Seeking the Soul of L.A. on Its Streets - Paintings and Stories by J. Michael Walker

Praise for

All the Saints of the City of the Angels: Seeking the Soul of L.A. on Its Streets

by J. Michael Walker

“Art and history coming together at the streetscape level: inventive, erudite, and thoughtful.”

-William Deverell, Director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West and author of Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of its Mexican Past

“J. Michael Walker takes us on an incredible and fascinating historical journey of discovery utilizing both his stunning paintings and his amazing stories in All the Saints of the City of the Angels. This book is a treasure found, that should be shared and cherished by all.”

-Synthia Saint James, internationally exhibited artist and illustrator

“Walker sees angels everywhere, the divine in the ordinary, saints in survivors. And that, in our era of fear and rage, is miracle enough for me.”

-Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street and Caramelo

“Los Angeles has many faces, many dimensions, many roots. We stand on some of the most layered and interesting cultural foundations. J. Michael Walker focuses on one of the most important-the naming of streets, mountains, cities, and terrains for Catholic saints, a legacy of Spanish and Mexican rule."

-Luis Rodriguez, author of the The Republic of East LA

and Music of the Mill

“J. Michael Walker has created a moving people's history of L.A. that unites its past, present, and hope for the future. At times poignant and honest, at other times witty, his collection of artwork, poems, and histories reminds us of our common humanity and our shared links to the past.”

-Charlene Villaseñor Black, Associate Professor of Art History, UCLA

“This book does a wonderful job addressing the cultural and spiritual meaning behind the Saint named streets of L.A.!”

- Man One, urban muralist and graffiti artist

“J. Michael Walker's book is an original, deeply empathetic spiritual geography of Los Angeles that sights present day sanctity among today's humble and downtrodden.”

-Laura E. Pérez, Associate Professor of Chicano Studies at University of California, Berkeley, and author of Chicana Art: The Politics of Spiritual and Aesthetic Altarities

“In company with 103 saints, we watch the small pueblo of Los Angeles unfold to become one of the major cities of the world. With sadness and joy, happiness and sorrow, success and failure, and yes, even life and death, Walker has given us poignant accounts of the geography of grace in the city he loves.”

-Michael E. Engh, S.J., Dean of Bellarmine College and Professor

of History at Loyola Marymount University