Julia Flynn Siler

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How a Sentence Reverberated

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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.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wrote that sentence late at night, while tucked up beneath my comforter the upper bunk of my tiny cabin. I’d just returned from a nighttime expedition to see the stars in an inflatable Zodiac raft and I was trying to capture the almost psychedelic feeling we’d had while floating in the dark on the Arctic Sea.

Most mornings and every night, I’d tap away on my laptop about my experiences aboard ship as one of the 29 writers and artists who were taking part in a residency organized by the non-profit group, The Arctic Circle. It was my version of a daily ship’s log.

When I got home to Northern California, I sat down to write the article for Alta about the experience. The log I’d kept was helpful, as was a detailed log of the ship’s daily movements compiled by our expedition leader, Sarah Gerats. I lifted that sentence (and a few others) for the Alta article straight from my diary.

My neighbor, Jeremy Levin, is a classical pianist and a composer. He’d been working on a composition for Ukraine and found inspiration in that sentence for a key tonal change in the piece.

He and his wife Charlotte invited me to his studio to play the piece, followed by tea and treats afterwards. He sat down at his Mason & Hamlin grand piano and took a deep breath before beginning. Chills ran through me when he played his composition for us.

Hearing how Jeremy had incorporated the spirit of my sentence into his piano piece was a lovely experience. It reminded me how the work we do can sometimes reverberate in beautiful and unexpected ways.

 

The view through the porthole in my cabin aboard Antigua.

Arctic Adventures

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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.

Julia in Svalbard as part of The Arctic Circle residency in the fall of 2022.

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.

Two of the gorgeous photos in the story were taken by the expedition leader Sarah Gerats, a photographer herself when she is not leading groups around the Arctic. The stunning photo of the polar bear we saw was taken by my shipmate Frankie Carino, an L.A.-based photographer. And the startling archival photo of explorer Louise Arner Boyd and the dead polar bear comes from the Marin History Museum.

Several friends have asked if I’m really planning to go back to the Arctic soon (perhaps alarmed by my description of Covid’s arrival on the ship). The answer? I hope so, if I can land a berth on an expedition in the summer of 2024 or 2025. I’ve written to two captains of Arctic boats and have heard back from one of them. I’ve also begun exploring the possibility of joining a commercial expeditions. Wish me luck!

Remembering a Hawaiian Queen

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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.

Since I’d never fully listened to the audio version of Lost Kingdom: Hawaii’s Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America’s First Imperial Adventure, I dove into it to prepare for the interview. Produced by Brilliance Audio and narrated beautifully by Joyce Bean, who mastered the Hawaiian names and words, I felt as if I was reading someone else’s book. It was  a joy to have a voice actor read it to me.

Working with the producers Lushik Lotus Lee and Polly Stryker from Wondery was a pleasure. We ended up doing two takes of the interview, in large part because I wasn’t as relaxed as I might have been during the first one. When Polly made the trek to my house to re-tape it a second time, the interview flowed more smoothly. Not to mention that Polly brought me a gift of homemade marmalade as a gift!

A few days later, Polly shared with me an article she’d found from Hawai’i Magazine titled “5 Beautiful Versions of ‘Aloha Oe,’ Queen Lili’uokalani’s Most Famous Song.” To my surprise, the magazine had found versions of Aloha Oe covered by Israel “Iz” Kamakawiwoole, Tia Carrere, slack key master George Kahumoku Jr, and Amy Hanaiali’I – but also a haunting version by Johnny Cash.

American History Teller’s host, Lindsay Graham, asked me at the end of our interview what I thought Queen Lili’uokalani’s most powerful legacy might be. She sat on the throne for a brief period – from 1891 to 1893. Yet the more than one hundred songs she composed are still performed today. To many people, she is remembered as much as a composer as a queen.

The Safe Place That Became Unsafe

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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?

I didn’t. So, in a somber tone, she told me the chilling story of a sexual predator who, for decades later in the 20th century, abused boys in the very same place where my story was set –the safe house in San Francisco’s Chinatown that my characters had established in the 1870s to protect girls and women.

I felt shock – and soon realized I was facing a challenge. How should I handle the monster in the basement – which was, literally, where the abuse took place? To include him in a book about heroic women could overshadow their story.

The home’s retired director, a woman named Doreen Der-McLeod, gave me fair warning. Before I ventured too far down the path of telling the stories of the brave women who’d fought human trafficking and slavery at the turn of the 20th century, she wanted to make sure that I understood the full horror of what occurred decades after the women had left the home.

I’d planned to begin my book in 1874, when a group of churchwomen founded a safe house for vulnerable women. Thousands of mostly Chinese girls and women took shelter there over seven decades, including several who went on to live remarkable lives. The home’s long-serving director was Donaldina Cameron, and the home was eventually renamed Cameron House in her honor. The book would end with her retirement in the late 1930s.

The person recruited to Cameron House after the women’s’ project had ended was  the Rev. F.S. “Dick” Wichman. He became the institution’s first male director, and he created a thriving program for Chinatown’s youth. But he also turned what had been a sanctuary for girls and women into a profoundly unsafe place for boys and young men. As the home’s director from 1947-1977, Wichman was a pedophile who preyed on vulnerable boys. (Both Cameron House and the Presbyterian Church have publicly acknowledged and apologized for his abuse.)

F.S. Wichman (left) and Donaldina Cameron (right), photo courtesy of Cameron House

By one count, there are 40 known victims of Wichman – all of whom he raped or molested when they were boys, and all Chinese. Some estimate the actual number may be in the hundreds. His predations defiled the dreams of Cameron and many others who devoted their lives to fighting sexual exploitation.

In researching and writing The White Devil’s Daughters, I decided to end my story before the period of Wichman’s abuse – ignoring what would happen in the future. I dealt with Wichman in a single paragraph in the acknowledgments. I didn’t want his story to undermine the accomplishments of the women I was writing about.

But it became impossible for me to continue to ignore Wichman’s decades of abuse after The White Devil’s Daughters was published. His story continued to hang over Cameron House like a dark cloud. As the Rev. Gregory L. Chan later described Cameron House, where he’d served as the board chairman and interim executive director, “the place felt like the Bates Motel in Psycho. We had not cleaned up the shrouded energy…”

In the summer of 2019, Cameron House, along with the Chinese Historical Society of America, hosted a large event to discuss The White Devil’s Daughters. Hundreds of people attended, many of whom had long ties to Cameron House and to Wichman.

During this event, and in private conversations afterwards, Wichman’s name arose – again and again. It became clear to me that there remained a crucial, second story to be told about his era at Cameron House. Yet I was reluctant to tackle it. I knew the reporting would force me to dive into the dynamics of clergy sexual abuse – an area that frightened and disturbed me.

It was a Facebook post about a film in the summer of 2020 that finally tipped the scale. A short documentary had been released about Cameron House’s long effort to acknowledge Wichman’s abuse and embark on a long journey of healing. More than a hundred people commented on it in a heartfelt outpouring of solidarity. Elaine Chan-Scherer, a former Cameron House staffer, who played a crucial role in bringing the abuse to light as a whistleblower, tagged me in her post. Because of the release of the film, I realized this was the moment to write about Wichman, who died in 2007. This was the right moment because the community’s healing process was nearly complete.

Wichman’s three decades at Cameron House were antithetical to the spirit that had guided the project of providing a safe place for vulnerable girls and women. It felt right to follow up my book with a detailed investigation of his time at Cameron House.

As a result, my expose, titled “The Safe Place That Became Unsafe,” about Wichman’s era of abuse and the community’s efforts to heal from it, was published in the Winter, 2021 issue of The Journal of Alta California. That gave me the chance to tell the story of the monster in the basement. While there are probably even more stories to be told about the home, they don’t all need to be told in one telling.

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This essay was adapted for one first published in The Biographer’s Craft, with thanks to its editor Michael Burgan.

Remembering Judy Yung

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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.

 

Born in 1946 and raised in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Yung worked as a librarian in the public library’s Chinatown branch before getting her PhD. in Ethnic Studies at U.C. Berkeley. She went on to become a beloved professor at U.C. Santa. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Sam Whiting wrote a touching tribute to her life.

 

Yung’s Unbound Voices: A Documentary History of Chinese Women in San Francisco, and Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco, were an enormous help to me in writing The White Devil’s Daughters. One of the women she profiled was Tye Leung Schulze, among the first Chinese American woman to exercise the right to vote.

 

Judy and I were in touch during the five years I spent researching and writing The White Devil’s Daughters, and one of my last email exchanges with her was while I was doing my photo research. She shared some suggestions on how to track down descendants of some of the women who passed through the mission home now known as Cameron House.

 

She also provided me with one of my favorite photos in the book – a 1912 photo of Tye Leung Schulze behind the wheel of an enormous Studebaker-Flanders. Judy revealed that Tye, a short-statured woman whose nickname was Tiny, never actually learned to drive. I am deeply grateful to her and send my heartfelt condolences to her sister, Susan Lee, and her family.

Talking with Min Jin Lee

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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.

Pachinko is a social novel in that great tradition. Told in the omniscient third person, it follows the lives of four generations of members of a Korean family that emigrated to Japan, facing decades of discrimination and even, in the case of the grandfather of the family, the Presbyterian minister Baek Isak, and his brutal imprisonment.

I loved this novel so much that I didn’t want Pachinko to end. It was rightly chosen as a National Book Award finalist and has earned a place on my living room  bookshelf where I keep my favorite books. The fact that I loved it so much made the invitation to be in conversation with its author, Min Jin Lee, even more thrilling.

Our conversation took place Monday, July 13st and was the kick-off event of the Sonoma Valley Authors Festival. I can’t fully express how much fun it was to talk with Min about the writing life, about where she finds her inspiration, and about the very specific challenges she’s faced in making her way through the world as a writer.

Tune in and join us! Here’s the link. And here’s a screenshot of the Zoom conversation between Min and me!

Overcrowded prisons in our back yards

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San Quentin State Prison, in San Quentin, Calif., March 13, 2019. (Jim Wilson/The New York Times)

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 few days before that.

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My Marin County house, perched on a hillside and concealed from the street by redwoods, is five short miles from San Quentin. I’ve driven past the pre-Civil War era prison a thousand times, but never given it much thought. It exists in a world separate from mine.

I used to take the commuter ferry from Larkspur to San Francisco, which passes a few hundred yards from the shore in front of San Quentin. From the boat’s upper deck, I’ve seen prisoners in blue milling around the exercise yard. Did I really see them? Or have I just conjured those men up from prison movies? I’d sip coffee and read the paper, surrounded by other suited workers heading into the city. I’d sometimes wondered if the inmates saw us.

During the winter months, San Quentin juts into the fog-cloaked bay like the prow of a ship, barely visible as the penitentiary and the water merge together. The flickering glimpses of cerulean are the only sign of the thousands of lives unfurling there. The yard is too far to make out individual faces as our ferry accelerates past the tip of land that San Quentin sits on. High fences, concrete overpasses and the rough waters of the Bay separate it from the rest of us.

Ten weeks into the shelter-in-place order, my focus has narrowed to the redwoods standing sentry at my home and the whirring hummingbirds battling for spots at my feeder. I haven’t taken the ferry for months. From my deck, I read about the state’s decision to transfer more than a hundred men, wearing bright orange transit suits, from a prison in Chino. Even before the transfer, San Quentin was overcrowded – with more than 3,500 prisoners crammed into a facility built in the 1850s meant to hold far fewer. There were no cases of Covid at San Quentin before the transfer.

Another three weeks pass. Summer solstice approaches and the county slowly re-opens. With traffic still slow, the shoreline around San Quentin teams with migratory birds. Red-necked Grebes and Black-legged Kittiwakes touch down on nearby marshes. Before the lockdown, windsurfers used the area just to the east of the prison as a place to launch. Kayakers paddle past it on calm days. A new bike path has opened across the San Rafael-Richmond Bridge. One of my sons, who lives in the East Bay, bikes across the span about five times a week. Gov. Gavin Newsom and his family also lived a short drive from the prison, before they moved to Sacramento.

Every night, before settling into the down pillows on my bed, I check on new COVID-19 cases in the county. A few weeks after the transfer, the first infections are detected. Case numbers rise fast. Officials halt visitors and impose a lockdown. To dampen alarm beyond San Quentin’s walls, officials start separating out the prison’s COVID-19 case numbers from the overall count – segregating, at least numerically, our green and prosperous county from California’s oldest prison.

Case numbers climb above 120 and newspapers begin describing the conditions there. Sick prisoners are kept in a part of the prison known as the “adjustment center.” Below them are another set of prisoners, also in barred cells. Droplets containing virus particles float down from above, infecting the people on the next level, according to a chilling report in the San Francisco Chronicle. I can’t get that image out of my head. I picture it as gray fog invisible to the human eye, penetrating the uniforms and then the bodies of the captive men.

I sit outside and look out onto Mount Tamalpais as I write this, gulping in the geranium-scented air as if to prove I still have a sense of smell. Yesterday, I saw a pair of red-tailed hawks making high-pitched cries as they seek to prevent marauding black crows from stealing their eggs. I sit here, in my treetop nest, as the prison heads towards another day of lockdown – a measure imposed soon after the first cases appeared to try to halt the virus. On Sunday, the prison’s case total hits 193. The next day, 337.

I drive past San Quentin as June ends, passing under a Black Lives Matter banner hanging from an overpass. Many of the men who are incarcerated at San Quentin are Black or Latino, while our county is overwhelmingly white. A day or two later, the banner is gone – replaced with banners for summer camps. As of today, the case numbers at the prison have soared to more than 400. As infection spreads, the men at San Quentin now face possible death sentences, even those with short amounts of time left to serve. The case numbers sit in the chart several lines below the overall total – as if the county is trying, through a rearrangement of numbers, to make those infected men disappear.

Over the weekend, protesters in a car caravan called for the early releases of the elderly, the immune-compromised, or those who’ve nearly finished their sentences. San Quentin, often shrouded by early morning fog, is California’s only death row for male prisoners. The state’s decision to move in infected prisoners from elsewhere is handing down a death sentence for even more of them.

A federal judge, reviewing the situation, wiped tears from his eyes.

“We know what’s going to happen,” he said. “We know.”

I leave my placid neighborhood and head towards San Quentin. It’s the first time I’ve tried to go there, even though I grew up in Marin. I’m a reporter and my instincts are to see for myself and ask questions: I am drawn to where this catastrophe is unfolding.

It takes me exactly fifteen minutes to reach the gate from my house. The prison’s COVID-19 case count has jumped from 505 to 832 over the weekend. By Friday morning, it’s 1,345: More than a third of the prison population is infected. Some have been transferred to local hospitals, including one that’s just two miles from my house.

A young guard, masked and about the age of my son, stops me. My own 23-year-old is awaiting the results of his COVID-19 test after several days of fever. I take shallow breaths, as if the air around me is contaminated by a gray fog of virus rolling through the prison gates.

“Can I go in?” I ask.

I know this is an impossible request and I’m not sure why I came, other than a sense of powerlessness about not being able to do anything else. I need to do something, even if it’s only to show up at the gate.

“No,” the young guard answers politely. “With the Covid stuff, it’s all locked up.”

I roll up my windows, take a deep breath, and drive the five miles home.

Julia Flynn Siler is a veteran journalist whose most recent book, “The White Devil’s Daughters: The Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown,” is a finalist for a California Book Award.

Editor’s note: This piece has been updated to reflect the latest case count at San Quentin as of Friday.

Read more here: https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/california-forum/article243913732.html#storylink=cpy

 

 

Honoring Hawaii’s Queen

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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.

Queen Lili’uokalani ruled the independent Kingdom of Hawaii for two years in the last decade of the nineteenth century. In 1893, a group of local businessmen, aided by U.S. Marines, overthrew her. A few years later, the U.S. annexed Hawaii as a territory.

I wrote about the Queen and her overthrow in Lost Kingdom: Hawaii’s Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America’s First Imperial Adventure. I visited the statue many times during my research trips to Honolulu. I was also the historian interviewed for the recent PBS American Masters documentary.

The last time I visited the statue of Queen Lili’uokalani was at opening day of Hawaii’s legislative session in January of 2020. People had draped multiple strands of delicate pink flower lei around the statue’s neck to honor her memory.

Facing the Capitol with her right hand outstretched, the statue seems to say “I surrendered my authority to the United States to avoid bloodshed, but I am with you,” as Richard Rodrigues, community relations specialist in the Hawaii governor’s office, suggests.

In her left hand, the Queen’s statue holds three documents — Hawaii’s Constitution; the Kumulipo, Hawaii’s creation story; and ‘Aloha Oe,’ the most famous of the more than 150 songs and chants that she composed.

It is as if the artist meant the statue to remind today’s legislators that “As you shape Hawaii’s future, remember its history, values and traditions,” Rodrigues adds. The Queen is a powerful and inspiring reminder of the struggles that have shaped our nation. You can watch the PBS documentary here.

The Bible as Literature (vs. Political Prop)

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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 Job and the Song of Solomon.

Maya Angelou, who wove the rhythm and imagery of the Bible into her writing

Yet, what I learned in that class managed to permanently lodge itself in my foggy adolescent brain – something I can’t say for most of what I studied in high school or college. It taught me that much of the world that I live in is informed by those ancient stories, with a power and resonance that seems to move us on a subconscious level. Bob Dylan’s lyrics taps into this, as does Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Maya Angelou’s poetry. The lesson was that the Bible provides the narrative architecture of the Judeo-Christian world, even during this secular age when many of us are not church goers.

Which brings me to President Trump’s photo-op in front of St. John’s Church in Washington, D.C. on the evening of June 1st. Federal police in full riot gear fired gas canisters and rubber bullets to clear away peaceful protestors and clergy members handing out water bottles on the steps of the church, making way for the President and his entourage. Trump held up a Bible long enough for the photo shoot, without reflecting on its words or meaning, and without expressing any sorrow over the police killing of George Floyd, who himself was involved in Christian ministry for many years. It was an offensive political stunt which debased the Bible and one of America’s most historic churches.

As a group of New England Episcopal Bishops wrote on June 2nd, “Our church may rightly feel outraged and insulted by having the symbols of our faith used as a set prop in a cynical political drama. The real abomination before us, however, is the continued oppression of and violence against people of color in this nation.” As a mainline Protestant denomination that, historically, often helped support establishment injustice, I am glad Episcopalian leaders are speaking out – first and foremost – against racism and police violence against black people. Under Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, who is black, the church is forging a leadership position on social justice. Mariann Edgar Budde, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, wrote eloquently about what she called this “crucible moment.” “Let’s keep our eye on the prize, which is racial justice,” said the Rev. Chris Rankin-Williams at St. John’s Episcopal Church  in my hometown of Ross, Ca. told the local paper. He and many other faith leaders in our community spoke out against Trump’s propaganda and in support of racial justice.

Rev. Chris Rankin-Williams at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Ross, Ca

Leaders of the high school I attended, Chris Mazzola, and its board chair Claudia Lewis of the Branson School, have also spoken in support of the protestors and the black lives matter movement. You can read their full statement here. That is a welcome change from the school’s stance towards systemic  racism, which was not acknowledged when I attended. Compared to the 1970s, today’s Branson students are more aware of their privilege and the school is making a far greater effort towards inclusion and diversity.

Two remarkable faith leaders working for social change came out of my high school in the 1960s and 1970s. One is the Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, who holds a Dean’s Chair at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, California. The other is the Rev. Sally Grover Bingham, an Episcopal priest in San Francisco and a prominent climate activist. Sally took a similar “Bible as Literature” class in college and seminary, and Brad did as well. Both of our sons also took a “Bib Lit” class from the Urban School of San Francisco’s late English and History teacher, Dan Murphy.

President Obama and Rabbi Bradley Artson

You can listen to a conversation between Rabbi Artson and the Rev. Bingham here that took place as part of Branson’s Centennial celebrations. We are connected through ancient traditions and stories, as well as our privilege of having attended a high school that is now acknowledging a need to take action against injustice, discrimination, and inequity. I’m also deeply grateful for having gone to a school which urged us to begin exploring the meaning and beautiful language of the Bible, all those years ago, and for all those working towards racial justice.

 

 

Unladylike2020

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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.

 

UnladyLike2020 is led by the prize-winning filmmaker Charlotte Mangin.  Charlotte interviewed me for the film, along with Tye’s grandson, Ted Schulze, and Judge Toko Serita, a New York State Acting Supreme Court Justice who presides over the Queens Human Trafficking Intervention Court. It’s a moving film about a woman who worked for social justice

 

I got to know Tye because she was one of the thousands of girls and young women who took refuge at the Presbyterian Mission Home in San Francisco’s Chinatown at the turn of the 20th century.  Tye is one of the young women I write about in my latest book, The White Devil’s Daughters: The Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown..

 

The youngest daughter of impoverished Chinese immigrants, Tye fled to the home to escape an arranged marriage at twelve. There, she gained an education and became an invaluable aide to the home’s longtime superintendent, Donaldina (Dolly) Cameron, who affectionately called her “Tiny” because of her short stature (Tye  was just 4’4″ tall.)

 

Dolly was so impressed with Tye’s gift for languages and her good judgment that she recommended her for a job in 1910 at the newly opened Angel Island Immigration Station, a detention center in the middle of the San Francisco Bay designed to control the flow of Asian immigrants into the U.S.

Tye Leung Schulze, courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library

 

Tye took the job, commuting each day to the island by boat to work as an assistant matron and interpreter. There she met a fellow immigration officer named Charles Frederick Schulze, a white man. They fell in love. Defying both their parents’ wishes and the state of California’s anti-miscegenation laws, they traveled to Washington state to marry.

 

Not long after to returning to work at Angel Island, they both lost their jobs. But Tye soon rose to prominence again. In 1912, one year after California granted women the right to vote, Tye became the first Chinese American woman to vote in a U.S primary election.

 

She left a rich written record of her life, including a first-person oral history that the historian Judy Yung kindly shared with me. I highly recommend Judy’s groundbreaking book, Unbound Feet: A Social History of  Chinese Women in San Francisco. There is also a new box of materials from the Leung-Schulze family at the University of California’s Ethnic Studies Library, which I pored through for clues about Tye’s story.

 

Charlotte and her team at Unladylike2020 are illuminating the remarkable lives of Tye and twenty-five other “hidden figures” from American history. On July 1, the series will release a short documentary about Hawaii’s Queen Lili’uokalani. More on that soon! Here the PBS American Masters site.