Blog - Julia Flynn Siler

Five Generations at Cameron House

September 16, 2019 by Julia Flynn Siler Leave a Comment

The Rev. Harry Chuck can trace his family’s history at 920 Sacramento Street back to the late 19th century.

That’s when his grandmother was sold into slavery by her impoverished family in China. Her owners sent her to San Francisco but she was intercepted by immigration officials before she reached one of Chinatown’s many brothels. They brought her instead to the Presbyterian Mission Home on 920 Sacramento Street, which was established in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1874 as a refuge for vulnerable women.

The Rev. Harry Chuck at Cameron House, photo by author.

From Cameron House to Civil Rights Work

August 3, 2019 by Julia Flynn Siler 2 Comments

Donaldina Cameron’s work inspired many people. One of the most memorable is Marion Kwan, a civil rights activist who marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King in the 1960s.

Marion Kwan, photo by author

Born and raised in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Marion calls herself a “Cameron House kid.” When Marion’s mother immigrated from China in 1940, she was detained along with Marion’s older 7-year-old sister at Angel Island. After their release, they were met on San Francisco’s docks by one of Cameron House’s Chinese staffers, possibly Mae Wong.

Chinatown Rising

July 3, 2019 by Julia Flynn Siler 2 Comments

This summer, I saw the new film “Chinatown Rising” in San Francisco. It’s a new documentary directed by Harry Chuck and Josh Chuck, a father and son team. Both of them have been deeply involved with Cameron House, whose early history I explore in my latest book.

The Rev. Harry Chuck, a social activist and now filmmaker, was a youth director and then Executive Director of Cameron House. He mentioned to his son Josh, who also worked at Cameron House over the years, that he was thinking about getting rid of some film reels that had been sitting in his garage for decades. Josh asked if he could see them first.

Anti-Trafficking Pioneers

June 27, 2019 by Julia Flynn Siler Leave a Comment

Donaldina Cameron (1869-1968) captured the nation’s imagination at the turn of the 20^th century. She was an early anti-human trafficking pioneer who ran a “safe house” for vulnerable girls and young women on the edge of San Francisco’s Chinatown. A tall, auburn-haired woman with a Scottish lilt, she who fascinated headline writers and the public alike.

Staffers at 920 Sacramento Street: Donaldina Cameron center, Tien Fuh Wu standing to her right. Photo courtesy California State Library.

Five Books of Narrative History

May 31, 2019 by Julia Flynn Siler 2 Comments

As a teen, I fell in love with narrative history — the use of classic storytelling techniques, such as characters, scenes, and dialogue — to write compelling histories. My first crush was on Barbara Tuchman, a journalist-turned-author who won the Pulitzer Prize for her books The Guns of August and Stillwell and the American Experience in China.

A history teacher assigned me to read A Distant Mirror, a book about what Tuchman called “the calamitous 14th century.” Her writing was so evocative to my eighteen-year-old imagination: I could almost feel and see the fine particles dust kicked up during the jousting matches she described.

The local settings of my latest book…

May 25, 2019 by Julia Flynn Siler Leave a Comment

The women who ran the Mission Home in THE WHITE DEVIL’S DAUGHTERS crossed the country for their work. They pursued sex trafficking cases and checked up on former residents in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, Sacramento, Fresno, Los Angeles, and elsewhere.

The charitable organization that supported them, the Occidental Board, was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area. And surprisingly, many of the places those 19th and early 20th century churchwomen founded are still around, providing education and social services to their local communities.

Seeking Refuge on the “Castle” Grounds

April 22, 2019 by Julia Flynn Siler 4 Comments

I’ve walked or biked past our local “castle” hundreds of times: Its Romanesque Revival campus perched on a hillside above my home town has a magical quality to it, particularly at dusk. In the days when our boys were reading J.K. Rowling’s books, it seemed as if Harry Potter might swoop through it spires any moment during a Quidditch match.

The San Francisco Theological Seminary

Disrupting the Business of Human Trafficking – Then and Now

March 5, 2019 by Julia Flynn Siler 2 Comments

In 1874, a group of women opened a “safe house” on the edge of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Because their work disrupted the thriving trade in women between China and America, they faced endless legal challenges and even sticks of dynamite placed on their doorstep. By offering a place for survivors of sex slavery and other forms of servitude to escape to and drawing public scrutiny to the crime, they threatened their century’s existing business model of human trafficking.

Debunking the “White Rescue Myth”

February 18, 2019 by Julia Flynn Siler Leave a Comment

The best-known image of the pioneering anti-trafficking crusader Donaldina Cameron at work was taken in the early 20^th century in a garbage-strewn alley in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

Donaldina Cameron (left, standing) with interpreter and police officers staging a rescue of a Chinese girl. Courtesy of Cameron House.

Cameron, wearing a full black skirt that fell just above her ankles and a dowdy, small- brimmed hat, gazes toward the camera. A man in a suit stands partway up a ladder propped against a brick building. On a balcony above him, a man who appears to be a plainclothes police officer holds a girl in his arms. She has a long black braid hanging down her back and is the “slave girl” supposedly being rescued.

The Fight to End Modern Slavery

January 24, 2019 by Julia Flynn Siler Leave a Comment

January was Human Trafficking Prevention Month, a designation of heartbreaking relevance to my home state of California. Not only does it remain one of the nation’s leading hubs for sex and labor trafficking; the state is also home to a host of non-profit organizations who fight the crimes of sex and labor slavery year-round.

Map showing locations of human trafficking cases in 2017, as tracked by anti-trafficking organization Polaris.