I sit at a long wooden table inside John Muir High School’s library. Around me are five students discussing Pasadena Unified School District’s literary magazine and leadership project. As we talk, I glance up at the mural above, featuring a panel of eight writers that includes James Baldwin, Gabriel García Márquez, Octavia E. Butler, and others. Outside, on a larger mural, Butler sits with her chin resting on her palm, gazing at the community garden. Text on the side of the mural announces her graduation year from Muir: Class of 1965.
Living and working in Pasadena, one cannot stray far from Altadena’s rich history. The unincorporated Altadena community has long been a hub for Black residents and artists, who up until the late sixties, were denied housing in Pasadena due to redlining and “sunset laws.” In 2016, when I landed in Pasadena, I began delving into the region’s history as well as into the work of the Black science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler, whose memory is embedded in the community where she was born, raised, and buried.
During the pandemic, Butler’s Parable of the Sower hit the New York Times bestseller list for the first time, nearly thirty years after the book was released. The novel, set between 2024 and 2030, is an eerie prediction of our contemporary world, where climate change, war, violence, and dictatorships are on the rise. And there is fire. One of the novel’s diary entries is dated three weeks after the Eaton fire:
“Saturday, February 1, 2025 - We had a fire today. People worry so much about the fire, but the little kids will play with it if they can.” —Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower
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On the night of January 7, 2025, when the Eaton fire erupts in Altadena and Pasadena, the valley is awake. As residents wait for evacuation warnings that are sent too late and fire trucks that never arrive, some climb on their rooftops to extinguish flames. Others use buckets of earth since the fire hydrants have failed. Over the next few days, we learn that more than nine thousand buildings have burned. Nineteen lives have been lost. Almost all are in west Altadena, a historically Black, middle-class neighborhood.
For weeks, the air is thick with smoke and ash as firefighters try to contain the flames. Many of my students and colleagues lose their homes or are displaced. Schools and offices close for three weeks, and our work becomes virtual—a reminder of the isolation of the COVID lockdown; the rest of Los Angeles rebounds to its regular schedule.
In the heart of all the loss is Altadena Library’s main branch, sitting at the base of the Angeles National Forest. Though the homes across and around the building are razed to the ground, the main library (as well as its smaller branches) is undamaged. And miraculously, the one hundred and fifty deodar cedar trees that shade Santa Rosa Avenue—Christmas Tree Lane—survive.
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The first time I visited Altadena Library on Christmas Tree Lane was a decade ago after my move to Pasadena when I needed to renew my passport in the library’s basement passport office. That, too, was a turbulent period when the U.S. government’s travel ban against six predominantly Muslim countries went into effect. At that time, I had no idea that the building would become an integral part of my world.
I was born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan, where summer temperatures soar past 100 degrees celsius. Perhaps my love for books, mixed with misty mountain trails and the smell of conifers emanates from spending summer childhood months in the Himalayan foothills—a landscape that is an integral part of my novel Black Wings (now shelved in Altadena Library). To give my siblings and me a break from the heat and the city, my mother took us to the mountains, almost a thousand miles away from Karachi. We spent our days in forests and parks. At night or when it rained, we read books that we borrowed from our Karachi library.
Much later, I learned that the tall trees that stretch into the sky on Christmas Tree Lane are indigenous to the Himalayas and were brought to Altadena via seeds from Italy. I often reflect on the irony of how trees from my homeland led me to a government office tucked in Altadena Library. That visit gave me freedom to travel and served as my passport into Altadena’s rich history and literary community.
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On March 4, 2025, two months after the fire and less than a year into my laureateship, Altadena Library’s main branch reopens. Friendly librarians welcome residents who need normalcy at a time when nothing else is normal. The library, lit by its glass walls and skylight, offers computers, working tables, books, and community. It also becomes a hub for gatherings, offering resources and support for residents.
Over the year, in collaboration with local poets, including my fellow co-poet laureate Lester Graves Lennon, as well as former Altadena poets laureate, I curate readings and workshops to tackle urgent issues: the fire, ICE raids, the genocide in Palestine. Featured at all readings, alongside established poets, are high school students, those who study beneath Octavia E. Butler’s watchful eyes, as well as those from other public school campuses.
Today, a year after the fire, owners of more than one thousand homes that were burned have begun rebuilding, while many have sold properties and moved away. Yet others struggle to obtain permits and insurance to cover rebuilding costs or search for reliable contractors. Many, whose homes survived, await remediation. And investigations are underway about what caused the delay for firetrucks to reach west Altadena.
There are more stories. An artist tells me: “We hear about those who lost family homes, but not enough is said about renters, who have been displaced for good.” And one of my students whose family lost their house, tells me that even as they deal with displacement, many of their family members are too afraid to go to work because of the ICE raids.
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As I write this essay, I hear rain falling outside my window. According to CalMatters, “For the first time in 25 years, the United States Drought Monitor reported … that none of California was in drought, or even abnormally dry” in contrast to the “second-driest period in almost 150 years of record-keeping—fueling some of the most destructive wildfires in California’s history.”
When the rain stops, I will lace my hiking boots and walk along the Gabrielino Trail. The stream will be a torrent of water, not its usual trickle. Each season, water ebbs or rises, depending on drought or rain. Sometimes I cross the trickle four or five times; other times, just once.
In April, I will cohost a festival to celebrate twenty years of the Altadena Poets Laureate program, one of the oldest programs in Southern California. On that date, the next two poets laureate will be announced, and Lester and I will step down. Despite the destruction around us, the cycle will continue.
I do not know the long-term impact of the fire, the political turbulence, and wars. But today, I place my hope in poetry and in the community that offers mutual aid and builds support to heal the damaged land and people. California poppies, sunflowers, and other wildflowers will bloom, for, as Butler says, “The only lasting truth / Is Change.”