Jim Miller - Flash (AK Press)

Flash (AK Press)

Who is Bobby Flash? Flash is a novel that follows the journey of muckracking journalist Jack Wilson as he investigates the century-old mystery of the identity of I.W.W. outlaw and revolutionary, Bobby Flash. When Wilson finds an old Wanted poster in a local archive in San Diego, his curiosity leads him deep into the lost history of America’s radical past through the Free Speech fights and the Magonista revolt in Mexico, the utopian Llano del Rio Colony, and the first red scare. Bobby Flash crosses paths with the likes of Emma Goldman, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Ben Reitman, and Big Bill Haywood as well as a myriad of other unknown tramps and revolutionaries. The reader even gets to see if it’s possible for Jack to sneak a portion of Joe Hill’s ashes through Homeland Security. Along the way we learn the story of the women who work in contemporary Tijuana’s maquiladoras and others struggling to make a living at working class jobs in Los Angeles, San Diego and the San Francisco Bay area. Flash is also the story of the love of a father and son and their unexpected discovery of their family legacy, including a grandmother committed to the ideals of revolution and free-love at the turn-of-the-century. This novel begins in contemporary Southern California and takes the reader through the LA punk and underground scenes, San Diego’s lost sailor town, and bohemian San Francisco and inner city Oakland ending finally on the Lost Coast Highway at a fledgling utopian commune. Flash speaks directly to current economic concerns and the yearning for hope and justice.

Selected Works

Poetry

Into the Bardo

Jim Miller's Into the Bardo reminds us that everything is "tentative and precious." After experiencing a harrowing summer of several near-death experiences, it was poetry that Miller summoned, to bear witness to what he learned on this journey. In these poems, readers navigate the sometimes-precarious waters between wakefulness and sleep, life and death, treading in the liminal spaces of uncertainty. In fact, it was the great Roman poets, Virgil and Ovid, who taught us, Somnus, the god of sleep, was indeed the brother of Death. It is in this nexus where we find Miller revisiting memories of family and friends, the marvels of travel, the percipience of the arts, and ultimately, his musings on the "interconnectedness of all," especially as he beckons us to confront the economic and health care disparities that so many still endure. Miller reexamines a life lived while all along urging us to "feel the multi-grained texture of life / as it flows on ceaselessly / past even death." Into the Bardo is full of wonder and wisdom.

—Manuel Paul López, Nerve Curriculum

Paradise and Other Lost Places

"Philosophical, lush and gritty, this collection answers a central question: How much pain and sweetness can fit into one man's life? This is life on the knife's edge where the deep well of grief…gives birth to joy. Miller, gimlet-eyed, turns his lens to city streets, motels, cemeteries, union workers, histories of oppression. Climate change, Lahaina burned. But also: the deep green jungle, the cerulean sea, a flock of hens, a gospel choir. An On The Road travelogue to Maui, Tijuana, Toledo, Chicago, Montana, the Salton Sea, Detroit, L.A. and more, each place a bittersweet cocktail of love and loss. These poems are world-weary and world-loving: The world is burning faster and more furiously/than even our love can repair…but also know that/we are always becoming,/like the newly formed shoots/on the scorched banyan tree. Miller says it best: There is no describing the vast love that wells up in you when you find yourself in rapture with the stunning, naked radiance of the world."

--Kendra Tanacea, The Alchemy of Us

Fiction

Drift

“Ultimately Drift seems a requiem for so many things, a noble past mashed in the dirt, and hope for a future that glimmers despite the dismal possibilities that cloud the horizon.”

--Jimmy Santiago Baca, author of The Importance of a Piece of Paper

Last Days in Ocean Beach

"Jim Miller manages to find real warmth in the cold light cast by our apocalyptic moment; this is a rare instance of actually dealing with, instead of attempting to 'fix,' the cascade of emotions and ideas that naturally come from the immensity of the challenges around us."
-Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth

Flash

"This remarkable novel is nothing less than a secret history of California--a radical past that might not yet redeem our future."--Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz

Nonfiction–History/Politics

Under the Perfect Sun: The San Diego Tourists Never See

“A... fascinating history of San Diego that debunks the notion of America’s Finest City”

—San Diego Magazine

Cultural Studies

Better to Reign in Hell: Inside the Raiders Fan Empire

"A rich, multifaceted, and engaging book. As participants and observers, Jim Miller and Kelly Mayhew take us on a tour of Raider Nation in all its contradictory dimensions: from the cynical corporate spectacle of the modern sports industry, to the spontaneous carnival and conviviality among fans on game day, to the multiple reverberations of imagined community and identity on the streets of urban East Oakland, South Central L.A., and beyond. Better to Reign in Hell is a remarkable account that should interest sports fans and anyone concerned with the popular experience of community in America today."–Chris Rhomberg, Author of No There There: Race, Class, and Political Community in Oakland

Quick Links

Flash (AK Press)

Selected Works

Nonfiction–History/Politics

Cultural Studies