The Safe Place That Became Unsafe

By Julia Flynn Siler / January 5, 2021 /

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…

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Remembering Judy Yung

By Julia Flynn Siler / December 30, 2020 /

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. Along with fellow San Franciscans Him Mark Lai and the Philip P. Choy, Judy Yung made an enormous contribution to…

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The Queen’s Diaries

By Julia Flynn Siler / July 25, 2020 /

It took a decade for The Diaries of Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii to finally be published. The result: a stunningly beautiful book that will be used by scholars and lovers of Hawaii for years to come. David W. Forbes led the effort to gather and annotate the diaries of the last queen of Hawaii, aided…

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Talking with Min Jin Lee

By Julia Flynn Siler / July 11, 2020 /

Over this past week, I’ve been immersed in Pachinko. To be specific, I had the fortunate assignment to read Min Jin Lee’s masterful  novel Pachinko, which is a family saga about the world of Koreans living in Japan. I’ve always loved the sprawling social novels of the 19th century – Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist and…

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Overcrowded prisons in our back yards

By Julia Flynn Siler / July 3, 2020 /

I wrote this essay on San Quentin for an online class I’m taking titled “Reading and Writing the Very Short Essay.” It’s taught by one of my favorite authors, Lauren Markham. It was published in Sunday’s Sacramento Bee print edition and other McClatchy papers throughout the state on July 5, 2020 and appeared online a…

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Honoring Hawaii’s Queen

By Julia Flynn Siler / July 1, 2020 /

At a time when statues are toppling across the nation, one work of public art stands tall. It is the eight-foot-tall bronze of Hawaii’s Queen Lili’uokalani, who faces the state Capitol in Honolulu. This  beautifully rendered artwork, by the American realist sculptor Marianna Pineda,  is even more powerful today than it was when it was…

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Who Should California Honor?

By Julia Flynn Siler / June 23, 2020 /

Father Junipero Serra. Christopher Columbus. Sir Francis Drake. Even Francis Scott Key, who wrote the lyrics to the national anthem. What do most of the statues being toppled across California have in common? They’re figures from history who supported white supremacy. And they’re all men. So here’s a timely proposal. Why don’t we replace them…

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The Bible as Literature (vs. Political Prop)

By Julia Flynn Siler / June 4, 2020 /

As a high school freshman many years ago, I took a course titled “The Bible as Literature.” It wasn’t exactly in the spirit of that freewheeling era. At a time when many of us were listening to the Grateful Dead and wearing our Birkenstock sandals with rainbow socks, we were also studying the Book of…

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Unladylike2020

By Julia Flynn Siler / May 11, 2020 /

Women’s lives have long been overlooked by historians, especially the lives of women of color. But a new PBS project, UnladyLike2020, is producing 26 documentary shorts of unsung women heroes of American history.   Part of PBS’s American Masters series honoring the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage, just aired a film about Tye Leung Schulze. …

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“Are you wearing a mask…?”

By Julia Flynn Siler / April 15, 2020 /

Donaldina Cameron and Tien Fuh Wu, two of the women whose life stories I weave together in The White Devil’s Daughters, lived through the terrible flu pandemic of 1918-1919, which killed upwards of 50 million people worldwide.   Just as today’s Covid-19 pandemic has taken its steepest toll to date at nursing homes and other…

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