“California is a palimpsest; there are cities and stories that were erased to make room for the ones that exist now. Vadi’s dispatches about gentrification sanitizing Oakland, the state’s many unheralded laborers (like the incarcerated men and women who work shoulder-to-shoulder but not dollar-for-dollar with our firefighters), and the tech and population booms reshaping the state, are an attempt to unearth those stories . . . His writing transposes those voices from the margins to center stage by letting them assume their rightful place as co-authors of the story of California . . . Inter State comes alive because of the intimacy Vadi infuses into his archiving . . . Vadi’s meticulous retracing of his family’s footprints across the state—down to the exact placement of the orange tree, chiles and aguacates in his late grandfather’s backyard—is exemplary.” —Naomi Elias, KQED

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