David Canul touches up a mural commissioned by ALOUD at the Central Library for Visualizing Language: Oaxaca in L.A . Photo: Gary Leonard. Essay by Abel M. Salas In the early ’90s, when my brother Tomás followed his heart from the Bay Area and a hard-earned position at the renowned Teatro Campesino to Los Angeles, I followed him. A few winters before, I’d followed him from Austin to San Juan Bautista—where the teatreros, or “theater folk” led by director Luís Valdez had taken him in as one of their own—and gotten my first real glimpse of a California I could belong to. Although fleeting, it was a vision that shimmered, taking shape around the possibility of transforming communities everywhere into multi-hued beacons of art, culture and thought. In Los Angeles, the ALOUD reading series at the Central Library has cultivated a similar spirit through successful literary programming for 25 years. With the abrupt and inexplicable dismissal of ALOUD’s founding director Louise Steinm...