I was recently asked about my favorite flower. Jasmine at night in Los Angeles returns me to myself, across time. That smell anchors me in a personal ancestry specific to California.

Poppy State is Myriam Gurba’s labyrinthine creation through California’s plants, expansive markers and partners in her life, and the book itself, while it refuses the cliched delusion of catharsis so commonly found in American memoir, does offer a kind of return and a clearing.

“California is many things to me,” Gurba said, when we spoke. “Beyond this political entity with these arbitrary borders that we call a state that is governed by an asshole named Gavin Newsom. It’s a spiritual state, but it’s also the land, and all of the life that is sustained by the land herself.”

And it’s long sustained her.

“I r

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