 Hello and welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us for our online program at Mechanics Institute. We're very pleased to welcome you to our author event, The Bohemians, a novel by Jasmine Darsnick, who will be in conversation with journalist Elaine Ellenson. I'm Laura Shepherd, Director of Events at the Mechanics Institute. And for those of you who are new, the Mechanics Institute was founded in 1854 and is one of San Francisco's most vital literary and cultural centers in the heart of the city. It features a general interest library, an international chess club, ongoing author and literary programs, and our cinema film series on Friday night. Please visit our website for upcoming programs. Also, please note that the library is now open three days a week, several hours a day, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and you can be at the library and visit and get your books at the library just to make a reservation in advance. And we are welcoming you back to the Mechanics Institute on site. Our program will also be followed by a Q&A, so please hold your questions and put them in the chat, and we will get to that after our program. Also, I'd like to make note that both The Bohemians by Jasmine Darsnick and also wherever there's a fight by Elaine Ellenson are available at alexanderbook.com or at one of your local independent bookstores. So now I'd like to introduce the book and also our guests. In The Bohemians, this new novel reveals the life and essence of Dorothea Lang. It captures a glittering and gritty 1920 San Francisco, and the young photographer is in the spotlight. Dorothea Lang in San Francisco, Dorothea is given entree into the monkey block, an artist colony, and the Bohemian heart of the city. And there she meets unforgettable characters such as Mabel Dodge-Lewin and Frida Kahlo, Ansel Adams and D.H. Lawrence and others, and the story unfolds from there. A portrait of an artist and a portrait of a city in 1918, a city of pandemic corruption and anti-immigrant sentimentality, a sentiment. So let me introduce our author, Jasmine Darsnick. Her debut novel was Song of the Captive Bird, which was a New York Times book review editor's choice. She was an Angela's Times bestseller and long-listed to the Center for Fiction Prize and awarded the Writers Center first novel prize. Darsnick is also the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Good Daughter, a memoir of my mother's hidden life. Her books have been published in 17 countries. She was born in Tehran, Iran, and came to America when she was five years old. She holds an MFA in fiction from Bennington College, a JD from the University of California, and a PhD in English from Princeton University. She is now Professor of English and Creative Writing at the California College of the Arts. And Elaine Ellenson is co-author of Wherever There's a Fight, How Runaway Slaves, Suffragists, Immigrants, Strikers, and Poets Shaped Civil Liberties in California, which was a winner of the gold medal in the 2010 California Book Awards. She served as communications director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and editor of the ACLU News and is currently a researcher on civil rights history for the National Park Service. She is a book reviewer as well for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Review of Books and Other Outlets. She is a former reporter and editor for Pacific News Service in California and Southeast Asia. Her first book, which was co-authored with Walden Bello, Development Debacle Debacle. The World Bank in the Philippines was actually banned by the Marcos regime. So please welcome Jasmine Darsnick and Elaine Ellenson. Thank you so much Laura and thank you for that beautiful introduction. Hi Jasmine. I really want to thank you Laura and Pam and the Mechanics Library for inviting me to be part of this program. It's one of my favorite places in San Francisco, and it's just such a lively center and it's nice to be back here even virtually. I'm especially thrilled to be back here to be talking tonight to Jasmine Darsnick, an author that I admire very, very much. So I thought what we would talk about first is the novel, The Bohemians, and we're also going to have Jasmine read to you from the book because so you can get a taste of her beautiful prose. And then I would love to branch out a little bit and just talk about the writing of historical novels and what that means and you know how to grapple with people in history and true stories and what is really true and truer. So I hope that your questions that as Laura said, and we invite you to put in the chat during the whole course of the evening and then Pam will will read them towards the end so that Jasmine can address them can be about this particular book or her earlier books or writing historical novels. So with that Jasmine so nice to see you. So nice to see you too Elaine. Thank you. Let's just start with. Why did you choose Dorothea Lang to write about. And why did you choose to focus on her early life when she arrived in San Francisco in 1918 years before she took the photos that we are so familiar with that I identify with her from the depression, the migrant workers from the dust bowl and the incarceration of Japanese Americans. Why Dorothea Lang. Great question. And first of all, before I say anything, I adore the Mechanics Institute and it's just an honor to be here even virtually, I will run to them as soon as I can in person but just such a venerable and beautiful organization here in San Francisco it's really a joy to be part of their story. And then there's why Dorothea Lang Dorothea Lang, as he said people know her, usually they know her they know that one iconic photograph my grandmother. And that's pretty much it I don't I feel like that is the pretty much the only thing many people know about her, if they know anything. And so I was really interested in her the parts of her story that we didn't know who she, how she became I think I've got a particular fascination with origin stories. When Dorothea Lang came to San Francisco she was 23. She came in 1918 from, she was a New Jersey girl by birth. She lands in San Francisco. Pretty soon after arriving, she is robbed of all of her money. But within a year she manages to establish this fabulous portrait studio. There was a story there. There just was. And I think also being being from Northern California being an immigrant to Northern California to it really, it really fascinated me how did she do it how did she pull it off. With really nothing but her wits, how did she pull herself up like that. So the origin story of a really fabulous woman. I couldn't not do it. Well, you did it so beautifully. But it's not only that you write about somebody that is fairly well known I mean as you said that one photo of migrant mother is something that is so iconic that you know everybody knows it but I think her pictures from the Depression and from Japanese American incarceration. You know she's fairly well known and she, I mean she's quite well known to you know in history and and there have been biographies written about her. So, not just as she well known but I think you were very bold to write the novel in the first person. But because that that supposes that you know what's going on in the mind of this person. How did you decide on that point of view. Yeah, you know I, I had written what a book previously in the first person and I agree I think it was bold it's like the gloves are off you know I'm not pretending that I'm objective in this you know I'm going to presume that I know this woman so that I can get under her skin and tell you the story from. But that's what a novelist can do a historian a respectable historian would never do that I mean they might speculate. But they're not going to go inside the psyche of a person without without evidence and proof of what they were thinking they're going to they're not going to make those leaps. But that's the space a novelist can and I think should occupy is that you have these powers and I think a novelist has the ability to tell a story that history can't or didn't or wouldn't. That's your power. So I felt like I should use it. Well, given that how did you come to get inside her head and and be able to write with her voice. How did you do that. I think it's either because of your research or looking at her photos or then your imagination, you know what what what enabled you to speak in Dorothea Lang's voice in the first person. What I'll say I'll also add about first person is that it's an invitation to the reader. It's a it's that kind of gesture that says come close I'm going to tell you a story. So if you're dealing with a subject that's, this is now 100 years ago. That's a vast gap between the reader of today and a woman who lived 100 years ago and I think the eye is something is a way you can close that distance so that's one thing I'd say. But how do you get there how do you earn it so it's your power but how do you earn it. Is that what I hear you asking. Elaine did not write an autobiography she was pretty reserved in her comments when you read oral histories of her, but her photographs, I think are kind of autobiography. I think you can discern a lot about the woman from the photographs you took what she cared about who she who she thought we should see that we don't. I think she got in her photography that I could kind of extract out and imbue her voice with so that was one method. And then of course, reading everything I could reading anything available to me, you know, really being very thorough with the materials that are there and using those as a way of igniting my imagination. I know you, you have as Laura mentioned you have a PhD and the law degree. So, you are very used to doing research where there's in addition to the photos where they're archival materials that you turn to. As you said, I didn't realize she had done an oral history as well. How did you find everything that you, you know, we're looking forward to, to know about her, Dorothea. Yeah, well, I was fortunate and then I was writing before the pandemic hit and I was able to access the materials at the San Francisco public library. Not so much for them for stories about laying but for that period so for the 1918 1920 for her cohort for the Montgomery block building which was the vibrant bohemian heart of the center at that time so the materials at the San Francisco public library were really valuable. There are in that collection if you go up there I hope, you know, we can all go there soon but they have, you know, they have a file on Montgomery block for example and there's their oral histories in there that have not been published you know but that are freely available should you go looking. So that was one source and the oral histories that were done with Lang were through the University of California so before she died. She was part of a pretty extensive oral history project conducted by the university. And she was, she was well enough known to that there were a lot of newspaper articles written about her at the time, you know, and of course, a lot of fabulous litter art history that's been devoted to her work so it was, you know, compared to the previous subject by my novel song of a captive bird. I had a pretty robust body of material to draw from. Well, as you mentioned it's not just about Dorothea Lang but it's also about that period of time the Spanish flu pandemic and post earthquake and post World War one. So, you invoke an era so beautifully in the book as well. I'm wondering you mentioned the monkey block, which played a central role in that period of time and then in her life. If you could read us that introduction to the monkey block so that we get a sense of what, how Dorothea first learned about the artistic life in San Francisco. And just for just for clarity sake, she didn't live in monkey block, but she was part of the circle of people. So Dorothea Lang's first husband Maynard Dixon was a very established artist in the city when she came along. He was sort of the king of Bohemia then so her, her sort of induction into that world is through her friends and her husband really Do you mean Elaine, do you mean the section let's see my page 69 or so ish. It was where, where she walks down the hall and she sees the easels and she sees the opera singer and is that I'm sorry I didn't mark it. Right we're so I will. I'll show you her. I guess her the first long look she takes at this place. Okay. Yeah, and I'm not going to read a long time. I know it can be it can be too much on the zoom so I'll just I'm reading little tasty bits of it that's all tonight. We're going to get a bunch of tasty bits. Okay, so, so it began my life in San Francisco. When I first arrived in May of 1918, the city belong to the Bohemians, which is to say the poets, the artists, the writers and the vast varied company they attracted. You saw them everywhere but the cafes bakeries restaurants and pubs of North Beach, the small Italian village on Telegraph Hill were bursting with them. They all come from somewhere else and they all had a story to tell. That was another thing about San Francisco. Every time you met somebody, it was like stepping into a story, just as they were making it up. And now I was one of them, or I was starting to be. I really don't want to read much more Elaine just the tiniest bits tonight. Okay, okay, but we're going to ask you to read other tiny bits. Okay. Because they're just some really wonderful, wonderful. I want to give people a sense of your prose as well. Well, as Laura mentioned, you know there's many historical figures in this book. Not just Maynard Dixon and her husband, but you know, Frida Kahlo she meets DH Lawrence, Maple Dodge and so on. But there's some historical figures that you disguise and I'm thinking in particular of Senator James Duval Phelan, who was a major supporter of the Chinese Exclusion Act and a rabid anti Asian politician. But you disguise him by name anyway. Why did you make that decision for him and not for others? That's a good question. If you, I don't want to get too much of the plot away but in the novel James Duval Phelan has a son which he didn't. He did not. And so it was, it was really a way of giving myself the latitude to create a character that I could, I could wholly make up right so the son is invented. But it's, it wouldn't be his, his personality and the family from which he came, I could just very pretty accurately draw from the Phelan, this, the story of James Duval Phelan, the politics of the Phelan's or that particular Phelan anyway. And I could then access the really horrific rhetoric and actual policy that was going on during that time so it's a gesture toward the real some things you can't even make up honestly, his slogan for example the James Duval Phelan slogan keep California white. I mean I did a double and a triple take because it didn't seem possible that someone had run on that campaign but they had so this is what you're doing I think is a novelist is your. There's a, there's a respect for the past but it's not a holy kind of reverence toward it right. If I, if I were only going to stick to what was there. Again I think I've not been really deploying all the powers I have or the tools I have at hand as a novelist. One thing that you did in that sense was to bring to life to very vivid and complex life, Carolyn Lee, her friendship with Dorothea Lang in this book is really the core of the book the friendship I think. And yet, as you mentioned in the, in the author's notes at the end, you know, this woman who plays such a central role in the novel is very briefly and vaguely mentioned in, you know, some of the documentation as the Chinese assistant. You know, or the Oriental girl. So I'm curious that, you know, on the opposite end, and using your novelist skill and artistry that you took a character that was not well known, and you made her very central to the story. Can you tell us about Carolyn Lee and the friendship that she had with Dorothea Lang and why that was so important at that moment in Dorothea Lang's life. Of course, I'm so glad that you've gone right there because I do think that's the heart of the book is the friendship between these two women it's really to me the pulsing heart of it. The in Dorothea Lang's biography and accounts of her life. There is brief, brief mention of a Chinese American woman. Sometimes she's called the mission girl some sometimes she's given, you know, a name that I've from colleagues who know better have told me sounds like a fabricated name. And yet, I think, also, because I'm a novelist and I'm looking as much for what's not there as what is. I knew there was a story there I knew this woman who, who history just had passed by, you know, no one had thought to ask this woman who she was, you know, people, people have all, you know, so many people told their story of their collaboration with Lang that's a voice that unfortunately there's no there's no record of that it's gone it's lost and again being an immigrant myself, or maybe I haven't said that but I think, I think that we have as as novelist and then I think also as novelist who are entering a tradition, and often finding ourselves. That's a very rich place to go as an immigrant as an immigrant writer is thinking of my writing is an opportunity to tell stories that we might not otherwise have. That's how I feel about Caroline so I gave her a name. I gave her top billing. She's right there shoulder to shoulder with Dorothea Lang. And so, so I think, again, it's just, it's what can you do that history could or wouldn't do, you know, how can you use your storytellers heart and mind and words to give us something that would otherwise otherwise be lost. Well, Carolyn Lee is a wonderful character that you've created, and also her major presence in the book, I think. I don't know allows may not be the wrong word but but means that we get a much deeper, more complex understanding of the anti Chinese policies and politics of the time and its actual impact on real people. You know, including Carolyn Lee but also other people from her circumstances. I'm wondering if you could do another reading a short one. About that I have this one I did mark on page 97, bottom of 96 and 97 about what happened to the Chinese women at that time who or girls who were trafficked into this country and specifically into San Francisco. And here there was, there was quite good. There was a lot of historical material, and this chapter happens to be absolutely it's drawn from fantastic historical research into the period and in San Francisco. The one mention I had the one clue I had about this woman was that she had grown up in a mission. There were two of them in the city. One of them was run by a woman named Donald Dina Cameron. She's the subject of a book called the White Devil's Daughters by Julia Flynn Seiler. And this is the novelistic rendition of that mission and it's, it's leader and the women who went through it. In her six years as head of the Occidental Mission Home for Girls. Donald Dina Cameron had already provided shelter to hundreds of babies girls and young women. Trafficking in girls was common and enforcement cursory. Most of Donald Dina's charges were Chinese but over the years that also been many from other Asian countries as well as Latin America. No state run institution would take them and the city was glad, mostly to have them off its hands. Anything Donald Dina had learned could happen to girls in this city. They were bought with ease and sold with impunity. In narrow alleyways and basements and behind barred windows girls as young as nine were drugged and dolled up and dressed in bits of cast off silk. The unruly ones were burned with dripping hot wax seared with metal tongs chained to beds. From here few live longer than four years. When they fell sick from syphilis or flew or mere exhaustion, they were locked into rooms where they either starved to death, or died by their own hands. Cut their throats with kitchen knives slit their wrists with rusted nails, swallowed opium or coal or poison, only to disappear swiftly and without a trace. The night Donald Dina Cameron and her aid set out just past midnight, flanked by two police officers from the city's Chinatown squad. She charged through the brothel on Waverly Place and filed coolly past the myriad familiar horrors. She had made this journey hundreds of times. The devil was here in the dark feted basements below Chinatown but she didn't fear it. She worked and she did it well. But all at once she stumbled on a loose floorboard and that's when it happened when she found the girls penned under the floor. Prying back the board to relieve a trap door Donald Dina found four little girls clinging to one another in a suspended box. They were huddled together. Pale faces turned up toward her their bodies naked except for the rags between their legs. They were so thin their ribs showed one of them was gripping a broom in her small hand and had what looked like a month old baby strapped to her back. And that last girl the one with the broom touching the broom and the baby on her back is Caroline Lee as I imagine her. This is her origin sport story, speaking of origin stories. This is how she's found and then brought into the mission home as one of the charges brought up and and given shelter there. That is such a powerful passage and as you say that, that era is been documented and I'm glad you mentioned Julia Seiler's book, but it's still not that well known you know that the enslavement of the Chinese girls that were brought here. It's, it's really not. I think you in your novel where you forefront it it's, it's that's really important. And thank you. Thank you for that reading. Actually, that leads me to in the context of the times that Dorothea Lang arrived in San Francisco. What, what do you consider some of the issues that were most important that you wanted to sort of amplify in the town that she arrived in. In San Francisco. Yeah, yeah. So there's the pandemic, which I knew would always be an issue that the artistic community in San Francisco had really suffered at the time of the earthquake at has had the whole city of course but the pandemic also was a huge psychological trauma for the city and all of its people it's so how do artists make art within these moments of historic cataclysm. That's one thing I was interested in. I was interested also in the fault lines of California's racial divides, so having grown up in Northern California myself, I did not know much about this history the history of Asian Americans at the turn of the century, even though I myself, you know, I'm I feel like I ought to have known more, but I didn't. So I, the more I looked at this time. I knew that I, I had to look there. I had to look at those fault lines. And then the theme of friendship and the way that it shapes us, Dory and Caroline are from such different worlds but they managed to become genuine friends and it's looking at the ways that we save each other and then sometimes fail each other as friends. So to me, female friendships are endlessly fascinated, fascinating and I, and I felt like that was that was another place I wanted to go with the story. Well, that also leads to thinking about the role of women in the arts and in the professions at that time which I found really interesting the way you portrayed that because when Dorothea Lang came to San Francisco, she met Consuela Kanaga and Imogen Cunningham photographers, both of who were professional, successful professional photographers, and had quite an influence on her. I want to talk about that. How, how easy was it for women to enter into a profession like that and how about these two role models. How did you come to learn about them. They're really important in the story too and so much fun. There's a reason the books called the Bohemians because there are so many of them. You know they all, I think they're all so terrific I almost feel like I could have written a novel about any one of these women but what happened in San Francisco is that after the earthquake, a number of photographers so the established photographers and I'm just going to speak about the photography community. So the photographers had to leave because there was no work for them. Eventually, Dorothea Lang's own mentor Arnold Gante, who'd been a very successful portrait photographer in the city he left, and he went back to New York City, Lang meets him so he had a conversation about San Francisco through Arnold Gante, but she also, she also had heard about, you know, the devastation to the city. Now when, when the earthquake happens and there's a sort of exodus of artists, it opens up a space, it allows women to come in and to enter a profession that in San Francisco it was not as male dominated as it was in New York at that time. In New York you have Alfred Stieglitz who's got, you know, a real kind of, you know, a grip on the photography community over there. There was no corresponding figure like that. There was no Stieglitz in San Francisco. In San Francisco had were these women who were very successful. Imogen Cunningham was already a successful portrait photographer when Lang meets her, and Consuelo Canaga, I mean to read, to read Dorothea Lang's descriptions of Consuelo Canaga, you feel the admiration and love she had for this woman. So decades before Lang herself was going into the streets with a camera, Consuelo Canaga was doing that in her work with the Chronicle. So, these two women who were truly Lang's friends and mentors and colleagues, they provided her a model she would not implement their lessons necessarily for another decade or so. But in them she saw what was possible for her. That's huge that's tremendous for Lang when she comes to San Francisco. That's amazing. I have to say, when we moved into the ACLU office here in San Francisco, there was a closet that had some portraits of early ACLU leaders by Imogen Cunningham. And we were like blown away. There was Sarah Bardfield and there was Ernie Besig and, you know, they were portraits by Imogen Cunningham so it, and these were taken, you know, in probably in the 30s. And it was really quite amazing to see them. So I was so curious to know that these women were quite prominent and successful. And so Dorothea Lang, when she sets up her studio, I mean she had models, in a sense, right, to do that. Yeah, and I think it's important to showcase that because so often with artists we think they're just born, you know, they're born geniuses and, and it's sometimes it's true that that myth of the solitary genius but Lang entered a community and she was fortified by the company of these women. So it was a wonderful opportunity to shine a light on their collaborations and their friendships. Yeah, I love that about the book too. You know, one of the key sites in the novel obviously you've read about it Monkey Block is the building on Montgomery Street. Today that's the site of the giant trans America building in the center of the city's financial district. Do you see any symbolism there. I think it was torn down for. Yeah, it was an artist center and now it's like this finance center I don't know I just struck me as quite a unique address you know it does tell a story and I, you know when I first heard about that place it seemed like a fairy tale because I certainly couldn't imagine coming to San Francisco and like Lang did and having no money but finding this, this place where there was a genuine community and, and there was a space for artists to live and do their work you know I think of course where it feels like a very distant world for us now. And I, you may have mentioned this earlier but I think it's important and I don't think this is a spoiler at all that it is Carolyn Lee who introduces her to that community, and you know their friendship is forged there with other people there as well too. I just loved that she was the person who not not not Maynard Dixon you know and not somebody else that, but it was Carolyn Lee who brought her there I thought that was a beautiful way to show the development of their relationship. So I want to go. Before we turn to some. There's many questions from from the audience but I do want to just sort of sort of talk about the role of the historical novel. You write in the author's note in fiction you can interpret history and tell your own tale. And then I just came across when I was grappling with the idea of historic novels. This quote, which I thought was interesting from Hillary Mantell. The novelist has a responsibility to adhere to the facts as closely as possible. And if they are inconvenient. That's where the art comes in. You must work with intractable facts and find the dramatic shape inside them. So this is a discussion, probably at many many sessions of writers conferences and so on but how close do you feel you need to adhere to what actually happened and how can you use what actually happened to shape the story, you want to tell. I really like that quote by Hillary Mantell, who of course is so skilled at this. I think if you like this work you're somebody almost like a poet who likes form their poets who don't like form at all and blast form open, and they're there are poets who find forms like the sonnet in gender curiosity and invention in them. I think history for me is a kind of form and I like the constraint I like that I have to work within certain parameters so I do make things up but the rule that I have for myself is that whatever I make up has to feel consonant with the truth. Right. So I invented Caroline Lee, but I knew knowing things work looking at it that she cared deeply about the condition of immigrants of Asian Americans if you know her work during the Japanese internment. Actually at the time of her death she was really working hard she wanted to do a series on the social justice movements in the south. And it was a lifelong interest it was in her soul interest but the invention of Caroline Lee telling that story. It feels to me consonant and therefore respectful enough to the historical record. Yeah. And so that's that's pretty much my rule for myself and and how I how I proceed with my work thankfully there's still a lot of room for invention. You can pluck out characters who were never, you know there, and you can put them in conversation. And that's so exciting and interesting to me, shining a light on the, on the people who are, you know, only ever in the background, that's tremendous for me. Yes. And, and we, and there also has to be the various similitude that that means that somebody who knows that area very well like say a photographer reading the novel would not would would believe. You know the way you describe her camera, or how she sets up the studio for example, I mean it has to be still. fictionalized obviously you didn't know, you know exactly what her camera looked like perhaps but it has to be so close to the truth that somebody who does know that era very well. It doesn't see that as an obstacle. Does that make sense. And, and I think you know thankfully I really enjoy that kind of work, I absolutely love research you almost have to pry me off my research books. And, and so that's a great pleasure and it's also fun as a novelist you know you're also choosing the world you're going to inhabit for a few years to three four years, you know. And in traveling with Dorothea Lang through 1920 San Francisco 1918 San Francisco, I had to learn something about photography I had to learn something about the city I had, you know, and, and now I'm writing about Hollywood in the 1930s and I'm having to learn about being an actress in the 1930s you know, but you get to live all these lives and it's just for me incredible fun. I love that I mean we talked my co author Stan Yogi and I about having research rapture right which is like you're so you're in the library and you're doing this research and, you know, you come across something like the menu from the votes for Women Club in 1911 or something that's just fantastic and you look up and it's dark out and you think, Oh, how did that happen you know the research is great. Are there so. And I want to say, it's not, you know, I get really happy I get really excited when people say I read your novel and then I went looking for Lang you know and I wanted to read her biography and I wanted to look at her pictures. It's just so fantastic, but there are so many people out there honestly having written a book about an Iranian poet, you know who's so accomplished and fascinating but honestly, a nonfiction account of her life would have reached very you know probably a much smaller group of readers you than that and so I think stories invite us in and, and I, I relish that I honor it, but it's also so exciting and wonderful for people then to be curious and want to go to read a biography right. I'm all for that I'm all for that. Give me my fiction and the pleasure of the story, but absolutely there's there's so much to explore. I agree, I'm actually in a cross country family zoom book club with 11 year old niece and nephew, and we read historical fiction in fact it's called the Ellison family historical fiction book club. And, you know, we've read books that they've selected about Chernobyl called Blackbird girls about the Japanese American incarceration. And it's just amazing how they can learn so much about different countries and different eras and history and and still be very, very absorbed by by the by the stories. And I think we need the stories as much as we can, you know, more stories more stories because for many of us these were not stories that we read in school. They're not stories that we feel, you know, maybe we feel we can access through more academic type treatments, you know, so more of these stories seems to me incredibly, it's a wonderful way of learning about the past. Can I ask you who are some of your favorite historical novelists or novels. I mean, not not to, you know, put you on the spot but you know I do, I love Paula McClain's Paris wife I've always loved that book I think that's a, you know that's one of the books that really invented the form or reinvented the form. She does, she does such a beautiful rich evocation of Paris in the 1920s, and I love that book, Isabella Andy's books I don't know if you would necessarily call them historical fiction. But they are definitely at that intersection of history and fiction, they are imaginings of historical times and places. I love her work as well. And Sarah Waters is another novelist she's a British novelist who does, I mean, incredibly kind of sly and witty things with women's history, I love her book, Tipping the Velvet. Oh, those are great recommendations and I'm just thinking about you know the sly and witty I mean, sometimes when you can't tell exactly what happened like in say in Colson Whiteheads, the Underground Railroad or Tony Morrison's Beloved, these authors go into sort of a fantasy or a magical realism world like Isabella Andy so that you can convey the spirit of what happened, even if it isn't exactly, you know, documented in history. Yeah. Well I think there's so many questions that I think Pam wants to open up the floor to our questioners I, I have a million more questions but I know we'll get a chance to talk again so I will see the mic to Troy of the Mechanics Institute who will turn to the questions in the chat. And if you have a question that you would like to ask in the chat. Please, please write it down and, and we'll get to as many as we possibly can. Thank you Jasmine so much. My pleasure, that was great. My question in chat is from Heidi Asundi. And we noticed I mean you did mention, Jasmine that you're writing about Hollywood now in the 30s and so Heidi's question is, who are you going to focus on in your next origin story project. I will not reveal her name. She was, you know, quite a sensation in those years and those times. And, and I think that's all I can say. Yeah, but she's an actress from the 1930s and 40s. Well we have a hint anyway. Yeah, so. So the next questions from Margo Schefter. Curious to know if you talk with Betsy Partridge Dorothy is grand goddaughter, who lives in Berkeley as part of your research Betsy's father Ron Partridge was Dorothy is photographic assistant. I did not approach her and I, and I feel like it's, it gets very complicated once you start talking to family. And I don't, I don't know. I don't know, really, I've never met any and I'm sure they're wonderful people many of them have created amazing works of art about Dorothea documentaries written books and, but I think my experience from song of a captive bird was that once you start interviewing the family. And I think in a complicated relationship to the story that the version that the family wants to tell can feel like the story you have to tell and I did not want to be in that space I wanted to be able to look at all that was there, you know, and of course I was looking at the interviews they had done and, and working as much as I could it materials interviews articles about her family but getting into that dialogue. It's tricky and I just did not want to go there. The next questions from Trish Gorman, Trish Gorman to as a teacher of creative writing at CCA is there one particular book you recommend these days for writing fiction. Gosh, one, just one book for writing fiction. I, I really admire John Gardner's books I've actually got a couple of my students in the audience so can I just say hello to them. And they, you know, that it's just such a joy to teach writing and I'm always looking for good materials to share. I have not found one single book that is, you know, I can just sort of hand them. I haven't found it yet but John Gardner's books are really fantastic if we're talking about fiction, creative nonfiction. Mary Carr's writing on memoir is really insightful. Those are two, those are two that I would go to John Gardner and Mary Carr. Next questions from Carol Verberg. How much about lungs feelings goals etc for her work were you able to hear in your own words from the oral history. And I know the second of her her next part of the question is I think you did cover that did you find her photos themselves more revealing. Yeah, I think I talked a little bit about this early in our time together I, I was searching wherever I could so whether it was written material or photographs but I do think that the photographs offered something really, really special and otherwise knowledge and information that would not necessarily have come through the words yeah. Her photographs were. Some of the most intimate documents I could find to tell me who she was. The next questions from margin Kamali. I'm Jasmine I know your other two books a century around Iran and or Iranians, for the most part, what was it like to make the leap away from writing about Iran was it liberating, tough to do. How much time do we have. This is, this is, this is a really hard question, I have a friend at us, a colleague of mine, Laleh had to be who says, she thinks bohemians is one of the first maybe it's the second or third, both by an Iranian in America that's not about Iran or Iranians or Iranian Americans. That was a lot that was a mouthful, but there have been Iranians in America for 40, more than 40 years now. And it's really notable even if I'm the fifth person writing about America with nothing explicitly about Iran. For me, those first two books were absolutely the books I had to tell, and I think I, that was what I had to do I had to tell the two books about Iran because they were, they were that important to me and to tell them was absolutely But then I came to a point where I felt there were other stories I want to tell and other places I wanted to go so I had dwelled in mid century Iran for almost seven years I was ready to go somewhere else, and so I decided to go to San Francisco. All that said, I think, being Iranian being an immigrant. It's absolutely in the book, even if it's not in the book. So the focus on Caroline Lee, the, the, the long gaze at what it means to be unseen. These are absolutely born of my experience as an Iranian woman as a woman of color. What next questions from he is swan hyzer. How much did the radical politics of the era come into the writing and the story. And what are the important elements of writing about someone not of your own racial or cultural background. Two excellent questions and hi is one of my former students. Fabulous questions. The first one, the radical politics came into view because it was in people's art. So when you were looking at the photography the art of the time, even though I wasn't working with the politics at the forefront of my mind, looking at the art and the artists, these were issues that they were wrestling with America just come out of World War One. It was a very xenophobic time. There were, there were brutal clampdowns on. It was the first red wave or red scare first red scare. And, and so all of that was there and it became, I would say one of the strongest guides for me in crafting the plot, the politics really did help shape my view of this time and these characters, and then the other aspects of writing about someone. This is very hard. This was another one of those leaps so the question is what is, I guess, what does it mean to write about someone who's not from your own racial or cultural background. This is why I made Caroline, we mixed race because mixed race is something I understand and I felt that I could access that in my self in my heart in my history. And maybe, maybe to me it felt like it wasn't. Not that I couldn't do it, but maybe it was not my story to tell to make her entirely to make her full Chinese, maybe felt a little bit like a place I, I don't want to say shouldn't go but it wasn't where I went in the end. And I think it's important to be mindful of what you're doing as you're doing it. One of the other sources of research is that I was looking at oral histories and memoirs by people of mixed race during that time there are some, and so whatever material of that kind I could find I was reading really closely and trying to be respectful to whatever is no and what is there. I think that's those are all the questions we have right now in in the, the chat. So, if anyone else has a question, you know, go ahead and type it in. Otherwise Elaine if you have more questions, or Jasmine's you have any more comments you can also jump jump in again. Well, I was fascinated by your, your story about your own view of yourself as a writer and immigrant, a woman of color, who had been an outsider coming into the city. Did that give you special insight also into Dorothea Lane. Somebody who was an outsider coming to a new place and seeing things with new eyes I'm wondering how, how much your own. I'm working off the other person's question because I think it's really interesting that the many facets of your writing persona, you know, how that affected your sense of Dorothea Lane. Yeah, I think we all, we all absolutely and, you know, necessarily come at people's stories with our own stories and our own, you know, I am interested in parts of laying that maybe would not have interested you. I just don't know, you know, to me it was really interesting that she had come with nothing she was in a sense a migrant herself when she came in 1918. I was also really interested laying had polio she had survived polio as a child so she had a disability that made her very attentive to other people's hardships. That was really interesting to me. And, and so I do think that, again, not so much me because I was so I was five when I came but thinking about my mother my grandmother, you know, who really just wrestled a life out of so little. Yes, I was interested in laying because hers was a version of their story. And do you think you have a different way of observing and writing at just as she did observing, rather than somebody who was like from that place right. I do think there's something about this being a stranger it's not for nothing that so many of our great American writers and I'm not putting myself in this pantheon but I think when you're an immigrant or somehow from the outside or not quite from the center. It does give you a different perspective and I think that can be a really rich place to write from. I think with laying. Polio this is her great trauma in her life but that's also what then gave her so much empathy and what made her great I think ultimately. And so I think you know things to me that in my own life, like immigration or various things that my family went through. And I see that as hard as they were for my family. They also gave me stories to tell. They gave me a curiosity about other people's stories you know and so there is something about the side of our trauma being also very close to the side of creativity and invention and survival honestly. I have another question from highest fun hyzer. How do you see the story connecting to the present moment. I have had so many people ask me if I, they don't say it quite this way but you know if I had do I have prophetic power. You know how did I see into the future did I know there was going to be a pandemic and of course that I do not have any of these powers but I think anytime you're looking closely at anything. You know the world to you. So even though I was looking at 1918 it was showing me 2018. Some of these stories it's not so much that history is repeating themselves so for example something very prominent in the book, the hate crimes, the violence, the legislation against the Chinese. It's very eerily similar to the rhetoric against immigrants Muslims particular in the last four years or so, but it isn't that the history keeps repeating itself is that it never stopped if you are an immigrant. The story of Caroline Lee is a story, you know, because it maybe happened to your mother your brother your sister your friend yourself right that those stories are familiar to us and they are very current. And they never stopped happening. I have a question from Sarah compost. Can you talk more about the intimacy of length portraits and how you translated those into language. That is really such a special quality of her work is that with moments seconds she was able to forge a connection to her sitters. When she's doing that work in the portrait studio. That's one thing because you get several shots at that right you can you can take many pictures but out on the street you, you have moments you have seconds. For my understanding she had a method she never just started shooting people, you know she she said I never stole a picture is something she said of her own work so she'd buy her description is that she'd always first approach them and start talking about herself. And I think the limp that she tried to hide for a lot of her life when she was going out into the camps. She would let that show because she do showing her vulnerability would open people up to her. And, and so that was another, another one of her, one of her qualities that she bring to those encounters is showing her own vulnerability. And, and I think that that's then really being present in the moment that's that is how she forges that connection is that she is there for people and she said, if there's a beautiful line she says, I felt that that often people had been waiting for years. They've been waiting for years for somebody to ask them what their story was to just look at them longer than a second, you know. And so she was there in a way that was profound. Okay, I have one question from Laura, Laura Shepherd. Did you look at contemporary journalistic photographers. Who and how did Dorothea influence photographers today. That's a great question. I know it seems that she suddenly has become very important that you know once moment. She was so much in the public eye which also she wasn't when I was writing in 2016 she was not quite you know in people in the public eye. One person I will talk about who's not contemporary but who really, it seems to me really interesting. I'm not a student of hers but Gordon Parks, the great African American photographer. When he sees what Lang could do in, you know, out in the fields and by the highways and you know at the, at the migrant camps and all that. He is a young boy realizes that there's power in a camera and he wants it. And so, though they, you know, they, I don't know that they were he did did work for that WPA, but, but he, he, he very much drew from the power of her portraits and if you don't know what in parks is where he created an extraordinary body of work himself, documenting the lives of African Americans. I think that's again, I think the chat, we don't have any more questions in chat. So, I keep the writing process, can I just ask one more. Do we have time. Go for it. Go for it. Um, Jasmine when you're working on a novel. Do you find yourself reading. Do you find yourself reading other novelists, or in addition to the direct research, or, or novels about the same period of time, or nonfiction about that period of time or things completely different. How do you, what do you read when you're writing. I do read a lot of nonfiction because honestly I find it really exciting and it stimulates my imagination. So there's that, but then otherwise I'm reading the best fiction I can because I am hoping that it will magic magic on me. And I think as a writer, I, I am entranced by the musicality of language and certain writers for me. The cadence of their words, if I'm stuck if I don't know where to go I just pick up, you know, is about one of the Isabella and these books and I just read it aloud, and the rhythm of it gets me going. So I'm reading the best I can I'm probably grabbing some of these old favorites that I mentioned to you. And I'm, you know, I'm really hoping that that that somehow by exposing myself to the richest best writing. Well, your earlier book was about a poet right do you do the poetry as well. I did for that book. I did read. Yeah, I don't not as much nowadays but that is an incredible exercise for any writer of nonfiction or fiction to read a poem of a day. I, my students probably know this about me but I, I really feel no word should be wasted and that is a lesson that we learn from the poets, not a word wasted, you know, you think oh with the novel you've got all the space and if it's messy, maybe somebody won't notice the messy bits over there. No, take it, take it like a poet would and make sure every word counts. That's great. We have a, we have a question from somebody who runs a book group I know very well Holland Lynch, she says Jasmine. Do you think you are attracted to your subjects in part because they are storytellers in much the same way as you are, just through a different media, ie photography, acting and poetry. Holly Holland unit you got my number. You, that's absolutely why I'm interested in them. And for me, I think it's that I'm so interested in creativity so I'm writing about photographers it's so different from what I do in many many ways but the courage it takes to be an artist is just, it's so extraordinary to me it's not for nothing I think we're fascinated in artists lives and we read by our I sure do I read a lot of biographies. And I think it's this is I think that it's, it's not that they're famous but it's that they have the courage to make something out of often the worst but serves them up you know and that, even if we don't think we're artists, we don't think we're creative is that lesson is something we need so much because life really, really beats us down doesn't it you know and so these models that the artists provide us are. It's sustenance, it's guidance. Great question. Thank you. And I think that's a wrap for tonight. Thank you, Elaine Ellenson and Jasmine darsik for inspiring us. Both with your, with your work and you novel and also your views about writing and historical fiction and so I know we have quite a few writers in our audience tonight so I hope that this is provided you with a lot of inspiration for your own work as we go on. Again, our library is slowly opening so we, we look forward to seeing you in person will probably start our author events in the fall. But in the meantime, if you're doing research on your book, or a poem or whatever your medium come down to the Mechanics Institute and we always look forward to seeing you whether it's in person or on zoom. So thank you, thank you so much for a really great, great evening. Thank you so much everyone for coming it's been really wonderful to have this time. Yes. Thank you so much for inviting me and Jasmine it's just a wonderful pleasure to talk with you about about your work. Likewise, thank you Elaine and thank you Mechanics Institute. Everybody, if anyone wants to just unmute and say some goodbyes so just close the doors. Say hi. Hi, great. Thank you Jasmine. Thank you my john so good to see friends all the new. Oh my gosh, your faces I missed you. Thank you. Yeah, next time in person with lots of hugs. Bye. Thank you everybody. Thank you. Thank you again. Okay, close the doors by everybody and thank you for coming. Thank you, thank you.