Eladatl A History Of The East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines Sesshu Foster by Sesshu Foster, Arturo Ernesto Romo 9780872867703, 0872867706 instant download after payment.

A breathtaking free fall into the long-buried (& fictional) history of a utopian era in American lighter-than-air travel, as told by its death-defying, aero-acrobatic heroes.

Foster & Romo’s ‘real fake dream’ of the future-past history of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines is a superb & loving phantasmagoria that gobbles up real histories for breakfast & spits out the seeds.–Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn

In the early years of the 20th century, the use of airships known as dirigibles–some as large as 1000 feet long–was being promulgated in Southern California by a semi-clandestine lighter-than-air movement. Groups like the East LA Balloon Club & the Bessie Coleman Aero Club were hard at work to revolutionize travel, with an aim to literally lift oppressed people out of racism & poverty.

ELADATL tells the story of this little-known period of American air travel in a series of overlapping narratives told by key figures, accompanied by a number of historic photographs & recently discovered artifacts, with appendices provided to fill in the missing links. The story of the rise & fall of this ill-fated airship movement investigates its long-buried history, replete with heroes, villains, & moments of astonishing derring-do & terrifying disaster.

Written & presented as an “actual history of a fictional company,” this surrealist, experimental novel is a tour de force of politicized fantastic fiction, a work of hybrid art-making distilled into a truly original literary form. Developed over a ten-year period of collaborations, community interventions, & staged performances, ELADATL is a furiously hilarious send-up of academic histories, mainstream narratives, & any traditional notions of the time-space continuum.

Sesshu Foster taught composition & literature in East L.A. for 20+ years, & at the U of Io