The poems and essays in Letters to My City combine two decades of field experience, research, personal observations, and stories told to the author, a third-generation Los Angeles native, by his grandfather and other family members, to interrogate all sides of Los Angeles, its streets, its people, its neighborhoods, as a means to examine the postmodern metropolis.
โMike the Poet sings the history, people, dreams, and even shadows of LA city, one of the most seen and filmed cities of the world, yet little known or understood. His poems are instant pop-and-crackle chronicles, more news than the 11 PM news hour, yet they are also jack-hammer words crashing onto concrete walkways, the palm-drenched horizon through smog-laden sky, the truth that dares to include everyone. What everyone forgets, Mike the Poet remembers.โ
โLuis J. Rodriguez, author of Always Running