Miller, Jim 1965–

PERSONAL:

Born 1965; married Kelly Mayhew; children: Walt. Education: San Diego State University, B.A., M.F.A.; Bowling Green State University, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—San Diego City College, 1313 Park Blvd., San Diego, CA 92101. E-mail—jmiller@sdccd.edu.

CAREER:

San Diego City College, San Diego, CA, professor of English and Labor Studies.

MEMBER:

Modern Language Association, American Federation of Teachers, Local 1931 (political action vice president).

WRITINGS:

(With wife, Kelly Mayhew, and Mike Davis) Under the Perfect Sun: The San Diego Tourists Never See, New Press (New York, NY), 2003.

(Editor) Sunshine/Noir: Writing from San Diego and Tijuana, San Diego City Works Press (San Diego, CA), 2005.

(With Kelly Mayhew) Better to Reign in Hell: Inside the Raiders Fan Empire, New Press (New York, NY), 2005.

(Editor) Democracy in Education; Education for Democracy: An Oral History of the American Federation of Teachers, Local 1931, 1969-2006, AFT Guild 1931 (San Diego, CA), 2006.

Drift (novel), University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

The city of San Diego, California, has served as a fertile subject for Jim Miller, a professor of English and labor studies at San Diego City College. With his wife, Kelly Mayhew, and Mike Davis, Miller wrote Under the Perfect Sun: The San Diego Tourists Never See, a book that San Diego Union-Tribune writer Arthur Salm described as a ‘blistering political and social history’ of the metropolis. The book focuses on wealth and class, showing how city politics have been increasingly influenced by the demands of powerful elites, whose interests conflict with those of the working class and of ethnic minorities. Miller's contribution to the volume, which traces the history of San Diego's labor, civil rights, and other activist movements, was hailed by a Publishers Weekly reviewer as a ‘powerful counter-image’ to the prevailing view of San Diego as a conservative stronghold. Noting that the book's ‘partisan outlook and at times strident rhetoric’ would prove irksome to some readers, the reviewer neverthe- less concluded that the book's urgent message should appeal to those concerned about how ‘private wealth determines public policy’ in the United States.

Sunshine/Noir: Writing from San Diego and Tijuana, a collection edited by Miller, presents short fiction, essays, and poems from writers including Jimmy Santiago Baca, Mike Davis, Sandra Alcosser, Victor Payan, David Reid, Sue Luzzaro, Perry Vasquez, and others. The volume includes perspectives from both sides of the border, and highlights the diversity of views on the region's complex culture.

Better to Reign in Hell: Inside the Raiders Fan Empire is an examination by Miller and Mayhew of the Oakland Raiders fan culture. The book explores the life of football fans in Oakland and Los Angeles, California, in a broad cultural, historical, and political context. Matt Coker writing for the Orange County Weekly called the book ‘breezy and funny’ and found Miller's treatment of this ‘mostly positive subculture’ to be compelling. In her review for the San Diego Union-Tribune, Kate Callen lauded Miller and Mayhew for their ‘sprightly analysis of life in this global renegade sect."

In Democracy in Education; Education for Democracy: An Oral History of the American Federation of Teachers, Local 1931, 1969-2006, Miller makes use of his skills as a professor of labor studies to chart the history of his union and then present that same history from the perspective of the union members who lived it.

In his first novel, Drift, Miller again reflects on San Diego experiences. The novel's protagonist, Joe Blake, is a poet and part-time instructor at three city colleges who falls in love with Theresa Sanchez, a bookseller with a special interest in the works of poet Pablo Neruda. In the book, Joe wanders through San Diego and its environs, including Tijuana, Mexico, observing the uneasy juxtaposition of new wealth and the older, more vivid working-class neighborhoods of the city. The plot follows Joe and Theresa to a desert by the Salton Sea, where, while exploring the ruins of a failed resort, they encounter the wreckage of a bloody collision and try futilely to help some dying migrant workers from south of the border.

Kinsee Morlan, writing for San Diego CityBeat, praised the novel's descriptions and said that Drift portrays ‘an exciting San Diego.’ Though a Kirkus Reviews writer found Joe's ruminations often ‘tedious,’ the writer enjoyed Miller's sketches of colorful background characters, including a homeless former student of Joe's, an ex-bouncer, and a meth addict. Seth Taylor, writing in the San Diego Union-Tribune, called Drift ‘a bittersweet valentine to San Diego, a city [Miller] clearly still loves—and mourns."

Miller told CA: ‘The first thing that got me interested in writing was reading. As a young man writers like Walt Whitman, William Blake, Jack Kerouac, Henry Miller, and others showed me how writing can help make you live more fully. They spoke to me directly and changed my life. I wanted to do that too in my own small way.

"In creative work I would cite [as influences] Whitman, the Beat [poets], Henry Miller, Don DeLillo, Charles Bukowski, Clarice Lispector, and music—jazz, rock, and folk music—for tone and the lateral movement of the imagination. In nonfiction, my friend and onetime coauthor Mike Davis has had a big influence on my writing. I'm also a fan of Thomas Frank, Rebecca Solnit, and other good political and cultural studies writers."

When asked the most surprising thing he has learned as a writer, Miller said: ‘How utterly lonely it is to write. The terror and wonder of facing the blank page alone.

"Drift [is my favorite of my books] because it is an expression of self in a way that nonfiction can never be. It also incorporates poetry and history in a synthesis of forms and genres.

"With my nonfiction, I hope to instruct and/or challenge the reader to think about the world differently. With my creative work, I hope my readers find themselves in my work, have one of those miraculous connections to the thoughts of a stranger. I hope for what Whitman hopes for in [the poem] ‘Crossing Brooklyn Ferry’—to speak to the future. It's an impossible desire, but it is there nonetheless."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Community College Week, December 8, 2003, review of Under the Perfect Sun: The San Diego Tourists Never See, p. 24.

Contra Costa Times, November 11, 2005, Mike McGreehan, review of Better to Reign in Hell: Inside the Raiders Fan Empire.

Journal of San Diego History, summer-fall, 2005, Lupe Garcia, review of Sunshine/Noir: Writing from San Diego and Tijuana.

Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 2006, review of Drift, p. 1238.

Orange County Weekly, September 23-29, 2005, Matt Coker, review of Better to Reign in Hell, p. 28.

Publishers Weekly, August 11, 2003, review of Under the Perfect Sun, p. 268.

Reno News and Review, May 31, 2007, Matthew Craggs, review of Drift.

San Diego CityBeat, February 21, 2007, Kinsee Morlan, review of Drift, p. 268.

San Diego Union-Tribune, August 8, 2005, Kate Callen, review of Better to Reign in Hell, p. 1; December 31, 2006, Arthur Salm, ‘At City College, Duo Break Down Walls"; February 25, 2007, Seth Taylor, ‘A Dark Night in a City That Knows How to Keep Its Secrets,’ review of Drift.