Guadalupe Rosales didn’t want to write a memoir.
The multimedia artist and archivist had spent years preserving LA’s 1990s Chicano culture through her Instagram projects Veteranas and Rucas and Map Pointz. So when a book offer came, she envisioned a collection of stories written by women who grew up listening to hip-hop, house and techno, and rocking Jordana lip liner.
Instead, she found herself writing a deeply personal coming-of-age story that weaves together family history, 1990s party crew culture and the East LA neighborhood that shaped her.
In “East of the River: A Memoir of Los Angeles Girlhood,” Rosales traces her birth in Redwood City and move to Boyle Heights in the early 1980s before settling in East LA in the 1990s. Old family photos with her signature blend of party crew memorabilia, hand-drawn flyers and fuzzy glamour shots accompany intimate stories about the close-knit family, friends and community that raised her.
“This book is about embracing and loving ourselves while speaking our truth as women,” said Rosales, 45, via Zoom.
“It brings together my story with the community that shaped me and the people I met on my journey. It’s a reflection of where we come from and how we find our way back to ourselves.”
Featuring a cover photo of her and her sister at a 1997 party in City Terrace, “East of the River” chronicles life before cellphones and social media, when Rosales buried herself in books at the East LA Library before joining the Aztek Nation party crew as a middle schooler at Eastmont Intermediate. The memoir revisits how she navigated family instability, foster care, profound loss and drug use, before moving to New York, where she came out as queer and built a career as an artist. Today, Rosales lives in City Terrace.
Fresh off exhibiting at the Venice Biennale and the release of her collaborative photography book, “Tumbados: Lowriding Memories and Cruising Futures,” Rosales spoke with Boyle Heights Beat about her first memoir, growing up with Whittier Boulevard as her front yard and her love of photography.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You created two seminal online communities, Veteranas and Rucas and Map Pointz. What inspired you to launch them?
After 10 years in New York, I started missing home and reminiscing a lot. It was 2015, and many of us started using social media. People were posting pictures hanging out with family in LA and I started having this longing, but still questioned if I was ready to go back home. I went through so much pain living in LA as a teenager with gang violence, drugs, dysfunctional homes. I thought, ‘What’s the most real, honest, unfiltered way to express ourselves?’ It’s storytelling. It’s our personal archives. Party crews and flyers weren’t being talked about. I wanted to see who else kept those things. That’s how I started building those pages. It was a collective invitation to come together and tell our story.
Did you anticipate the accounts turning into a huge online reunion?
No. I wasn’t prepared, not experienced. No one was going viral. I had no language around what I was doing. People started using the word archivist and storyteller. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s what’s happening.’
What is the most rewarding thing that came out of these projects?
Reconnecting with people I went to high school with and the connections that were made. Someone would share a photo of their grandmother and someone else would be like, ‘That’s my tia. Who are you? How come we’ve never met?’ I learned so much through people’s stories.
What was it like growing up queer in East LA during the ‘90s?
I wasn’t out. I was like every teenage girl. I had a quinceañera, had crushes on cholos and dated boys. When I came back home [from New York], people were like, ‘But you dated guys!’ It’s a little insulting. You’re not seeing my queerness. I was closeted.
Your memoir “East of the River” captures life growing up in East LA and Boyle Heights and includes your signature blend of photography, flyers, artwork and social media commentary. What inspired you to write a memoir?
I’ve always been very shy and awkward. When I started going viral on social media, I got super nervous. I woke up to so many notifications. Someone contacted me to do an interview and I was like, I don’t know how to do that. I didn’t want to write a memoir. I wanted to write a collective story with essays from other women. I was encouraged to write my story as the heartbeat of the book.
Walk me through your writing process.
I love writing. I took a lot of writing classes, read a lot of poetry, philosophy and theory. I like taking notes, writing on paper and highlighting things that resonate in books. A lot of people gravitate towards the [Instagram] pages because of how the stories are written. I always approach writing as a painting, being as detailed as I can to bring people into this world.
Pictures can be triggering. How did you navigate the depths old photos can take you?
There were a lot of times when I looked at myself and was like, ‘Oh my God. I don’t know if I can post this. Pictures of when I was a 15-year-old and more feminine made me cringe because I felt like I wasn’t in my body. I started opening up and appreciating those times.
Your book touches on themes of survival, love, sisterhood, grief and celebration. You write about growing up with Whittier Boulevard as your front yard, your first encounter with police at 7, your family being ripped apart and losing loved ones. How difficult was it to go there?
Thankfully, I have therapy because a lot of things I hadn’t thought about for decades came up. It was healing not just for myself, but for my family. I’m hoping that people who read this book can relate. I talk about abuse, going out and being concerned about safety as a woman. A lot of this material went back and forth with my sister. I wanted to make sure she felt safe and got her blessing.
Have you slowed down or do you still like to party?
The art world keeps you busy and on your toes. It wasn’t until the last couple of years that I started thinking maybe I need to chill, but I like partying. I like socializing. I like throwing parties. I still do it for fun. I’m actually throwing a big launch party for the book.
Is there a flyer for that?
[Laughs]
“East of the River: A Memoir of Los Angeles Girlhood” will be released Sept. 8. Rosales will discuss the book at Skylight Books on Sept. 14 and LACMA on Sept. 17.
