Seldom can a creative writer concretely identify the first experience that has given direction to his work. Cesár A. González-Trujillo remembers that experience and the two incidents that triggered it quite vividly. At the age of three, in the midst of the Great Depression, he heard his elders talking about a job distributing phone books. Some forty workers were needed, but hundreds showed up, resulting in fights among the desperate men. The second incident occurred within weeks of the first. The author remembers hearing shouting in the street below while he and his mother were in the Lowe's State Building on Seventh and Broadway in downtown Los Angeles. Rushing to the window, he caught a glimpse of workers surrounding a streetcar and rocking it. The conductors, angry because of low wages, had driven streetcars into downtown Los Angeles and blocked traffic. The streetcar company...