Julia Flynn Siler

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Recent Posts

  • California Book Awards
  • History Written by the Victors….
  • United Nations and Human Trafficking
  • The Safe Place That Became Unsafe
  • Remembering Judy Yung

Recent Comments

  • Christopher Phillips on “Auntie” Tye and one degree of separation….
  • Cynthia Tom on The Safe Place That Became Unsafe
  • Online Tributes – Judy Yung on Remembering Judy Yung
  • Online Tributes – Judy Yung on Remembering Judy Yung
  • Stephen M Stirling on “Are you wearing a mask…?”

Archives

History Written by the Victors….

July 7, 2021 by Julia Flynn Siler Leave a Comment

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.

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Filed Under: Bay Area Book Scene, History, Speaking, women's history Tagged With: California history, History, murder, stanford

The Safe Place That Became Unsafe

January 5, 2021 by Julia Flynn Siler 1 Comment

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?

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Filed Under: Asian Americans, Clergy sex abuse, History, Research, The Writing Life, Uncategorized, women's history Tagged With: cameron house, clergy sex abuse, healing, sex abuse, survivors

Remembering Judy Yung

December 30, 2020 by Julia Flynn Siler 2 Comments

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.

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Filed Under: Asian Americans, History, Research, The Writing Life, women's history Tagged With: asian american, historians, History, research

Talking with Min Jin Lee

July 11, 2020 by Julia Flynn Siler Leave a Comment

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 Hard Times,  Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.

In the 20th century, perhaps the most famous social novel was John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, which exposed the hardships of migrant farm workers. These are all works that explore pressing social problems through the lives of characters. They’re also sometimes called protest novels, because they often aim to expose a social injustice.

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Filed Under: Asian Americans, Bay Area Book Scene, History, Literary Festivals, The Writing Life Tagged With: Books, literary festivals, min jin lee, pachinko, Writing

Honoring Hawaii’s Queen

July 1, 2020 by Julia Flynn Siler Leave a Comment

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 erected in the 1980s.

If anything, this regal public monument become even more beloved over time. To understand why, watch this PBS American Masters short documentary on the Queen that’s just been released. It’s a wonderful and very moving.

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Filed Under: Hawaii, History, Music, Research, The Writing Life, Uncategorized, women's history Tagged With: Hawaii, History, queen lili'uokalani, statues, women's history

Unladylike2020

May 11, 2020 by Julia Flynn Siler Leave a Comment

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.

Tye Leung Schulze, artwork by Amelie Chabannes

 

Part of PBS’s American Masters series honoring the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage, just aired a film about Tye Leung Schulze.  She was the first Chinese American woman to work for the U.S. Federal Government and an advocate for trafficked women. You can watch the film here.

 

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Filed Under: Asian Americans, History, Human Trafficking, Research, The Writing Life, women's history Tagged With: "donaldina cameron", cameron house, documentary film, tye leung schulze, women's history

“Are you wearing a mask…?”

April 15, 2020 by Julia Flynn Siler 1 Comment

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.

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

 

Just as today’s Covid-19 pandemic has taken its steepest toll to date at nursing homes and other institutions, so did the so-called “Spanish Flu” sweep through the two homes for vulnerable girls and women that Cameron and Wu ran in the San Francisco Bay Area. One of the homes was on the edge of San Francisco’s Chinatown and the other was in Oakland.

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Filed Under: History, Research, Uncategorized, women's history Tagged With: "donaldina cameron", 1918, 1919, masks, pandemic, Spanish Flu, Tien Fuh Wu

Update on My United Nations Trip….

February 18, 2020 by Julia Flynn Siler Leave a Comment

March is Women’s History Month and I had planned to participate by telling the story of a group of pioneering women who fought human trafficking…but, alas, our panel at the U.N. Women’s Conference in New York was just cancelled due to concerns over the coronavirus.

As part of a delegation of women to the United Nation’s CSW64, the Commission on the Status of Women. I was planning to take part in a panel to discuss the late 19th and early 20th century efforts to combat human trafficking detailed in my book, The White Devil’s Daughters: The Women Who Fought Against Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown, on March 12 in New York City, as part of the parallel NGO CSW Forum.

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Filed Under: History, Human Trafficking, Speaking, The Writing Life, women's history

Two Historic “Safe Houses”

January 21, 2020 by Julia Flynn Siler Leave a Comment

Cameron House, at 920 Sacramento Street in San Francisco, is famous as the place where thousands of vulnerable girls and women found their freedom in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It opened its doors in 1874 and is the setting for my book, The White Devil’s Daughters.

But it was not the first organization to supporting trafficking survivors in Chinatown.

That honor goes to the Methodist Mission Home, now located a few blocks away at 940 Washington Street. It opened its top floor two years earlier, in 1870, to provide a refuge to Chinese girls and women who’d been trafficked into labor or sex slavery. Like Cameron House, the institution now known as Gum Moon Residence Hall & Asian Women’s Resource Center still provides services to vulnerable women.

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Filed Under: Asian Americans, History, Human Trafficking, The Writing Life Tagged With: cameron house, gum moon

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.

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Filed Under: Asian Americans, History Tagged With: "donaldina cameron", activism, cameron house, chinese exclusion act, civil rights, delta ministry, presbyterian church

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