East of the River: A Memoir of Los Angeles Girlhood

From acclaimed artist and Instagram star Guadalupe Rosales comes this moonlit memoir, a visually stunning, poignant account of growing up in ’90s Los Angeles that weaves stories with snapshots and social media moments.

“A vibrant and wild time capsule of a ’90s girlhood in East L.A., assembled by a chronicler who lived it, breathed it, danced it . . . Her evocative pics and tenderly witnessed stories are a treasure trove.”—Quiara Alegría Hudes, author and playwright

Guadalupe Rosales chronicles her Boyle Heights childhood and adolescence in East LA, finding joy and danger from Commerce Center to Whittier Boulevard. Her frank, intimate prose captures the freedom and fear pulsing through that time and how sisterhood helped her survive it.

After losing loved ones to violence and struggling with drugs and depression, Rosales moved across the country to New York City. A stack of starshots from her youth became a lifeline and eventually inspired her to create two Instagram archives while she was away from home: Veteranas and Rucas celebrates ’90s LA women, while Map Pointz focuses on the party crew scene. Thanks to her, they’re thriving online communities.

Now this beloved artist—whose work hangs in the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and elsewhere—extends her project of collective memory by sharing her own story of adolescence in a treacherous time, finding herself as an artist far from home, coming to terms with her own queerness, and returning to her beloved Los Angeles transformed. Elegantly designed, the text is interspersed with photography, flyers, Rosales’s own artwork, and social media conversations.

An altar to a past era and a map to the future, this book is a reminder that memory, celebration, and community make us whole.