“The Nature of California is part of a new wave of scholarship on land, labor, race/ethnicity, and belonging from historians, anthropologists, geographers, and sociologists. While Wald complements this literature, she strikes new ground by incorporating an explicitly environmental studies perspective.” – Deborah Cohen, reviewed in the American Historical Review (June 2017).
“Wald brings forward a topic that has not been addressed so thoroughly and in such an engaging fashion. Hers is a truly fascinating study.” – Gilbert Gonzalez, reviewed in Western Historical Quarterly (March 2017).
“By exploring texts such as Treadmill and the Los Angeles-based Japanese newspapers Rafu Shimpo and Kashu Mainichi, or even through fresh ecological readings of Hisaye Yamamoto’s popular short fiction, Wald’s study contributes to the current rethinking of the field of environmental studies.” – Benjamin Mangrum, reviewed in American Literary History Online Review Series X
“Race and the Real California” reviewed by Seonghee Lim, Against the Current 118 (May-June 2017)
Reediana Briefs, REED Magazine 95.3 (September 2016)
“Wald skillfully shows how social constructions of race and citizenship have been intertwined with constructions of nature in representations of agriculture in California.”
-Douglas Cazaux Sackman, author of Orange Empire
“A fascinating analysis of the ways in which farming the land has been connected to U.S. citizenship. Wald delivers brilliant new insights from a reading of literary, archival, and popular-culture objects and adds innovative ecocritical and environmental justice lenses to earlier scholarship on farming, citizenship, and labor.”
-Noël Sturgeon, author of Environmentalism in Popular Culture
“By focusing on the work of Mexican, Japanese, and Filipino writers and artists, Wald attributes not only labor but environmental conscientiousness to those who have borne the burden of exploitation in California fields. Here we witness people of color fighting back in the most eloquent way possible-art and the written word.”-Matthew Garcia, author of From the Jaws of Victory