Tales of an Inland Empire Girl
"Tales of an Inland Empire Girl is a searing, beautiful memoir that illuminates the struggles of parents who are beaten down by life and their arduous working-class jobs and of children who are trapped in the middle of their parents' battles. A compelling read-raw, honest, and hopeful. I wish this book existed when I was growing up. It would have been my life preserver."
-liz gonzález, author of Dancing in the Santa Ana Winds
"In her first novel, Juanita E. Mantz goes back to the old house to unshackle the ghosts that still inhabit the charred curtains and broken windows of her youth. We meet The Wonder Twins, a Wolfman Jack stand in, The Flintstones, a young Wonder Woman with tinfoil wristbands & Nancy Drew incognito via unexpected introductions into Mantz's life growing up in The Inland Empire. This is as creative as autobiography gets without veering from the hard truths herein. Maybe you saw the cartoon once, and thought it fantasy, but read this book and then firmly believe that underdogs can fly." -Dennis Callaci, author of 100 Cassettes
"Tales of an Inland Empire Girl is deep and funny and true. A remarkable story of resilience and love told in bright prose, and written from a place of rigorous vulnerability that draws us in from the start."
-Brett Paesel, author of Los Angeles Times bestseller, Mommies Who Drink
"Mantz takes readers into a deeper journey of a childhood and coming of age filled with turbulence and tight-knit family love, and she writes with blazing grit, flashing joy-de-vivre, and an occasional comic overtone that feels natural coming from this self-professed punk-rock girl. This collection of stories spares no stone unturned, no watershed truth - both hard and celebratory - unexamined. And through it all, shines an anthem call of what matters most in life: the unbreakable bonds of family, and this family's enduring love for one another."
-Ruth Nolan, born in the IE and editor of No Place for a Puritan: the Literature of California's Deserts"Tales of an Inland Empire Girl, set in the fast-growing Eastern region of Southern California and told in Mantz's smack-in-your-face honesty, lures one into the places of childhood--of first home and lasting memories. One learns to live, however awkward life might be, in a house 'the color of dirt', finding a place to call one's own in a Plastic Cheese chair, and love, even through girl fights. Through dexterous use of language, Mantz tosses her readers into a reality where a little girl finds herself in tears of frustration and shame with two left shoes, a drunken dad and screaming mom, but loves deeply anyway, and deals with her situations with twin-powered bravado and punk rock: 'I feel as if I could dance forever, ' says Mantz."
-Hồng-Mỹ Basrai, author of Behind the Red CurtainEarn by promoting books
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Juanita E. Mantz (“JEM”) is a USC Law educated lawyer, writer, performer, and podcaster who believes writing has the power to change the world. She graduated from UCR in 1999 with a degree in English Literature. Juanita graduated from USC Law in 2002.
Juanita is also a creative nonfiction writer who has 2 books, a YA novel/memoir titled "Tales of an Inland Empire Girl" (Los Nietos Press, Jan 2022) and an award winning hybrid chapbook titled "Portrait of a Deputy Public Defender, or how I became a punk rock lawyer" (Bamboo Dart Press, Aug 2021).
Her stories have been published in literary journals, newspapers & anthologies including in The Acentos Review, Aljazeera, As/Us, Entropy, Mutha, Muse, San Bernardino-Singing (anthology), The Dirty Spoon Radio Hour, The James Franco Review, The Riverside Lawyer and Inlandia, among others.
She performed her story "Stalling" in the 2016 cast of Listen to Your Mother, Burbank. She is an alumni of the VONA and Macondo workshops. She also serves as VP on the board of directors of the Inlandia Institute.
Juanita has presented at UCR Writers' Week, the UCR Punk Conference, Pasadena LitFest, AWP and Beyond Baroque. She produced and taught in the ASA 2020 Freedom Course on Combatting Mass Incarceration.
She is in the low residency MFA creative writing program at UNO where she is working on adapting her YA memoir into a stage play. She was just named the writer in residence at Pasadena City College & will be performing there in October and her chapbook "Portrait of a Deputy Public Defender" was just awarded a gold medal at the International Latino Book Awards in the Mariposa category for best first book, nonfiction English.
Check out her video podcast, "Life of JEM" where she does live interviews with writers. It's available on her Life of JEM FB page, on her author site and on Twitter!
Find everything on her author website: https://juanitaemantz.com
