CSUMB hosts writer Gordon Lee Johnson for Native American Heritage Month.

November is Native American Heritage Month, and CSU Monterey Bay is celebrating by hosting author Gordon Lee Johnson. Johnson is a member of the Cupeño and Cahuilla tribes, who live together on the Pala Indian Reservation in northern San Diego County, where he was partially raised and where he lives now.

Johnson knows life both on and outside of the reservation; before becoming an author, he spent years working as a journalist, writing mostly about Native American issues and experiences. His first mentor in storytelling was his grandmother.

“With no TV and no radio [on the reservation], I would listen to her,” Johnson says, recalling childhood stories and family gossip. Johnson also became a big reader as a child, taking advantage of libraries, including a mobile library that would come to the reservation. He names Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck as one example of a beloved book.

“I was very familiar with the whole setting,” he says about the cast of characters and the environment Steinbeck immortalized in 1935. “I really connected with that. This book opened me to writing.”

Later on, Johnson attended college at UC Santa Cruz, then eventually earned a creative writing degree at Vermont College and an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University in 2008. While he still spent time on the reservation, “when you get educated it also distances you from people,” he admits.

In the late 1970s, Johnson started writing for a newspaper. With time, he became known for his columns, read also by the people from the reservation. These columns eventually formed his first book, Rez Dogs Eat Beans, published in 2001. “I had no intention to publish a book,” he says. “There was this community activist [Ruth Wilson, who died in 2021] who said: ‘I want to do it for you.’” And she did.

Later on, Johnson was approached by publisher Heyday with an idea for a second book: Fast Cars and Frybread (2007). More recently, Johnson published Birdsongs Don’t Lie: Writings from the Rez (2018), which includes essays and short stories.

At CSUMB, Johnson will read from his books and answer questions.

WRITERS FROM THE EDGE: GORDON LEE JOHNSON 6pm Wednesday, Nov. 15. CSUMB Alumni and Visitors Center, 100 Campus St., Seaside. csumb.edu/cahss/writers-edge-humanities-communication.