We’re all connected.
I was reminded of that when a neighbor mentioned he’d read my story for Alta Journal about traveling to the Arctic Circle last fall.
One sentence leapt out at him: “Nothing seemed fixed: water, stars, sky, or people. It was all changing and rotating and moving in a dance governed by randomness.”
The subject line was “Hello from New York Times Opinion.” It landed in my inbox about 24-hours after the horrific wildfires on Maui had begun to spread. I’d already checked in with friends who live on the island, to make sure they were safe. Like the rest of the world, I was watching in horror as historic Lahaina town went up in flames.
Last fall, I took part in an unusual residency program in the Arctic Circle. I spent two and a half weeks aboard Antigua, a three-masted sailing ship with 29 artists and writers on an expedition to explore the Svalbard archipelago. It was quite a trip.
I wrote a story about my experience for the current issue of The Journal of Alta California. We hiked on frozen tundra, encountered a polar bear, hunkered down during a howling wind storm, and gazed in awe at the spectral beauty of aurora borealis. My shipmates were artists and writers who’d come from Hong Kong, Berlin, Toronto, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere for an off-the-grid wilderness experience.
Founded in 1931 during the depths of America’s Great Depression, the Commonwealth Club’s California Book Awards celebrates its 92nd anniversary this year and tonight is the award’s ceremony.
Please join us at 6 p.m. PT to honor some of the state’s most distinguished writers. It will be streaming at https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2023-06-05/92nd-annual-california-book-awards
The purpose of the awards is to highlight the work of California authors – a praiseworthy goal at a time when the publishing industry (then and now) remains focused on East Coast writers.
A few weeks ago, I was asked by a producer at Wondery if I’d be interested in being interviewed for the podcast American History Tellers about Hawaii’s last queen. I hesitated at first because my book on Hawaii had been published more than a decade ago. Agreeing to the interview would mean that I’d have to give myself a crash refresher course on my own book.
Founded in 1931 during the depths of America’s Great Depression, the Commonwealth Club’s California Book Awards celebrates its 92nd anniversary this year.
The purpose of the awards is to highlight the work of California authors – a praiseworthy goal at a time when the publishing industry (then and now) remains focused on East Coast writers.
Over the years, many of the most important voices in American literature, such as
Joan Didion, Ishmael Reed, Amy Tan, Hector Tobar, and Viet Thanh Nguyen, have been honored with California Book Awards.
For an example of history being written by the victors, consider the case of Jane Lathrop Stanford, the victim of one of California’s most puzzling unsolved murder mysteries.
Leland, Jr. and Jane Lathrop Stanford, courtesy of Stanford Special Collections
As co-founder and primary benefactor of Stanford University, Jane died of strychnine poisoning in 1905 in Waikiki. For nearly a century, the fact of her murder was successfully covered up.
The key figure involved in that cover-up was the university’s first president, David Starr Jordan. He was the victor in shaping how history judged Jane’s contribution as a leading educational philanthropist over the next hundred years or so.
March is Women’s History Month and I’m thrilled to take part on Friday, March 19th in a virtual panel at this year’s United Nations Commission on the Status of Women NGO Forum.
The event is being organized by the San Francisco Collaborative Against Human Trafficking, a public-private partnership established more than a decade ago by the National Council of Jewish Women and the Jewish Coalition to End Human Trafficking in collaboration with the San Francisco Department on the Status of Women, the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, and the San Francisco Mayor’s Office.
Early on in the research for The White Devil’s Daughters, I learned about a horrific aftermath to the story I was writing. My focus was on a group of women residents and staffers of a historic safe house who fought sex slavery at the turn of the 20th century. One day, while sifting through case files with the home’s retired executive director, she suddenly turned to me and asked, do you know about Dick Wichman?
Judy Yung’s death this month marks the passing of a gifted and generous scholar. Her groundbreaking work in the history of Asian American women paved the way for a new generation of thinkers and writers.
Historian Judy Yung, photo by Laura Morton, courtesy of San Francisco Chronicle
Along with fellow San Franciscans Him Mark Lai and the Philip P. Choy, Judy Yung made an enormous contribution to our understanding of the Asian American experience. Her focus was on women, a group that had been largely been overlooked by scholars. Judy died on December 14 at her home after a fall, at the age of 74.
