The Writing Life
Five Generations at Cameron House
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.…
Read MoreSeeking Refuge on the “Castle” Grounds
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…
Read MoreThe Cameron Family’s Gift to the Bancroft Library
One morning, in June of 2016, an e-mail popped into my inbox from the grandniece of Donaldina Cameron, one of the main characters in The White Devil’s Daughters, my nonfiction account of the women who fought slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown. I’d already been researching and writing my book for more than three years by…
Read MoreFinding Your Literary Community
At this year’s annual gathering of the Community of Writers, I was honored to give the opening talk. Here are my remarks. *** I’m so happy to be here… to help celebrate the rollicking and generous spirit that has infused our Community all these years. How many first-timers are here today? Raise your hands… …
Read MoreRemembering 1882
On Saturday, May 6th, several hundred protestors gathered in San Francisco’s historic Portsmouth Square in Chinatown carrying such signs as “Remember 1882” and “2017 Has Become 1882.” They were there to mark the 135th anniversary of the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first law implemented to exclude a specific ethnic group…
Read MoreGuidebooks to Sin
At opening night of the 2017 Tennessee Williams Festival in New Orleans, I met a librarian who also happens to be a champion ham kicker. She shimmied her way onto the stage of Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carre in New Orleans in a sparkly black top and full-length skirt. Channeling the spirit of one…
Read MoreMark Ho’omalu and a “Kingdom Denied”
“Get your papers!” cried the delivery boys and girls, carrying rolled up copies of a Hawaiian newspaper printed especially for that evening’s show. Wearing natty caps and suspenders, they ran through the aisles clutching copies of the “Star of the Pacific,” yelling, “Get your papers!” Thus began an extraordinary one-night performance of the musical “Kingdom…
Read MoreThe Queen and the Clevelands (Grover and George…)
September 2 is the birthday of Hawai’i’s last reigning monarch, Lili’uokalani. Born in a grass house in 1838 and adopted by Hawai’i’s ruling dynasty, the infant girl who would become Hawai’i’s last queen began her tumultuous life 174 years ago at the base of an dormant volcano in Honolulu. For the past several years, historians,…
Read More“The Wave” by Susan Casey
The ancient Polynesians felt profound respect for the power of the sea. Their custom was to carry ti leafs with them when they went on risky journeys. As Susan Casey reports in her masterful book, The Wave, California-born but Hawaii-bred surfing legend Laird Hamilton, perhaps superstitiously, always carries a ti leaf along with him as he…
Read MoreSusan Orlean on Stagecraft (and How Writing Can Be Like Stripping…)
I just spent the past few days at the 21st Annual Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference. I was on a panel with Andrew McCarthy, who made his name as an actor in “Pretty in Pink,” “St. Elmo’s Fire,” and “Less Than Zero,” and is now an award-winning travel writer for National Geographic Traveler…
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