Beautifully written, with incredible candor, on race, class, drugs, sexuality, and quite literally having the fire underneath you drive your deepest desires into reality. Carla Rachel Sameth is both brave and relatable in her struggles, and ultimately, a guest who will leave you feeling like we can overcome adversity to both give and receive love.
“Carla Sameth has seen it all—and she’s the perfect guide to show us the poetry she found. Like motherhood itself, One Day on the Gold Line will break your heart in all the right places and put it back together a little differently.”
—Ariel Gore, Author, Editor/Publisher of Hip Mama
“Race, class, drugs, sexuality, otherness…21st Century American hot-button issues are on full display in this brave, gritty, unflinching memoir.This is a “feel-good” book not because it’s fuzzy and vague, but cause of its clear-eyed, truth-telling love.”
—Sue William Silverman, author of The Pat Boone Fan Club, Love Sick
—Lillian Faderman, author of Naked in the Promised Land: A Memoir and Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death
“There is so much to admire in these warm, funny, and deeply human tales of love, sex, motherhood, and other adventures. Carla Sameth never gives up on herself, and her readers will never give up on her.”
—Héctor Tobar, author of the New York Times bestseller: Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine and the Miracle That Set Them Free.
While escaping from a burning boat, Carla realizes that if she died, her one regret would be not having children. She overcomes miscarriages to finally give birth to a son. Motherhood’s usual struggles are then complicated by identity, community, and the challenges of creating a blended family. The overarching theme of these loosely woven reflective tales is the storyteller’s dream of the “perfect” family, the pursuit of which hurls her from one crisis to the next, ultimately meeting its greatest challenge in the form of her teenage son’s struggle with drug addiction.
Through essays on race, culture, and family, One Day on the Gold Line (July, 2019) tells the story of a lesbian Jewish single mother raising a black son in Los Angeles. A memoir-in-essays, it examines life’s surprising changes that come through choice or circumstance, often seemingly out of nowhere, and sometimes darkly humorous—even as the situations are dire.
Carla Rachel Sameth has taught creative writing to incarcerated youth through WriteGirl and teaches at the Los Angeles Writing Project at California State University Los Angeles and with Southern New Hampshire University. Carla's writing has appeared in various anthologies and publications including Brain, Brevity blog, Child; Narratively; Longreads; The Nervous Breakdown, and MUTHA. Carla has an MFA from Queens University in Charlotte, and is a member of the Pasadena Rose Poets. Carla was selected to be a 2019 Pride Poet with the City of West Hollywood and was a 2016 PEN in The Community Teaching Artist. Carla lives in Southern California with her wife.--
