  "No matter how educated I am or how hard I work, I will always, to some, not belong." [56:02]
• On presences:
  "When someone passes, you say their name and say presente, which means present." [66:35]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Intro & Context – [01:09–11:28]
• Meet Daniel Olivas – [11:29–17:16]
• Family, Loss, and Becoming a Writer – [17:40–22:21]
• Law, Activism, and Immigration – [22:21–33:09]
• Writing for Change vs. Preaching to the Choir – [33:09–36:20]
• Chicano Frankenstein – [40:06–46:40]
• Waiting for Godínez & Absurdity – [46:57–54:10]
• American Dream & Personal Stories of Exclusion – [55:44–60:47]
• Inheritance, Legacy, and the Power of Literature – [61:18–67:57]

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"My Last Book" with Janet Todd

[69:34–77:08]

• On Choosing a Last Book:
  • Janet Todd reflects that, at life’s end, she'd choose poetry (“succinct and quick and beautiful”), or Jane Austen—particularly Emma—for its sense of acceptance and contentment.
• Austen’s Worldview:
  • "You don’t have regrets, you don’t have desires. We just have a kind of acceptance." – Jacke Wilson [71:32]
  • "The ordinary is made special. It's magical." – Janet Todd [71:51]
• On Contentment & Comfort:
  • Austen prized contentment and comfort over romanticized happiness. Todd suggests simple pleasures—“a warm fire, a pleasant view, a little wine and some buttered toast”—as key to Austen’s vision of joy. [72:32]
• On Austen's Own Last Book:
  • Todd posits Austen would likely pick William Cowper’s poetry, especially The Task, as her own last companion.

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Episode Tone & Style

Jacke Wilson maintains his warm, curious, gently humorous style, drawing out deeply personal stories from Olivas and ending with poignant wisdom from Janet Todd. The language is conversational, empathetic, and literate throughout.

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For Further Listening

• Daniel Olivas’ Chicano Frankenstein, Waiting for Godínez, and How to Date a Flying Mexican are widely available.
• Janet Todd’s many biographies and scholarly works on Jane Austen offer deeper dives into Austen’s world.

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A stirring episode that blends literary history, family legacy, and the ongoing fight for dignity and representation in American life.

Transcript

[Jack Wilson]

The History of Literature podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio.

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[Daniel Olivas]

That's a great attitude.

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[Daniel Olivas]

You sound insane.

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[Daniel Olivas]

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[Jack Wilson]

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[Daniel Olivas]

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[Commercial Announcer 1]

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[Jack Wilson]

Hello. Daniel Olivas has been fighting racial discrimination and anti immigration sentiment since he was a law school student in the 1980s. In addition to his work as an attorney, he has a second vocation, literature. He'll tell us about his career in the creative arts and his work adapting authors like Mary Shelley and Samuel Beckett today on the history of literature. Okay, here we go. Welcome to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. I've been saving this article for months. It's one of those coincidences that still make me shake my head. Denver museum Known for dinosaur displays finds fossil under its parking lot. That's the headline in the newspaper. The Guardian. A museum. A dinosaur museum found a fossil under its parking lot. Maybe somebody dropped it. Is that your first thought? Oh, some guy, some museum, some paleontologist probably, or some worker probably crammed a few bones in his pocket, he went out for lunch, accidentally tossed it out when he pulled a napkin out of his pocket or something. And some there was an ancient fossil in the grass and they had just been parking cars on the grass back in the old days, and then they paved it over and now they found the fossil. It could not just be a coincidence, could it? That the museum was built over a treasure trove of fossils? Well, let's hear subhead. A hole drilled 750 deep. 700, sorry. 750ft deep. To study museums geothermal potential yielded an unexpected surprise. Okay, wow. 750ft. That kind of Takes away my guy on his lunch break. Theory. Let's read the article. It says a Denver museum known for its dinosaur displays has made a fossil bone discovery closer to home than anyone ever expected under its own parking lot. It came from a hole drilled more than 750ft deep to study geothermal heating potential for the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. With a bore only a couple of inches wide, museum officials struggled to describe just how unlikely it was to hit a dinosaur. Even in a region with a fair number of such fossils, finding a dinosaur bone in a core is like hitting a hole in one from the moon. It's like winning the Willy Wonka Factory. It's incredible. It's super rare, said James Hagedorn, the museum's curator of geology. Okay, end quote. Wow. James Hagedorn comes in with a nice literary reference like winning the Willy Wonka Factory. There's a hat tip to Roald Dahl, and James Hagendorn seems to know his stuff. It could have said, like winning a golden ticket to the Willy Wonka Factory, but that would not be rare enough. It'd be more, it's like winning the whole factory itself. But that quote, when I look at that quote, I've read this a bunch of times, that quote seems a little bit odd to me. It starts out, it's like hitting a hole in one from the moon. Okay, we get it. What an incredible thing. That must be super rare. Then he follows it up with, it's like winning the Willy Wonka Factory. Okay, we get the point. It's incredible. It's super rare. And then he says, it's incred. It's super rare. James Hagedorn, we take the point. We take the point the first time. We don't need four instances, but whatever. He's excited. Okay, back to the article. Quote, only two similar finds have been noted in borehole samples anywhere in the world, not to mention on the grounds of a dinosaur museum. According to museum officials, a vertebra of a smallish plant eating dinosaur is believed to be the source. It lived in the late Cretaceous period, around 67.5 million years ago. An asteroid impact brought the long era of dinosaurs to an end around 66 million years ago. According to scientists, fossilized vegetation also was found in the borehole near the bone. This animal was living in what was probably a swampy environment that would have been heavily vegetated at the time, said Patrick o', Connor, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the museum. Vertebrate Paleontology. Oh, to be a vertebrate paleontologist. That's a road not taken for yours truly. Okay, they're excited and rightfully so. Let's hear from some other museum curators who were not as lucky as James Hagedorn and Patrick o' Connor in Denver. Will they be similarly excited? Probably so. They'd certainly be jealous, wouldn't they? Lucky you, Hagedorn and o'. Connor. You just hit a hole in one from the moon and then won the Willy Wonka factory, you lucky devils. That's the quote we're expecting, right? Well, let's hear. Keep going with the article. Other experts in the field vouched for the fine's legitimacy, but with mixed reactions. It's a surprise, I guess scientifically it's not that exciting, said Thomas Williamson, curator of paleontology at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in Albuquerque. End quote. It's a surprise, I guess. It's a surprise, I guess. Is that what you would say if someone hit a hole in the Hole in one from the moon? Decent shot. I suppose scientifically it's not very exciting. You didn't do it in a tournament, you moon golfer. Let's hear from somebody else. Back to the article. The find is absolutely legit and very cool. Aaron Lecount, director of education programs at the Dinosaur Ridge track site just west of Denver, said by email. The fossil's shape suggests it was a duck billed dinosaur or Thessalosaurus, a smaller but somewhat similar species. Lecount noted. Now Aaron Lecount is on board. Aaron Lecount is not showing the kind of. The kind of perhaps jealousy that Thomas Williams was. It's a surprise I guess. Aaron LaCount is being Aaron LeCount. Nice to be enthusiastic for others. Very cool, she says in all caps with an exclamation mark. And she says it's a nice duck billed dinosaur or a Thessalosaurus. Well, what do you say to that, Thomas Williamson? There was no way to tell exactly what species of dinosaur it was, Williamson noted. End quote. Okay, she says it's one of two things. It could be a nice duck billed dinosaur, a Thessalosaurus. Either way. Very cool, Williamson. Thank you, Mr. Wet Blanket. Thomas Williamson, he's the guy. Let's say space aliens have just approached us. Their ship is hovering above a ranch in South Dakota. They're playing Beethoven music and they're flashing their lights. Creatures have emerged. What do you think, Thomas Williamson? Eh, no way to know what galaxy they're from. But we know better. We know that James Hagedorn of Denver is now poised to make some history. Their museum has been blessed. It is located above a fossil site. Let the excavations begin. Glory shall belong to Denver's James Hagedorn, winner of the Willy Wonka Factory Moon golfer who eyed the planet Earth and swung with all his might. Back to the article. The borehole fossil is now on display in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, of course, but there are no plans to look for more under the parking lot. What? I would love to dig a 763ft hole in the. Let me say that again. I would love to dig a 763foot hole in the parking lot to excavate that dinosaur, the rest of it, but I don't think that's going to fly because we really need parking, hagedorn said. Oh. End quote. Oh, boy. Okay then. Okay. Sometimes that golden ticket doesn't earn you a candy factory. Sometimes it wins you a single piece of chocolate and you decide that's good enough because you need the parking. Oh, boy. Daniel Olive oh, here we go. Daniel Olivas is a fan of the podcast. He reached out a while ago, we got to talking and I started reading some of his essays and I thought, this is someone with a fascinating relationship with literature and a lot of things to say. Let's have him on the show. Because here at the History of Literature podcast, we don't stop with the hockey puck shaped fossil. We excavate our parking lots. We go for more, even if we do need the parking. We'll also have a my last book with Jane Austen biographer Janet Todd. But first, Daniel Olivas.

[Daniel Olivas]

Okay.

[Jack Wilson]

Joining me now is Daniel A. Olivas, who is an attorney, playwright, novelist, short story writer, poet, and book critic. He's the editor of two anthologies and the author of 12 books, including Chicano Frank Frankenstein, a Novel, and Waiting for Godinez, a Tragicomedy in Two Acts. Daniel Olivas, welcome to the History of Literature.

[Daniel Olivas]

Thank you for having me. I'm delighted to be here.

[Jack Wilson]

So you've been a lawyer for more than 40 years. What kind of law do you practice?

[Daniel Olivas]

Yeah, I'm an old man, so. Can't believe 40 years. I am currently the Senior Assistant Attorney General for Land Use and Conservation within the California Attorney General's Office. So our section specializes in land use, environmental enforcement, and also affordable housing. I supervise a team of 50 attorneys and paralegals, and we represent about two dozen state agencies, some of the biggest ones in California, like the California Costa Commission, State lands Commission, all 10 of the state conservancies and conservancies are agencies that hold open space for the enjoyment of the public in California. I don't know if you've been in California very much, but California has some amazing open spaces, that land that's protected for people to enjoy and hike. And the beaches, of course, are open to everybody.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. Well, that is a very serious career, a very substantial and impressive position that you hold. How have you balanced your career in law with your passion for literature?

[Daniel Olivas]

I don't golf.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Okay. That frees up a little time.

[Daniel Olivas]

And I know I'm going to get some hate mail about this. I don't really watch sports and TV anymore. So the three hours when I could be watching a football game, I'm writing a short story or poetry or doing an author interview or working on a novel. So I also, I think people who create, people who are painters or writers or dancers, people who are artistic, there's a drive to do this and you'll find time no matter what. There's a perhaps apocryphal story. Isabel Yande was signing books and someone came up to her and said, you know, when I retire, I want to write novels, too. And she said, oh, what do you do? He said, I'm an oral surgeon. And she said, when I retire, I want to become an oral surgeon.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. I've heard a similar story of Tolstoy saying something about being a professional violinist and saying, nobody would go up to a professional violinist and say, oh, yeah, I'm planning to do that this weekend. Or, you know, I'm thinking about, I've always liked the violin, so I'm thinking about doing what you do. I mean, do you. Do you write early mornings or evenings, or is it just these three hour blocks of time that formerly were devoted to football games?

[Daniel Olivas]

Well, it depends. For example, when I am inspired to write, say, my play Waiting for Bodinas, essentially what I did was I did a lot of prep work. I reread the original Waiting for Godot, and then I watched many versions of Waiting for Godot. And it was about six months worth of thinking and cogitating on what I wanted to do when I was ready to write it. I wrote every morning before breakfast. I wrote at night after work, and I wrote on weekends, and I wrote it in 13 days. And that's one thing about writing. Writing is just not the typing. Writing is all the months and even years of thinking about certain concepts or certain type of issues you want to deal with. So it kind of depends on the piece. I just finished writing another novel that is sitting with an. With a publisher. I'm waiting to hear about it. But that one. I took my time. I wrote it. You know, I spent about a year with the idea and just slowly chipped away at my plot and just kind of created things slowly. No rush. And that's one of the beauties of having what I would jokingly call my day job, my income, my health insurance, all that is.

[Jack Wilson]

It takes some pressure off of the writing that it doesn't have to provide that.

[Daniel Olivas]

Right. Unlike Dickens, who had to.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Write by the word and write by

[Daniel Olivas]

the word, and when he was desperate for money, he had to do something crazy like write a, you know, Christmas carol or something.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, yeah. Work on one book in the morning, another one in the afternoon.

[Daniel Olivas]

Exactly that way. So I. And I never wanted writing to be. To become a job. I wanted always to maintain in my heart and soul that it was a. Something I did out of enjoyment, something that helped me recreate as a person and something where I was able to just have complete freedom to write about whatever I wanted to write about, whatever was important to me. So I'm very, very blessed in that way. And frankly, most writers have jobs. Most writers, they teach creative writing. Yeah, they teach. Or they're lawyers. I know several lawyers. There are doctors, there are baristas. There's all kinds of folks who write, but who make a living doing something else. That's probably the more common way to be a writer. Very few Stephen Kings out there.

[Janet Todd]

Mm.

[Jack Wilson]

Well, I'm glad that you have allowed yourself to do it. I had a. I saw a quote the other day. I just pulled up to make sure I got it right. Is from Mary Oliver. And she said, the most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.

[Daniel Olivas]

Yes, yes, I. I agree. And. And that's why I think I. Well, I became a writer, but I hesitated in becoming a writer. And let me explain why. My father and mother, you know, they both had. At the time, they had high school educations, and they got married and started a family. And this was in the 1950s. My father had wanted to be a writer, and so he actually wrote. He wrote a novel, and he wrote poetry during the day, and at night he worked in a factory in Watts in Los Angeles. And I actually. I inherited his. His old Quiet, Royal Quiet Deluxe typewriter, which is the kind of typewriter that Hemingway used. And my dad got rejected. He never got published. And when I became a Writer. After being a lawyer for a while, he was looking at my study and he found a big book of re, and they were all my rejections and next to it was a book of my acceptances. And he said, why do you keep your rejections? And I said, because they make me so mad, because they make me want to keep on writing and submitting. And I said, you know, I know you wrote a novel. Can, can I read your novel sometime? He said, no, I burned it.

[Janet Todd]

And

[Daniel Olivas]

I said, why? He said, well, you know, people didn't want to publish me, so I figured I'd focus on raising my family and then getting educated, which he did. And so I think about that heartbreak. Jump forward to me being at Stanford. I'm majoring in English literature and I took no creative writing classes in college. I only took literature. And the thing that was in the back of my mind was what my father went through. And so when I eventually decided to go to law school, became a lawyer, I hesitated even thinking about doing anything creative. Even though I had been creative in grammar school and high school and even in college, I was writing, you know, bits and pieces for, you know, student publications and. But at age of 39, my wife and I, we had a son and. But then my wife suffered the fifth of what would eventually be seven miscarriages. And I was helping my wife and son with their grief, but I was not dealing with my grief very well at all. And I started to write and I ended up writing my very first book, which is now out of print. It's a novella called the Courtship of Maria Rivera Pena. And it was a simple story about Mexican immigrants coming to Los Angeles and starting a family and living a life. And it was filled with the joys of, of love, but also the, the heartbreak when people pass or other things happen. And it was a very cathartic thing. And it got published by a small press in Pennsylvania. And once I wrote that, the floodgates opened and I was, I just had the permission to, to start writing. So I started writing short stories. They were being published in literary journals. I taught myself, you know, the professional side of writing. What does a submission look like? And back then we used to do paper submissions with self addressed envelopes and started writing poetry. Then I started writing pieces for the LA Times. I wrote some kid stories. You know, they used to publish actual professional kids stories in the LA Times back in the day in the kids section. And here I am now, I actually have 13. I've written 13 books and edited two anthologies and my books are taught in colleges across the country. They're taught in Canada. I was. I was startled to learn in British Columbia. And people are talking about and writing about my works of literature. And so I guess I became a writer.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Daniel Olivas]

Even though. Even though I'm a lawyer by day and identify as an attorney, when I fill out forms, typically I usually don't write. I usually don't write. Sometimes I do attorney slash writer. I've done that a couple of times. I remember I had a medical appointment, and when the doctor saw that, he said, what do you write? And he turned around and just started Googling me. He said, oh, you're famous. I said, I'm not famous. You have a bunch of books. So you order one of my books. And then he turned around, he said, okay, let's talk about your prostates.

[Jack Wilson]

He's going to examine you in a couple of different ways. Okay, so let's talk about your writing and one topic in particular that you've often written about. And I read a lithub essay that you wrote where you talked about 41 years of writing about the abuses of the immigration system. And I wanted to start with where you started, which was an experience you had in the 1980s when you learned of the factory raids from news reports and legal decisions. And so we've heard from your timeline now that this would have been years before you viewed yourself as a fiction writer or allowed yourself to write fiction. So at that time, what did you do after you learned about those factory raids?

[Daniel Olivas]

Well, at that time, I was in my third year of law school at dcla, and I had already been very active in law school as I was the. In my second year, I was the co chair of the La Raza Law Student Association. And then in my third year, I was editor in chief of the Chicano Law Review at ucla. And what I found most disturbing about what was then called factory surveys, it's a very kind of genteel term, but they're basically raids. Back then, ICE was called ins, and INS would surround factories and block exits and then just kind of question the workforce and then arrest people and deport people. I just found it incredibly hypocritical of our country, even back then. You know, our country needed immigrants basically to keep some major industries afloat. I mean, if you removed every undocumented immigrant from the United States, it's estimated that about five industries would collapse. Agriculture, hotel, restaurant. I mean, manufacturing, on and on and on. In fact, in California, with all the rates that have been going on in California, the ICE raids. A lot of these Republican farmers have been complaining, saying, we can't find people to work the fields. Citizens don't want to do this hard work. And so I wrote a piece for the Chicano Law Review arguing that the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure should apply to factory raids. And in fact, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal hadn't ruled exactly that. However, at press time, when my piece was all nicely written, at press time, I had to add a footnote that the US Supreme Court had reversed and wrote an opinion that said that a seizure did not really occur, because even though there were badges and guns and. And all that used by ins, the employees knew they could leave if they wanted to. I mean, we're talking basically a fantasy. I mean, what would you do if. If you were facing someone and we're watching. We're watching what's going on right now with the ICE raids. We've seen people killed. So what would you do if you worked in a factory and whether or not you were documented and there's someone in a uniform with a gun and a badge, are you going to feel free to leave? I don't think so. So I wrote that, it got published and jumped forward to me as a creative writer, and I've been writing. I've been censoring people who look like me and my family for the last 27 years or so of writing. But it's. In more recent years, I really have been focusing on the issue of immigration. And out of that anger on my part, I guess, watching us go backwards with Trump's first term and now his second term, I ended up writing a play, Waiting for Boudinas, and then Chicano Frankenstein, and as well as other pieces, short stories and poetry. So the howling into the wind. Is that that phrase I use in that. In that piece I wrote for Literary Hub. When you write about injustice, you sometimes wonder, is anyone listening? Are you changing hearts and minds? One of the reasons why I wanted to write a novel than a play, you know, going big on these issues is I felt like the issue was so big and we needed to have more literature like this. And I have to say, in watching my play performed and working with actors, some of whom are undocumented, and also watching audience reactions, you know, whether or not I'm changing people's minds, maybe I'm preaching to the choir, but there's another element to literature as well, and that's letting people know they're not alone.

[Jack Wilson]

Mm.

[Daniel Olivas]

When I work with college kids who are studying my literature and they tell me I've never read a book where I recognize the characters, right? You know, they look like my grandma and my cousin and they talk like my family. And that tells them that they're not alone. It also tells them that their stories are important, and that could be a very, very powerful weapon. Weapon not in, not in a vicious or cruel way, but a weapon to help survive and to help define yourself in what you do and not allow yourself to be pigeonholed or denigrated. Now, I've gone through life. I'm. Now I'll be 67 this spring, you know, and I have plenty of stories to tell. You know, I remember a high school coach calling me a stupid Mexican in front of all my, my, you know, teammates. I, I've been, I've been stopped and questioned by ICE as an adult, as a lawyer, and I've had people question my, My right to be at Stanford. Why? How did you get in? Oh, gee, you got a pass or something? Not knowing a student in high school. Not knowing, right, that I worked hard and not even caring that a place like Stanford's not, is. Is not going to waste an opening on someone who's, who's going to not succeed. I mean, it's so I have a lifetime of that. And so how does one counteract that? Or how does one, as a writer, help others counteract that? So through my writing, maybe I can help someone with. Give them strength to be able to move forward and understand the beauty of their culture and who they are as a people. And then maybe those people who are not of the culture can read a novel I've written or a short story or a play and say, oh, gee, these characters are just, you know, they love. They want to have families, they want to work. They're kind of like my folks. They're not that. They're not different. They're not a different entity. And that's one of the things about racial epithets and ugly political rhetoric. If you can dehumanize a group of people through language, you make it that much easier for people to get on a bandwagon and just support inhumane treatment. And we've seen it throughout history. You know, many, many examples. My wife's family is. Is Ashkenazi Jewish descent. And, you know, her grandparents fled Russia around 1905. Czar's Russia was quite an anti Semitic, and they used Jews as cannon fodder. They would put them on the front lines of their armies and. And so her grandparents fled. And it takes a belief in one's worth to be able to continue when you face that kind of discrimination. So I don't know if I answered your question.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, no, that's all you covered. A lot of things I was going to ask you about. The biggest one was this issue of howling into the wind and feeling like you could be preaching to the choir based on who's going to pick up a book these days and read and who's going to come to watch one of your plays. And especially because you're somebody who. You had a different set of skills as well, and a different possibility for you might have been to pursue this through your legal career. And some writers maybe would be envious of that and saying, I feel like you could make more difference, you know, if I could file a brief or if I could represent someone, or if I could take a case to the Supreme Court or, you know, something like that, maybe I could really make change. And instead I'm just writing these books that hardly anybody reads, or if they do, they already agree with me and, and that kind of thing. Do you feel like it's a burden on you to try to reach out to people, to change minds, in particular of people who would be hostile to your views, or do you feel you can't think that deeply about the audience? You just have to go with, you know, write the best book you can and let the chips fall where they may in terms of readership and reaction.

[Daniel Olivas]

So let me back up a little bit. Within the work that I do, the environmental enforcement, for example, and affordable housing, some of the work that the section does actually does intersect with the anti immigrant work. And I won't get into the specifics because these are ongoing cases, but we are specifically within some of the cases within my section dealing with the federal administration on immigration, on the environment and some other issues.

[Jack Wilson]

So it was sort of, I was kind of mistaken to say that you kind of chose one path instead of the other. You've sort of been able to keep both of them going down both paths in those careers. But in terms of your writing and your fiction and your audience, I mean, so many people feel like, especially in the last eight years, what's the point? Hardly anybody's reading novels these days. And the ones who do are so segmented. How do I get a novel in the hands of the person who I most want to read it? Or is that not something you can really take yourself into that mind space?

[Daniel Olivas]

Yeah, if I get too deep into that mind space, I think I wouldn't do anything. I would freeze up. I would. And certainly some people may envision the kind of writing that I do. And it's not as if my writing isn't entertaining. I use a lot of humor. You know, it's sort of. I'm of the school that, you know, spoonful of sugar makes medicine go down, you know, to, to quote a song from Mary Poppins, that by using humor and using plots that are entertaining and interesting in creating characters who are three dimensional, that is a way to get folks thinking about these issues. So essentially the way I view writing a book like Chicano Frankenstein is I'm going to. I want to tell a good story. I want my characters to ring true. And if all people get from that is they're entertained, fine. Then on top of that, there are messages within the novel. And if, if those messages get through to some people, that's icy on the cake. If I wanted just to bang the drum on a political point of view, I would be writing op EDS all the time. And I have written op EDS for New York Times, for the LA Times, for other publications, but I don't do a lot of them. I just do a few here and there. I think that. How should I put this without divulging too much? It's already a public record that Universal Television has optioned Chicano Frankenstein. I can't say more beyond that just because there hasn't been a press release or anything yet. So I want, and I don't want to jinx it, so I want to be careful about that. But the copyright of the option agreement is recorded, so it's public. And if people can Google it, and I've acknowledged that, but I will say that I think that if my novel does become a TV series, it will play well with blue states and it could perchance reach the hearts of people in red states because of the characters I've created and because of the way I tried to explain what Othering does, what bigotry does, by cloaking it within my Mary Shelley esque world of reanimated people. So we'll see. I mean, we'll see what happens in the end. I don't think we can be silent to injustices. One of my team members called me crying because her dad was chased by ice and he, he drove away. The ice agent was on foot. And this is a lawyer in my section. You know, no one is immune from, from this. So I. To be silent in the face of, of that, of that type of inhumanity within our country. I just, I just, I don't see myself shutting down and being quiet.

[Jack Wilson]

It would be giving in.

[Daniel Olivas]

It would be giving in. Yeah.

[Jack Wilson]

And we also, we maybe exaggerate this idea a little bit of preaching to the choir where, you know, like I was saying, a lot of people don't read as much anymore. Who knows if that book that, you know, the person picks up or gets as a gift or something, that might be the first novel they've read in a couple of years or maybe they're, maybe they're 17 or 18 and it's kind of the first novel they've read cover to cover. And it's easy at our age to be kind of jaded and to say, well, everybody's read every book and they already have opinions on what they're going to read and they already know everything that they think before they even encounter something. But, you know, for, for most people, that's not the case that, that books can be surprising and shocking and, and jolt them into some kind of new awareness. And so I'm sort of apologizing for the question, but I wanted to hear your take on it. But I have to say I would have rather had the other side and been defending literature instead of the side that it's all howling to the wind. So let's take a quick break and then come back with more from Daniel Olivas.

[Daniel Olivas]

Foreign.

[Jack Wilson]

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[Jack Wilson]

Okay, we're back. So you talked a little bit about Chicano Frankenstein. Let's talk about that some more. And then I want to ask you about Waiting for Godinez as well. But Chicano Frankenstein, I understand that was inspired by the 2022 midterm elections.

[Daniel Olivas]

Yes, and during the mid. Those midterm elections, the anti immigrant rhetoric again grew rather wild and cruel. And so I decided I wanted to go big. And instead of writing a short story or a poem, I wanted to write a novel. And I thought about it. I thought probably a perfect metaphor for what's going on is Mary Shelley's iconic novel Frankenstein, published in 1818. And the reason why it seemed to fit with the situation is our country needs immigrants. And essentially, economically has created this need to hire people who do not have documents in order to have our various industries and farms to grow and to rake in. In the original novel, Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein, the doctor's big sin, if you will, is that he decided to create life. But when he created his creature, which goes unnamed throughout the novel, he is repulsed by what he's created and rejects the creature. And in that rejection, the creature becomes a murderous monster and is at one point in that novel, begs Dr. Frankenstein to build him a mate so that he's not alone. You know, being shunned and being alone and being pushed out of society was. It was just too much for the creature to. To deal with. So I thought that was a perfect metaphor. So in my novel, it takes place in the near future in Pasadena, California, and there are 12 million reanimated people in the United States. Reanimation is accepted as something people can do. They can sign a donor card, but the catch is, when you reanimate it, if you happen to die suddenly, your history is wiped, your skills are kept intact, your fingerprints are removed, and they give you facial surgery and vocal cord surgery so that you're essentially a brand new person and you're put back into the workforce so that your family, you're basically dead to your family. And that's, that's the accepted agreement. My novel follows one particular person called the Man. We never learned what his name is. And he is a brown skinned man who has, however, a one white arm and one white leg stitched onto him. And the epithet used by people who do not like the reanimated is stitcher. So he's a stitcher. The novel is then interspersed with the macro political reality, and that is a right wing president, Mary Beth Cadwalader, who is trying to drum up numbers for the upcoming midterm election so that she's not a complete lame duck and she wants to basically, quote, make America safe again. Close quote. Or masa, if you know about Mexican food. Masa is the cornmeal that's used to make the tamales. And so my novel plays on the micro level where my man, my main character, is beginning to fall in love with a lawyer, Faustina Godinez, who have to share a name with my, with my play. And he begins to feel like he's missing something. He's missing his culture. And there was a clue in his belongings when he was reanimated, left by the reanimation doctor. And basically saying, when you're ready to talk, if you want to talk, I'm here. And that's been one of the things that the right wing president has been fighting against are these reanimation doctors who are upset that people's cultures are being wiped. And so they've been leaving, you know, secret messages to the people they reanimated, telling them, you can learn about who you were if you contact me. So I don't want to give it away, but that's the premise of the novel.

[Jack Wilson]

I heard an interview with Margaret Atwood where she was talking about the Handmaid's Tale and people were saying, you know, what an imagination, this dystopia. And she said, I didn't imagine any of this. I was only using statements of politicians and I was using examples of things that had been implemented in other countries or in certain states and, and saying, this is not science fiction. It's not this wild fantasy. This is the plan if these people take power. Did you feel, I mean, you have the reanimation angle, but as far as the motivations and the conduct of the, the people in power. Did you feel like you were inventing things when you wrote this book? Or did you feel like you were describing things that you could see were trembling in the future, that they were about to come to pass, or that this was in the air?

[Daniel Olivas]

This was in the air. And that's true, I think, with the vast majority of dystopian fiction. Dystopian fiction tends to be based on things that already exist, things that people have already done. So, for example, in my novel, I have one character, vice president, talking about executive orders to begin to chip away the rights. Now, I modeled that after what FDR did with the internment of Japanese during World War II. In fact, I use the same number, executive order number in my novel. So those things already existed. And frankly, I thought Trump wouldn't be re elected. So my novel was a cautionary tale about what could happen. And sure enough, we're seeing someone going off the rails politically, using tactics that have precedence in history in different countries, including our country, that I recount in my novel. So it's not a shock on some level that we're seeing some of this actually happen. It is extremely frightening, particularly as we approach the midterm elections and we hear rumblings about perhaps a state of emergency being called by the government in order to take control of the voting apparatus of various states and, you know, which states they'll go after.

[Jack Wilson]

Let's bring in Waiting for Godinez, because I want to ask you about, get to a question about ICE. In 2025 and 2026, you wrote Waiting for Godinez in 2019. What is that play about? How were you reimagining Samuel Beckett's famous

[Daniel Olivas]

iconic absurdist play in 2019, and certainly before then. But it really came to the fore in my mind and in 2019, that the type of cruel immigration enforcement tactics, in particular family separation policy of the Trump administration was so cruel as to be absurd. The absurdity again, of needing a group of people to do the work that's needed for the country to prosper, yet at the same time going in and snatching them up and deporting them the next day? It sounded to me like a Beckett play. It's so absurd. In the original play, Waiting for Godot, you have two characters who are waiting in this desolate area. There's a lone tree. And one of the characters every night is snatched up and beaten and thrown in a ditch. And. And every night he. He drags himself back to be with his friend as they wait for Godot, who never shows up. So in my play, I took that concept and one of my characters every night is snatched up by ICE and thrown into a cage, but they forget to lock the cage and. And he escapes to come back to be with his friend as they wait for Boudinas and so I used the famous Waiting for Godot format where nothing happens twice. And in order to paint my picture of absurdity and within the context of immigration enforcement and the reaction of audiences in the readings that we've had. And also the full stage production up at Sacramento has been very, very powerful. Sometimes in rehearsals for the readings and also for the production, some of the actors have been in tears because some of the actors have been undocumented or. Or come from families who. Where they have undocumented family members. This cuts very close, but at the same time, there's an acknowledgment that there's humor in this. And, you know, Joni Mitchell, I'm going to mangle the line from one of her songs, but it's basically is laughing and crying. It's all the same release, you know. And there's been some writers who have said that within Mexican American literary circles, humor is used quite a bit in order to deal with some very difficult issues. And in fact, I knew one professor up at UC Davis who told me that there's a thing about Chicano humor. It's almost like a sardonic way of approaching very painful things, but at the end, there's a laugh. And that's the thing that, I guess, helps you survive.

[Jack Wilson]

I think I've told this story on the podcast before, maybe a couple of times, but one of the key memories I have of taking a literature course in college when we were reading Waiting for Godot, and I was blown away by it, and our professor had said, you know, when this was first produced, it. It proved to be extremely popular in prisons, and my jaw just dropped, and I said, I would think that would be the last place they would want to watch this play. And he said, oh, no. You know, they're the ones who get it the most. And it seems like there's a parallel there with what you're talking about, that it's the people who are most affected by this situation who most needs to see a play like that. It does provide a kind of release or a kind of identification that can be maybe a step on the path toward healing.

[Daniel Olivas]

Yes, absolutely. And what's interesting, because I read that same story, because when apparently, when Waiting for Godot was first produced, it was done in French. He wrote in French. He was an expatriate, and he eventually did his translation into English of the play. But when he was first performed, apparently people were yelling at the actors. People got upset. It's like, this doesn't make any sense. It's crazy. But, you know, he wrote it coming out of World War II and the atrocities that he saw. As I understand it, Beckett was part of the French Resistance. And what was learned after liberation about the concentration camps and what was done to people, it made sense that a play that makes no sense would be written coming out of that, because it's very, very difficult to make sense of a world where such atrocities could be perpetrated by large governments and to feel the kind of.

[Jack Wilson]

I'm looking ahead a little bit in our own future here in America, but to feel like not only did it happen and it wasn't stopped, but now we have to somehow go on and we have to somehow live with people knowing that this all happened and that it was a fight and a battle and a sort of feeling that we couldn't even agree on basic facts and that we now have to somehow move forward together. It just feels. Feels like we're headed toward a period of absurdity and a feeling of kind of Beckett, you know, feeling sort of trapped and sort of almost adrift in not knowing exactly what to do.

[Daniel Olivas]

And that's why the myth of Sisyphus is so important to the absurdist and to the extension. Yeah, right, exactly. Camus and I actually make reference to Sisyphus in my play. Um, I. I turned it into a. A little bit of a dirty joke in my play, but I do acknowledge the concept because this is what the characters are going through. But you're right, it. It seems to me that someone like Samuel Beckett, if he did not write, if he could not write, even in the face of absurdity, he would have gone mad. I mean, that's. That's what I think he was dealing with. And there are times when I'm writing and I'm writing in the Fever, where I just have to get this book written or I have to get this play done. There's an urgency. If I don't do it, if I don't get it out of me, and if I don't get it into the hands of other people, I. I just feel like my head's going to explode. And that's probably not a very healthy thing to feel, but it's. It's what I experience. And. And I think it's because I just get so shocked by how people are mistreated. I just. I just don't understand. You know, there's so much beauty in cultures and different cultures. One of the things I love about Los Angeles is that you can walk down the street in downtown la. You could hear German you could hear Japanese, you can hear Spanish, you can hear English. You can go into Grand Central Market and eat virtually any kind of food. You can eat your way around the world, basically, from pupusas to, you know, to Japanese food and everything in between. Bratwurst, everything. Just. It's all kinds of food. Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that wonderful? Isn't it?

[Jack Wilson]

I know.

[Daniel Olivas]

Isn't that better than just having one, you know, steak and potatoes and that's it.

[Jack Wilson]

I know. I'll tell you a story. And this shows how naive I was. I guess it was, was 11 years ago or so now. And when a certain politician we don't have to name, he gets enough oxygen. Was a candidate, a political candidate. And I was walking past, this was back when newspapers were still in boxes on the street. And I was walking past, and I saw a headline and it said, the candidate's name, colon. And then a quote, and it said, a taco truck on every corner. And I thought, he can't promise that. How would he ever get that done? He's not going to have that kind of power if he wins. And then, of course, I realized, you know, after I learned more about him and read the article, that that was to scare people, that that was a thing of fear. And I thought. I thought that sounded. I mean, who's against tacos?

[Daniel Olivas]

It sounded so wonderful.

[Jack Wilson]

That sounded like paradise. I love being able to eat different kinds of food and hearing different kinds of music and. But let's talk about your family. And I read this beautiful essay that you wrote for Stanford Magazine about your father in books. But before we get to him, let's even go back a generation before him. And this concept of the American dream, and how do you define it, and do you view your family fitting into

[Daniel Olivas]

it, and if so, how well, absolutely fitting in with. Within the concept of the American dream. My grandparents came to Los Angeles about 100 years ago with very, very little. My mom's parents worked in the laundry. That's their entire lives in Los Angeles. And my dad's father was a cook. And, you know, their kids did better. And then the grandkids, you know, we all the grandkids, we've all gone to college. Most of us have gone to graduate school. And so certainly that you would call that the. The American Dream. The flip side of that is, no matter how educated I am or how hard I work, I will always, to some, not belong. So being questioned by ICE while on Amtrak train in 2012, heading from LA to San Diego to supervise a Team of lawyers for the Attorney General's office. An ICE agent got on board, walked by several people sitting near me, and then looked at me and said, excuse me, sir, what city were you born in? And I'm wearing a blue blazer. I have a white shirt on. I'm editing a legal brief, and I look at this young man who's probably 21, 22, and I said, excuse me. He said, what city were you born in? I said, I have a badge. My badge is in my briefcase above my head, right there. Would you like to see my badge? He turned six shades of red. He realized he had profiled law enforcement because I'm a lawyer with the California Attorney General's office. And he said, no, thank you, sir. And he walked away. I was livid. I was absolutely livid. I'm mad at myself for not taking a picture of his badge and reporting him. All the other folks around me who appeared to be white, he didn't bother them, didn't ask them a question, but he looked at me. So here I am, someone. I went to Stanford University. I went to UCLA Law school. I supervised attorneys for the California Department of Justice. I filed briefs all the way up to the U.S. supreme Court. And this young punk is asking me, excuse me, sir, what city were you born in? And my people have been in California for 100 years.

[Jack Wilson]

Well, they've been in California for 100 years. And also you said you were on a train from Los Angeles to San Diego. Two cities with Spanish names. You know, if anything should have tipped him off.

[Daniel Olivas]

The ironies of irony. I know it's sort of like, you know, I've had other stories. One time I was at the market, and this is, you know, less pernicious because of the situation. So back when we were writing checks at the markets, I was writing a check, and the nice woman, she looks at my check. I'm talking with her, I'm chatting with her. She looks at my license, and she said, what kind of name is that? I said, oh, it's. It's a Spanish surname. And she said, you speak such wonderful English.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Daniel Olivas]

And I said, I use it a lot in my work. And she said, oh, what? What do you do? I said, I'm a lawyer with the California Department of Justice. She shuts down, just completely shuts down. Or when, for example, my wife is Jewish, and. And she has blonde hair, and she has blue green eyes. And so our son is like a blend of us. So one day, I'm carrying my son. He has blue eyes and mixed Complexion kind of like. Kind of a blend between me and my wife. I'm carrying him and I have a bag, and we're leaving. Going through the department store, I think it was like May Company when May Company still existed. Security guard stops me. I said, sir, is that your child? Ben gets scared. He grabs my neck and says, papa. So the security guard said, that's okay. You can go.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, but still, the fact that you had to hear the question and feel that

[Daniel Olivas]

in a place like that, where we have so many mixed couples. Yeah, it is so common. And I'm not trying to be a Debbie Downer or anything. I mean.

[Jack Wilson]

Right, right.

[Daniel Olivas]

Things that occur and. And it, you know, I maintain a sense of humor. I can laugh about it later. Still aggravates me. But again, it goes back to the writing. Why am I writing? I'm writing these stories. I'm. Hopefully the stories are getting out there to all kinds of people. Maybe people who don't normally, who might be forced to read it, since my books are taught in colleges as well as high school. You know, there's a couple high schools that teach Kono Frankenstein. You know, there may be some kids who normally would not get a book like that.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. And your family. I mean, it's not just the length of time, but your father fought in the Korean War and. And your parents attended community college, and then they became teachers in the Head Start program, and your mother opened a preschool. And, I mean, they been deeply embedded in the community. We talked about your father as a writer. We haven't talked about him as a reader. But you wrote about that beautifully in your essay. What were his favorite books?

[Daniel Olivas]

So one of his favorite books. Well, I actually have two of them, physically, that he gave me, which I read. I think I read these when I was in fifth grade. Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham and also James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. And he also. Another book, the copy I don't have, my mom has it. It's his. His edition of Don Quixote Cervantes, which I read at a very young age as well. And these books, I think, were his touchstones. He was very, very religious, very Catholic. In fact, he had been a seminarian before he left a seminary. And then he went to a regular high school and met. And met my mom and eventually married her. But a book like A Portrait of the Artist as a Young man, which is a very Catholic kind of milieu that is described within that novel. And I went to 12 years at Catholic school. Even though I converted to Judaism later in life, when I read a novel like that, I understand. I understand the culture, I understand the people. I understand the words used. And you.

[Jack Wilson]

You realize how steeped in it Joyce was. You know, that this was. This was his world, was. Was that school and. And the Catholic nature of it.

[Daniel Olivas]

And one of the other books that my father loved, but that I didn't study until college, was Voltaire's Candide. And I actually have a copy of this was printed about 100 years ago. This belonged to my father. And the story behind this copy, the actual title of this, the Complete Romances of Voltaire. Also, the subtitle is the Philosophy of History, the Ignorant Philosopher, Dialogues and Philosophic Criticisms. Eight volumes in one. And this. This edition was published in 1927, so almost exactly 100 years ago.

[Jack Wilson]

Right, Right.

[Daniel Olivas]

This volume had belonged to my grandfather, my mom's father, Daniel Velasco Flores, and his name is in it, and he's dated it on June 16, 1947. And he has the address of where he lived. And he was a tough Mexican father with three daughters, and so he jealously guarded his daughters. And so when my dad came, according, he was tough on my dad, really tough. But my mom told me that when he finally accepted my dad as a proper, you know, future husband of his daughter, his eldest daughter, he invited my dad over to the house and he gave my dad his copy. This is my grandfather's copy of Voltaire. And even though my grandfather, his first language was Spanish, he still read enough English and still cared enough about written word. And so my mom said this was his way of telling my father, I accept you as a member of the family. I love that story. And I didn't learn this until. Well, when my dad passed in 2020, my mom gave this to me. She said, your father would have wanted you to have this because you're the writer in the family.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, but you're standing on the shoulders of giants.

[Daniel Olivas]

Yeah. My father, at the end of his life, in that essay, I talked about how he. About before he passed, he was always reading multiple books at the same time, typically some fiction. He was also very religious, so he would read like a biography of a saint or something like that, or one of his other favorite books was St. Augustine's the Confessions. My mom gave me the last novel my father was reading, and his bookmark is still at the stop place where he stopped. And it's. It's Gore Vidal's historical novel Julian, about the Roman emperor who tried to stamp out the spread of Christianity. And my dad stopped at page, at pages 208 and 209 before he just couldn't read anymore. And in it is a bookmark. And my dad, again. My dad was very religious. And on each side of the bookmark is a prayer. You know, I'll just read one prayer. And you don't have to be religious to, you know. And I'm no longer Catholic. I'm now Jewish. But this prayer says, do not fear. I am with you. Do not be anxious. I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you with my victorious right hand. And that's from Isaiah 41:10. In the Mexican culture, in Latin American culture, when someone passes, you say their name and say presente, which means present. And when I read that bookmark, I was thinking, my dad's still present. He's always with me with what he gave us through his hard work and his. And through his love of literature and love of education. Those. All those wonderful gifts he gave us are still with us. And. Which means he's still with us in. In the Jewish religion, you say, may his memory be a blessing. And it's the same concept being present because of the gifts he gave us. One of the other books that he loved, absolutely loved, was, and I'm rereading it, One Hundred Years of Solitude, which I know Garcia Marcus's great novel is, I think, number five on your list of great, great books. I think it's number five, four or five. I'm rereading it because it's. It's another way of kind of connecting with my father, who my. I miss quite dearly. He was always a huge fan of my books. Whenever a book came out, sometimes he'd go to, like, the Barnes and Noble in Ventura where they retired, and he'd lie. He said, I'm a professor. I teach literature. Why don't you carry this book by Daniel A. Levis? And then they order a few copies and it's like, pop, you. You can't be doing well.

[Jack Wilson]

Why not?

[Daniel Olivas]

Why not? So the last couple books, the last couple of books, I dedicated to him because he was. He was always my. He and my mom, my biggest fans.

[Jack Wilson]

Let's leave things there. Our guest has been Daniel Olivas. His many books include how to Date a Flying Mexican, New and Collected Stories, and the works we discussed today, Chicano Frankenstein, and Waiting for Godinez. Daniel Olivas, thank you so much for joining me on the history of literature.

[Daniel Olivas]

What a joy. Thank you so much. I appreciate the time and I will continue to listen to your backlog of episodes. I have so many wonderful episodes to listen to. I'm excited.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, good.

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[Jack Wilson]

And finally today, Janet Todd was here. Back in episode 706, after she and I discussed what it's been like to have Jane Austen as a friend and advice giver for more than 50 years, I asked Janet a special question. Okay, I'm joined now by Janet Todd, expert, expert in the life and works of Jane Austen. Janet, this question comes from a listener who asks, what do you want your last book to be? This will be the last book you will ever read. You can either choose one that exists or describe one that has not yet been written.

[Janet Todd]

Well, by the last book, do you mean the book that you have on your deathbed?

[Jack Wilson]

I think so, yeah.

[Janet Todd]

At the very end. Well, I'm thinking that too. Well, I do think about that from time to time. Time, I suppose if I were honest, since time would be very short, I'd go for poetry anyway, because it's succinct and quick and beautiful. But if I were going to take a novel, well, I've been on about Jane Austen, but I think it's also true that I would take Jane Austen. I think she more than any other writer, and there are writers who do other things that she does not do, but she more than any other writer can be read and re read and re read. And if I had to go out into the good night with something, I think I'd go out. Well, listening at this point, I imagine, to Emma. And I'd like to have that passage where Emma stands at the door of Ford's and looks out on her humdrum, ordinary village and sees all sorts of little things happening. A dog, a child, the Apothecary walking past and everything works for her. She finds that it's all fine. It's enough. I think I'd like to go out on that.

[Daniel Olivas]

Yeah.

[Jack Wilson]

And it's a reminder to us that that's when life at its best, that that's what it's been like, where things we don't have, the striving, the things that we were never able to attain. We don't have regrets, we don't have desires. We just have a kind of acceptance.

[Janet Todd]

Yes. Yeah. I think that's what you get there. In that place, the ordinary is made special. It's magical.

[Jack Wilson]

You told us, when we were talking about Jane Austen in her life, that she might have been a little bit surprised to see our emphasis on the pursuit of happiness. And. And that a better way of thinking about it was maybe to have a kind of pursuit of contentment. And maybe pursuit is the wrong word, but a kind of, you know, that a goal for us can be contentment as well as what we think of as happiness.

[Janet Todd]

I think that's true if you also like comfort, which is another thing that I think. I mean, it's hard to remember just how uncomfortable life would have been, even for the gentry in her period, compared with our own. I mean, my own life, after all, when I think about my very early childhood, was immensely uncomfortable compared with now. And I think a little bit of comfort, a warm fire, a pleasant view, a little wine and some buttered toast, you know, that's really nice. And I think she gives you a sense of that very, very strongly. But she. Yes, I think she finds contentment a kind of joy. I don't think she necessarily separates the two. I don't think she requires some kind of romantic ecstasy on the top of a mountain, but it's ecstasy of a kind.

[Jack Wilson]

Well, it's also. It gives us a nice way of thinking about our role and relationship with others. Because, I mean, with my children, for example, I could make them happy when they were three or four years old. I could buy them ice cream, or I could put presents under the Christmas tree or that kind of thing. But as they get older and they become adults, it's kind of like I am with any adult, which is. I don't know if I can give you happiness, but I know I can give you comfort. And I know I can, you know, make things a little easier. I can pay for a meal, or I can cook something for you, or I can, you know, make sure that you have warm blankets on your bed and things like that. Being Able to appreciate those is also being able to appreciate the way that we can influence the lives of others.

[Janet Todd]

I think that's true. And by doing that, you've influenced your own life. It's the doing of all those things has given you happiness and joy. And just like the doing of anything outside yourself, I think, is something very attractive and something that you get there. I mean, they're always sewing or they're always doing something. Those characters in general, we think of them as leisure ladies, but they're always doing something. Even if they're walking up and down, they're doing something. They're not introspecting, they're not constantly concentrating on themselves. And I think Jane Austen writing or the others doing something else, even if it's sewing, sketching, playing the piano, all the things that they do in the novels, all these things bring a kind of joy and joy to other people.

[Jack Wilson]

Now, I have a special follow up, which usually I don't ask this kind of question, but in your case, I think you're someone who can probably give us a pretty insightful answer. And that is, what do you think Jane Austen might have chosen for her last book? If she had been asked that during her lifetime, what would she have wanted to read?

[Janet Todd]

Oh, I think she'd have wanted to listen to the poetry of William Cooper. I think that Jane Austen is actually. I've always seen her as an 18th century character. The fact that she's. She lives into the other one, into the 19th century, and she's associated with the Regency because. Partly because we like the Regency period and it goes very well on films and the costumes are very nice compared with the 18th century, or very doable, and we like it altogether. But I see her as intellectually a person who goes back to her youth. And having just edited for this general readership the works of Jane Austen, I see just how often she quotes from these people. I mean, she certainly reads Byron and Wordsworth later in life. But the quote, the quotations are primarily, it's Cowper and the people from that period. So I think she'd want to go out with some rather good passages from Cowper's the Task. I think he's must. He should be read far more than he is. I think he's a really very good writer. The fact that he has a lot of moralistic stuff as well might not appeal to us, but if we don't like it, we could skip it. There's a lot of Cooper to read.

[Jack Wilson]

Well, it might not appeal to me in particular, but it would appeal to me, knowing that it appealed to Jane Austen.

[Janet Todd]

We'll work at it, eh?

[Jack Wilson]

Okay. Janet Todd, thank you so much for joining me on the History of Literature.

[Janet Todd]

Well, thank you. Thank you for having me.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, there we go. That's going to do it for this episode of the History of Literature. My thanks to Janet Todd for that cameo appearance and to Daniel Olivas for joining me, such fascinating guests. And there's more, more to come, so do come back. We will have for you a Cherokee novelist, the first one in America, I think, who was also in California, like Daniel. And one of our favorite old episodes with a poet who tells us, why poetry? That's the question. And he answers it. Why poetry? We'll hear that one soon. John Ruskin will be here. Lawrence. Well, not here, but you know what I mean, I guess. Talking about John Ruskin, Lawrence Stern, Proust, Amelia Lanier, Chaucer, Shakespeare, the comic Shakespeare in translation, German writers, ancient classic writers, George sand, the Harlem Renaissance. So many great authors coming up. I'm a lucky guy, a busy guy and a lucky guy. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.

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