ELADATL : a history of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines /
In the early years of the twentieth-century, the use of airships known as dirigibles, some as large as one thousand feet long, was being promulgated in southern California by a semi-clandestine lighter-than-air movement. Groups like the East LA Balloon Club and the Bessie Coleman Aero Club were hard...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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San Francisco :
City Lights Books,
[2020]
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| Summary: | In the early years of the twentieth-century, the use of airships known as dirigibles, some as large as one thousand feet long, was being promulgated in southern California by a semi-clandestine lighter-than-air movement. Groups like the East LA Balloon Club and the Bessie Coleman Aero Club were hard at work to revolutionize travel in the pre-apocalyptic Southwest, with an aim to literally lift oppressed people out of racism and 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 and recently discovered artifacts, with appendices provided to fill in the missing links. The story of the rise and fall of this ill-fated airship movement investigates its long-buried history, replete with heroes, villains and moments of astonishing triumph and terrifying disaster. Written and 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 artmaking distilled into a truly original literary form. Developed over a ten-year period of collaborations, community interventions and staged performances, ELADATL is a furiously hilarious send-up of academic histories, mainstream narratives and any traditional notions of the time-space continuum. |
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| Physical Description: | 317 pages : illustrations, map ; 22 cm. |
| ISBN: | 9780872867703 0872867706 |