 Hello and welcome everyone. Happy Friday. We're very excited for you to join us here at Mechanics Institute for our online Writers' Lunch. Writers' Lunches are held every third Friday of the month. We hope that this will be one of many Writers' Lunches that you join at Mechanics Institute. We just started talking about how we might start to offer our Writers' Lunches back in person in a hybrid manner so people can join in person or online. So look out for that over the next few months as we begin to welcome people back on site and continue to maintain this virtual Writers' Lunch. My name is Alyssa Stone. I am the Senior Director of Programs here at Mechanics Institute and I'm happy to welcome you all to our Writers' Lunch today. For those who may not know, 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. We are a true gem of San Francisco. Mechanics Institute features a general interest library, an international chess club, ongoing author and literary programs, and the Cinema Lit film series. Please visit our website milibrary.org to check out everything that we've got going on here on site and online. For example, this evening we are showing the fabulous musical film Cabaret starring Joel Gray and Liza Minnelli, which I am personally very excited about. We also have a chess tournament tomorrow and we've got author talks throughout the coming weeks. We've got lots going on so please check out milibrary.org to find out more about everything we have to offer. And if you have not been here on site, please join us for a Wednesday tour. We offer free tours of the building every Wednesday at noon, so please come on by and check out our incredible space. Today's discussion will include Q&A with the audience. You are welcome to add your questions to the chat and I will read them out loud. If you are invited, you will be welcome to ask your questions aloud when the floor opens. And please mark your calendars for the writer's lunch on Friday, August 18 for the topic of balancing authorship and publishing. The moderator Cheryl Beesboot will be joined by two multi-talented authors, Ginny Grossenbacher and Osiris to discuss the joys and challenges of writing and publishing. And I will add that information to the chat as well right now so that you can get yourself registered. So, how do you find, choose and research histories that have been forgotten? How do you decide which form to pursue, whether article, nonfiction book, fiction book, poetry, or other? And how do you engage readers who might not be history buffs? We are joined by three award-winning writers, poet, Heather Orbeau, journalist, Alyssa Greenberg, and author Julia Shearys to discuss writing overlooked histories moderated by Cheryl Beesboot. And I'm excited to pass the conversation torch over to Cheryl after I read a quick bio of hers because y'all want to know about Cheryl. Cheryl is an award-winning author and Pushkart Prize nominee and an Oakland multidisciplinary writer whose autobiographical and fiction short story collections, along with her lyrical and stunning poetry, artfully succeed in getting across deeper meanings about the politics of race and economics without breaking out of the narrative. An inaugural Oakland Poet Laureate runner-up, she is also a popular teacher, literary reader, presenter, storyteller, curator, and emcee or host for literary and poetry events. Please join me in welcoming Cheryl, who will be our moderator for today's discussion. Thank you so much, Alyssa. Alyssa with the Y. And thank you, Heather. Alyssa with the I and Julia for being here. I want to dive right in with my first question. And Alyssa with the I, I'd like you to go first in terms of answering this question. So all of these figures that you have all have written about in either narrative or poetic form were hidden. Tell us a bit about who they are just briefly, and how you found them. Sure. Okay, so hi everybody. I was so I was thinking about like what do I have to share today. And the first thing that came to mind actually had never known where this quote came from but it's apparently William Faulkner, which is the past is never dead it's not even past. And so what I have found is that if you have your eyes open, there's bits of history everywhere. So for example like one of my major stories in this genre is about the origins of Rocky Road ice cream which was invented in Oakland. And I found that story on the back of the menu at Fenton's Creamery in Oakland, which anybody who is local. I recommend making a pill over there because they have the best ice cream, but I thought like, wait, could that be true and then it turns out. There is a lot to be said about this, which you can read about in court if you're interested. And then a friend of mine saw a bust of Feng Ru, who was this Chinese aviator who lived in Oakland during the 1890s and then on, and he was engineered the first flight on the west coast. And there's just one little bust about him or of him at the Oakland Aviation Museum at the airport. And my friend texted me a photo of it and said, Do you know anything about this. And it turns out there's also so much to be said about that, which ended up as a story in Alta. There's the Oakland Black Cowboys still do an annual parade in Oakland on the first, I think it's the first Saturday of October. If you start to dig into the history there there's so much to be said about what's not being said when we talk about the history of the west. And then even just like on all of the Oakland Street science, there's an oak tree. Why is that you don't have to look very far to find these little bits. And so that's how I ended up finding this gentleman who I think now must be 97, who was one of the last people who remembers why Oakland, where the Oakland tree came from. I don't know if that answers your question but it's at least a start. Yes, that's great. Thank you so much. Julia, how about you. Oh gosh, and well, I'm a journalist by trade as well as Alyssa and my first two books were really sad one was a memoir that was sad. The second was about the Jonestown tragedy. And then my third book is a biography of Elsie Robinson who used to be a household name she was a Hearst columnist from the 20s to the 50s and she's a local woman she got her start at the Oakland Tribune. And she has an amazing rags to riches story. I didn't come across her. In fact, it was a former CNN producer who found out about her and needed help turning her idea for a book into a book so we wrote the biography together. Wow. So there's all kinds of ways to find people how about you Heather. Oh gosh, well, I'll also hold up my book so I did a collection of poetry called monarch that just came out in March that is the entire book is overlooked histories of the US West that I was. So California, Oregon, Nevada, Washington. And for me. There were many different ways that I came across some of these stories, some of them. I knew but was surprised that other people didn't know. So things that you know hyper local knowledge that I thought everybody knew and then even realizing that once I went down those rabbit holes, I didn't even know the full story. Even though, you know, I might have learned it in schools in Reno in particular, but you know there were a lot of rabbit holes that I went on or I would be. You know I listened to podcasts like East Bay yesterday for fun. And, you know, sometimes they'll say something in passing, like one of the guests will just say something in passing, and I'll be like wait, what now. I'll go searching down this rabbit hole and that's what led to two of the poems which I, you know sent to Liam O'Donohue was like thank you so much for doing your thing. Your guest was talking about this other thing but you know they mentioned the eucalyptus trees, for instance, in in parts of the Bay Area there's clumps of eucalyptus like the Albany Hill has clumps of eucalyptus. And that those were put there because they're fast growing and they could ask, act as a sound barrier, because there were so many explosions from gunpowder and TNT manufacturing happening in in different places around the East Bay, as well as the same thing is true for San Francisco there's personally San Francisco that they plan in eucalyptus groves because they were doing, you know, TNT mining and such out there, but I didn't know that I think most people don't know that most people don't know that those were majority labored by Chinese immigrants. And so yeah, you know you go to start going down the rabbit hole and then they were talking about the fact that California grizzlies are different species. And it was just, again, like a very quick little note and I was like wait, wait a second. Yeah, came across monarch for whom the book is named after and there is a poem about monarch the last California grizzly. So they no longer exists we very successfully hunted them to extinction, but put them on our flag. Well as as a writer let me let me continue with you, Heather. As a as a writer a poet. What advice would you give to writers in terms of the research that they need to do to to really flesh out the hidden histories of the subject matter that they want to tackle. Well my name is Heather and I'm a recovering journalist and I like a good rabbit hole, and I really I also will do interviews with experts, if not people who are living history themselves for whatever the topic is that I, I try and do at least try you know the principle of triangulation I want at least three different sources coming from three different places that are verifying a fact that could be not at face value. I definitely want you know primary and secondary sources if available. There is a 19 page bibliography that goes into my poetry book and they're there are footnotes, and I think not to you know if you if you choose to look at history through the poetic lens which I very much encourage because in one page you can say a lot, and you can bring the emotion and really bring people in and spark their curiosity in a way that doesn't feel overwhelming that a book length might feel for some people. Or even an article with our, you know, short attention spans these days might feel overwhelming for people. I personally love all all of it. I would write all of it but I really encourage people to try the poetic and to not be afraid of the research and there's the research may lead you to someplace even more magical than what you thought you were going to be writing about. Exactly. That is exactly true. So Julia, how about you. What advice would you give to writers on research. Ah, gosh research. Research can be very fun. It can be endlessly seductive. It can be an elaborate form of procrastination when you're on a deadline for a book. And so my problem personally when I'm writing and I feel stuck or I'm not quite sure what I want to say is I will click on to the internet and start researching and be just sucked into these wormholes and then at one point hours later maybe think like, wait, what am I doing here. How did I get here. I am so lost right now. This is nothing to do with my subject matter. I need to get back to the story. Personally what I find is outlining is my best friend so if before I go into a book certainly but even like a long journalistic project or an essay. I'd like to have a sketch out an essay of what I'm trying to say what the theme is what the main points or scenes are, and kind of a sense of, you know, what is the what is the whole story about it can't just be a collection of loose anecdotes you have to inject this story. This writing with some meaning. So what is the underlying meaning of the story I'm trying to to relay. But really, I also teach creative writing narrative nonfiction, and I'm always telling my students to, you know, to have some type of outline or sketch out ideas of what the theme is. What are the big beats of the story. What is the story arc, and this can be like a living document it may change as you do more research and make discoveries. But it's good to have like that sense of a blueprint of like a sense that there is something there you're not this isn't fiction where you're just following the headlights into the the darkness or whatever I think that was William Faulkner to there it's if it's a true story especially there's already like pieces of the story that you can extract and hang the writing on. Wonderful. All of those are just wonderful points. So, Julia. Yeah, what advice would you give for research. Alyssa. You're talking to me. Alyssa with the eye. Well, so I think that my advice would probably be a combination of what Julia and Heather said. What what Heather said about the points that make you sort of stop and say wait what, like those are always what I'm looking forward to. I feel like that's really key in terms of finding stories it's following your nose, where you see like something that makes you think like oh there's more to that that you know the the the moment that I was like wait could it possibly be true that they this this like little ice cream parlor invented rocky red ice cream. So, I think trust trusting yourself, then finding resources so there's also I mean especially if you live anywhere near university there's all kinds of really interesting archives for my rocky road story I went deep down to also a dairy rabbit hole in the archives at UC Berkeley. And the Oakland history room has been a huge boon for me in terms of so it's within the Oakland public library system but there's librarians, who's like whole job is to just maintain these this like really amazing archive of local newspapers and and like flyers and and it's all categorized by like event, and they really get excited to help you so I mean, you know not everybody lives here and not every story is going to be an Oakland history room but chances are, you have an Oakland history room near you, or something similar or archive or and then similar to what Julia said about sort of figuring out when to stop. So, you know you want to be balancing the triangulation you want to be really thorough about like what is what's a fact, how do we decide what is true and honestly I feel like it's not always that easy to do that when you're talking about an like nobody alive remembers, but you can do your best. But there is so the anecdote that I always share is one from a journalism school mentor, who was writing a book about the history of the abortion debate, and she was just like researching and researching. And at did ended like the timeline kept stretching she kept telling her publisher I need more time. And finally at dinner. She said over dinner to her, her husband. You know I was thinking that I should maybe learn Latin so that I can read Thomas Aquinas in the rhythm, and he said to her, No, this has gone too far. And so like that became the sort of the metaphor the symbol for like over reporting over researching is like don't learn Latin. There's a point at which you have gone as far as you're going to need to go. So like keeping an eye on that and reeling yourself in when you reach that point I think is also important. Oh, you guys this is also wonderful this is some really really good advice. I'd like to open. I'd like to ask if there's anything in the chat, Alyssa. There have been many fabulous comments in the chat so I'm going to back up and just read a couple of the comments which might spark some additional conversation and for our listeners and viewers if you'd like to add any questions, general questions or specific questions to one of the speakers please feel free to pop them in. So, a question, a comment from Sandy for Alyssa also writing a biography of Henry G. Fenton and of course rocky road ice cream. So very fun that you mentioned. And it sounds like Sandy lives in San Diego and nobody knows about Fenton which is a true crime to not know about Fenton. And then a couple other things there have been some links that have been popped in a comment from Beth about Glen Canyon Park being was the home to a dynamite factory and comment from Lynn about Heather's monarch is a beautiful read and important history and poetic form. A comment from Michael, who also did some research during coven and found librarians were very helpful in finding documentation, especially special collections, and another comment from Beth highlighting SF libraries history archive at the main branch, a fantastic. And then a comment also looks like from Beth about one of their friends named Allison, who learned medieval scots to research their book on the witch trials ashes and stone. So, lots of lots of juicy things that have been popping up as y'all have been talking about research and your lines of interest and inquiry. If you have a question for any of our speakers please feel free to pop them in the chat. And for now I'll pass it back to Cheryl. All right. So, I'd like to know how each of you decided how you would present these hidden histories. So Heather, what drew you to the poetic form. Yeah, well I first want to give a shout out to bankrupt library at UC Berkeley and every every major university is going to have something similar but bankrupt library is very very special especially if you want. Old timey documents that you need to wear gloves for from early European settler time of the West Coast they. Wow. And I say European settler but really, you know, everybody was settling at that time everybody was coming out for the gold rush but it's just a way to say, you know pre pre gold rush and gold rush era. They have a lot of documents. For me. I chose poetic form. I kind of dumbed into it in some ways so I had written. A piece. I think I think the order is that I first wrote fugo which is a poem I did about the only bombing that happened on US soil during World War two, which was from these aerial balloons that the Japanese. sent over they sent over hundreds of them only one successfully landed in Southern Oregon wilderness and killed five people who were civilians on a picnic. So I came across I don't remember how I came across it, but I did some deep research onto it and just felt like, Oh my God this one man's life, the pastor who survived. Even though his, his pregnant wife and three teens that they had brought on to this picnic for Sunday school type picnic. And they all died, but his life was just a crazy thing and I felt like the, the irony of his life because there's more to his story than just it starts with this but it ends with something else. And then I just served in. In a poem, like you could, you could highlight these arcs very quickly and get to that gut punch really quickly through the book. And and then I was driving up to my family used to have gold claims up in the SISQ and I was driving up there. And I started realizing, you know, oh I don't even know, like it's a place I've gone to my entire life spent full summers many, many, many most summers when I was kid up there. And yet I don't really know the history I don't even know the geographical history let alone the human history of that location, knowing that for sure humans diverted like maybe that river isn't the original river run. Yeah, I started doing some research thinking, oh maybe I'll do something bigger on the salmon river and then I just realized no, you know, I just need to do these poems these poems just need to be the, the, the histories I wish I had been taught. So weirdly presented itself it was not an immediate, you know, the news, the news works right. It's to you the way it comes to you. How about you, Julian. Why did you decide to write your history in the form that you did. So like I mentioned earlier, this was not something I found this topic. It was a woman who was a former CNN producer who the story was she was cleaning out her mother's house after her mother died and she was in college when her mother died. And as she was putting away her mother's books, this poem fluttered out of an old book, and she bent down and started to read it and it was a poem by LC Robinson, who is the woman we wrote the biography about but she found this beautiful poem that was about pain and grief and losing and she went to the internet and tried to find out more about her and kind of ran into, you know, a robot there was there was nothing out there. And then she tried to write a book proposal and sell it but it didn't quite work so she then hired me she brought me on to help her because I'd written a couple of narrative books by then. Honestly, she persuaded me pretty quickly, because as I mentioned my first two books are kind of dark and depressing. And this was just such an uplifting book. It was such a Western story about this Western woman born in 1883. And at the end of the handmade era in the United States when, you know, women were really starting to get out into society and go to college and have careers and it was a just, it's a really sweet point and American women's history. And she herself just had such an amazing story of growing up in a poor family, and then marrying into this wealthy family and Vermont, being unhappily married. It wasn't enough, as she'd been told just to marry a rich guy she wanted something more. So she was like Betty for Dan but in 1912. She wanted something else and she actually wrote a memoir called I wanted out. And it was all about her quest to find herself to become a writer to express herself she was an illustrator of children's books. She was a poet, she was a fiction writer. She was, and then she became a journalist, you know so eventually, after leaving her wealthy husband and returning to California. She hit rock bottom ended up being a gold miner in Hornados this tiny town up in the gold fields and she was just a common mucker with this ragtag crew of men, the only woman on this gold mining crew so she would work all day and she had her her sick, asthmatic son with her. You know he was, and then she after working in the mines all day she come home, help him with his homework and then she had this old typewriter and she taught herself to type, and then she taught herself to write. And she was just so determined to become a writer and she would use everything that was happening in this gold mining town, and her affair with a fellow minor, and just turn it into fiction. Right, it was just, it was, it was just such a bold and courageous move, especially for a woman at that time. It was, it was a really fun book to write. It felt very like, wow, if Elsie Robinson can do this, you know what's holding me back type of thing. So it was just a fun book to write it was just about this woman who, against all odds, succeeded in her quest to, you know, become a writer to become actualized to follow her bliss whatever cliche you want to use but it worked. And it was a real departure for me as a writer because I tend to look at, you know, kind of sad and depressing stories of child abuse or suicide and it came along at the right point in my life and it was just a pleasure to work on. Hey, thank you. Hey, Alyssa with an eye. Why did you choose the form you chose. Well, so I was thinking about this suspecting that you might come to me eventually. I mean, so I mean as a journalist, first and foremost, journalism is sort of the way I'm always going to go it's just that's the most my craft but within journalism there's always this question of what, what is the structure going to be especially with long form written journalism we think a lot about the structure of the story. And so the one that came to mind in particular when with this question was the piece that I wrote about Fengru this gentleman who was a Chinese aviator living in Oakland China town. And I actually started that story, like the opening scene doesn't involve him at all it's actually two people in a dentist office in 2008, the dentist and the patient having a conversation. And it was an interesting, like I, the choice came to me sort of suddenly that because I, when you're writing these history stories the question is do you want to keep it. Keep it in history like are we going, going back and staying back, or are we showing how this history either has been uncovered or continues to affect today. And so I suddenly had this moment of like, oh no, this can't just be I actually had pitched the story as just the story of this gentleman and how he came from China, taught himself aviation using just like textbooks at night. It was like a workshop where he built things himself could became sort of like obsessed with the right brothers and copying the work that they were doing. It was like a very compelling story on its own, especially because this was like right in the middle of all the like deep anti Chinese sentiment of the Chinese Exclusion Act. So I had mentioned earlier in our conversation that the way that I found this story was a friend who saw a bust of this gentleman at the Oakland Aviation Museum. And so the question became like, wait, how did that bust came get get there. Who still remember this person. And when I dug into it, it became it was this like interesting rag tag group of a dentist musician, a journalist, a librarian and a historian, who had all become like really obsessed together with bringing this guy back to the surface. And so when it becomes a story of not just this person but also how we like bring history back to the surface, then it makes a lot more sense to start in that dentist's office where the dentist having heard from his grandfather who heard from his father about seeing Wayne Fong, who is Chinese American and several generations in the US and so his great great something grandfather had seen with his own eyes, Fungru fly the plane. And just in the middle of this, this dentist appointment. There was, they was like a quiet and you know dentist need to fill the quiet and he said hey did you know that the first person who flew a plane on the West, the West Coast came from around here. And so that was sort of the conversation that ended up kicking off this effort to like bring this guy back and eventually have a bust of him. But yeah, so I guess the point is that I chose to start there because that felt like the actual start beginning of the story, which is a two part story, not just the history but also how we deal with the history. You know, it reminds me of my government days when we would do research on a certain subject and they would call call it starting with this little thing and then pulling the string. Keep pulling the string. So all of you are and are very good at pulling the string and then putting it into words. I saw that in the chat that there was a comment that Beth wanted to make. Do you see that Alyssa I do yes, Beth wanted to add another incredible resource for historical writing newspapers.com and local or regional digital newspaper archives like California has one. So Beth very kindly put the link in the chat for cdnc.ucr.edu, which is a free and searchable archive. And Alyssa just popped an interesting story in the chat I did want to highlight one question that came in from Dara to just reflect back what was the name of the library at Berkeley that Heather mentioned for research. The bank which is part of UC Berkeley. And you have to get a special card but you usually get access to it that day. So, that's also where I did my dairy research they had they have all sorts of archives there it's pretty amazing. Yeah. Julia. I just, yeah, I just wanted to add the California Historical Society right downtown San Francisco on Mission Street is amazing. I, you know, I did most of my Jones town, my second book is about the Jones town tragedy. And you have all of the archives of people's temple there, and you can go in and you can talk to the archivist, and they are more than happy that's their job to show you what's in their collections. And so, sometimes I'll just go in there and it's like what new collections do you have, you know that might be interesting untold stories it's archivist will, you know at these, especially the small historical stories of the love to talk to you, and to, you know, kind of give you a guided tour of what's interesting from their collection. Yeah. Okay, thank you. All good resources, wow, I'm going to be spending some time at the libraries. So, writers, all of the stuff that you find is not always good, good stuff. And while we've tended today to talk about some of the discoveries that you've made in your research about some of the interesting and wonderful things that people have done that you've chosen for hidden histories. I'm sure you've come across some not so nice things. What do you do with that as a writer. And since I see you on the screen Julia, how about you go first. So, could you just clarify a little bit about what you're not nice thing. When you're doing research on an individual or a subject matter and you find something that is not such a positive thing about an individual or a person as a writer when you set out to do it a certain way what do you do. How do you treat that. That's a great question. You know when I set out to write this biography of Elsie Robinson I didn't want it to be a hagiography. I wanted it to be real. We all have a way of presenting ourselves in public that we want to be seen as a certain way. But you know the interesting part about being a journalist is trying to poke behind that screen and see what a person is really about. So, I found a lot of things out about Elsie Robinson me and my co author I should say that she did not reveal in her lifetime but that made her a much more fascinating, well rounded character, a character with weaknesses with foibles with, you know, that who made dumb decisions in her life like we all do. Right, but it just made her more appealing. I thought. So for example, she never publicly admitted having an affair with this minor when she was out in the gold mines of California. Right. But my co author and I were able to go to the Mariposa County Courthouse and pull her divorce records. And through those carefully there's like hundreds and hundreds of pages, we could, we could piece together this, the backstory which is that she was cohabiting with this other minor in this in this town, for example. And I think what that does is, you know, when you run across something like that. It's important to show why a character would have chosen not to reveal that about themselves at that time. Well, this is 1915. She's a woman. You know, women aren't supposed to be out cavorting with men who aren't their husbands and living large, quite honestly, but that's what she wanted to do. She wanted to be as free as a man. This was part of her life's path. She's like, if my husband can go be in a glee club and be a poultry fancier and be in a softball league and do all these fun things. I then have to only be sitting home making soap and caring for my son. I want to live as large a life as he is. And this was really kind of a theme throughout her life. So it really helped us develop that theme by discovering these hidden things about her. Honestly. Yeah. So, Alyssa with an eye. How do you, how do you think they're not so nice stuff. More Julia, I'm sorry. No, that's a lot of Alyssa. Oh, sure. I mean, I, I agree with Julia that that stuff is just as important. Because it humanizes people and because, you know, every person has flaws and so if you're not finding them, then you don't have the full picture. I do think also though to go back to what Heather said, that that's where triangulation probably becomes more important because you want to make sure that as much as possible you can like you are portraying fairly somebody's flaws and that means that you are evaluating who was speaking badly about this person in the moment and what they might have had to gain or lose before you, you know, portray somebody unfairly in a negative light. Right. For me, I mean I have more often found a negative stuff about how society treated the people that I'm writing about so you know, I think I have some allergies happening. You know, the, like I said, Fungru was living during a really a time of like really ferocious anti Chinese sentiment and the things that were written about him in the newspapers were like breathtakingly racist at times. I think it's important to portray that in some way because it's very important a key part of what he was experiencing, or like when I was writing about the history of the black West, and I mean like a one third of cowboys in the sort of Westport expansion time where either Latino or African American so this is like a really significant time but it's also a time of great racism and so talking about what the policies were around that is really important. So I think it's just that's what you need to do in order to get a full picture. Exactly. Exactly. Well, anybody who's read monarch knows I, I gravitate to the ugly. And not for its own sake, but because again, I think we're doomed to repeat these histories if we don't know them. And we better start knowing them because we are already repeating a lot of the hideousness we have brought upon other humans and our ecology. I think to add to it is you, I think to elaborate on what Alyssa said, it's, you need to bring in the perspective, the contemporaneous perspective, because a lot of times, when these things were written about initially, they were written about from a perspective that isn't generally giving the whole truth and certainly rarely giving a fair representation of people who were involved if they were not white male landowners, essentially. So, really training people, you're, you know, getting people to be more critical of what they're reading just in general, I think is, is good and bringing that into your story somehow so for me I found, I have a teacher's guide that accompanies this, and it's really all about people encouraging people to look at the, some of the first, you know, the contemporaneous writings and really question who's, who wrote that, what was their agenda, whose voices aren't heard, whose voices would they want to be heard in that reporting. And then I also encourage people to question my own bias that I bring, because we all have blind spots, we're all humans. And, you know, my perspective is not the only perspective on this history so you know it's encouraging the like, okay, some of these are really hard truths. And the way I'm looking at it, isn't the full thing either. So, what am I missing? How can we bring fuller understanding to these, these, you know, painful parts of our history, because we all share this history together. Yes. Yes, we do. So, Alyssa. I'd like to open it up to the audience if they have any questions, if there's people out there that want to ask the writers any questions, let's do that for a few minutes. Absolutely. If you would like to, you are most welcome to unmute and ask a question or prompt a comment. You can also add any more comments into the chat. Okay, I also did want to circle back. I think a bit of go Heather, maybe you were pumping up to ask a question yourself and I don't want to skip over that as a question of questioners and just wanted to give Heather a moment while our other attendees may gather up some questions they might want to ask or pose as well. I was just really curious with Julia, you know, did you want to break down any parts of LC story into magazine pieces or do essays. And then for Alyssa sort of the opposite was there any story that you've done, you know, the joke of like every journalist has a book in them like this has there been a story that's intrigued you enough for book length research. No, that was going to be my last question. Sorry. No, that's okay. You're my honorary cousin now so it's cool. I mean, certainly whenever I'm in the midst of reporting a story, especially these stories where there's like so much just your sort of waiting around in this other world. It always feels like there's so much to say here. There's so much more to say that can't go in there. There wasn't like one particular story. That specifically caught like that I'm, you know, now developing into a proposal. But I do feel like one thing that this whole process has taught me is that like, almost always there's somewhere that you could go deep. And there's so much more to say on every topic. And especially in these areas where we're working where it's been, you know, forgotten brushed over, either on purpose or just over the, the course of time. So I certainly wouldn't rule it out in the future. And there's, there's like stories that I would be interested in going back to. Writing more about, but nothing in particular I guess. Julia. Well the problem with historical stories like stories that take place in a distant history I found, I think Alta is very special and that it, you know, focuses on the west and western histories but a lot of magazine editors you know unless you're a current news peg, they're really, you know, they don't see the point and they're not interested. We were, you know, we got excerpts placed in Ms magazine and lit hub, which were great but you know, this is a woman who basically been forgotten about and for us it was enough just to bring her back to life and, you know, to make sure that now she shall be remembered hopefully. It does look like we have a question being raised from Michael so I'm going to have you unmute and please go ahead. Yeah for Julia I'm curious. How do you think your agent and your co writer sold this book to the publisher. It seems like it would be a very narrow interest group or you know a group of people that might want to buy it. That's a that's a very a smart observation. Honestly, the advanced was was pretty low. And, you know, I have found as a writer, especially if you're writing a book it's not about the money it's about the passion that you have for the subject matter. And so like every, and like every other writer I know especially in the Bay Area, you know we cobble our income streams from from different sources to feed this passion to write. I'm very proud of the book, you know, it's, it's really resonated but you know it's it's not a New York Times bestseller and that's that's enough for me, because I loved the process of writing it and love and reintroducing this amazing and inspirational woman to the world, and that was enough. Hopefully that answered your question. It wasn't about the money in that case I you know I got a much larger advance with my second book but it's one of those quality of life do you want to spend your years, you know writing content about hot dogs or do you write about a passionate dramatic story that just, you know, inspires you and, and hopefully other people will enjoy reading. Yeah. Yeah, to add on to that. I feel like one of the biggest rewards of doing work in this arena is being able to like believe like okay I have contributed in some way to bringing this back into contemporary the contemporary world is like in the course of writing about Feng Ru. I, you know, wrote to a lot of folks, especially in Oakland Chinatown looking for historians. Almost all of them said, I can't believe I hadn't ever heard of this guy. One of them said I'm going to pass you on to my nephew who's in charge of the ethnic studies curriculum at Oakland Unified School District I think your article should be part of that. It's like extremely gratifying to know that like okay this, this will be a little bit less hidden a little bit less lost. We have another question from Dara. So we'll have Dara unmute and please feel free to ask your question. Yes, thank you. So I'm a genealogist and do, you know, do a lot of family research. Did how are the archives as far as census records marriage and birth records. How valuable were they, or did you use those in in your research. I can answer that I used all of that. A lot of census records were incredibly important to some of my stories. I also used us da historical archives on crop production. I could, I could get to some dry, like, not dry for me because I could see the larger context for these crop yield historical crop yield information, but I am incredibly grateful. The library of loc.gov was also incredibly important to me because I was able to see what materials were archived that were part of testimony for particular bills, including, you know, the law to exclude exclude Japanese from becoming citizens in the United States in the 20s. So there is, I'm, yeah, I'm one of the few people that gets very excited when they announced they're releasing another year of census. I'm also one of those people I guess that's not surprising. And so I actually I haven't used it in a story yet, but coincidentally, most recently when the 1950 census was released. My partner and I were like, let's just see who was living in our house then. And it turns out we went down this wild rabbit hole, and we learned about the family who built our house and several other houses on our street here in South America who were responsible for desegregating San Francisco schools. They were prominent Chinese American family who came here during the Gold Rush did really well, wanted their daughter to go to San Francisco schools and the school and so they sued and one. And so I mean, basically, yes, so I'm really excited about a hoping to be able to write about this and be maybe even talk to Berkeley Historical Society about getting a plaque because I think that they would deserve that. But yes, so there is another way that census, the census can really pay off if you wanted to work if you get lucky. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, I just want to say that all of this has been of great value to me and I hope that it's value to be the writers and others who have joined us today. I write historical fiction. And so in order for me to have the right backdrop I have to do a lot of this research as well. And all of the places that you have mentioned today are certainly places that I am going to be visiting. As I start to write about this particular geographic area in my writing. I'd like to ask each of you if you would briefly just give us any closing remarks you'd like to make anything that you didn't get a chance to say today. I'll start with you. Alyssa with an eye. Well, so I mean I think I already sort of dropped my, my final thought which is just, you know, that that what this is really about is bringing stories that really deserve to be part of how we think about our present back from the past. And, and so yeah that I think hopefully the project that I just mentioned will be something I work on in the future. But I guess I would encourage people who are here to be looking at, you know, just once you sort of turn on your radar for this stuff. Don't stop see it like everywhere, just reading little plaques or the backs of menus or like who made the sculpture that is in the like little plaza that you were walking through. And so like in that way that can really inform and enrich your life even if you're not going to write about it. Thank you. Heather. Yeah, I mean I co that I also would say, you know, take advantage of things like if you're local San Francisco public library offers free walks in every day, there's at least one walk. Usually there's up to 10 or 15 walks. They're called city walks, and they're free and available to everybody. And you get into some juicy histories you'll have tasty tidbits for cocktail parties if not, you know, to help you go down some rabbit hole. I also want to encourage people to really, you know, dive in and read these histories that we're talking about because once you understand that the history that we've generally been taught is so myopic. Yeah, you know, once we understand that many different people coming from different places helped this area of the West grow from from its, you know, I would say from 1776 when the Spanish first settled in the San Francisco area on word. You see that it's not that these groups are new. They were an integral part of this community and maybe we can stop othering each other, and we can just accept that we're all part of this rich history and we share this history together and we can stop. Other. Here here. Julia. Yes, one, a couple of free sources, free resources that I wanted to mention somebody said newspapers calm, but the Library of Congress look there first because they have a wonderful repository of old newspapers like workers literally, you know, Xeroxing copy and page by page these old newspapers which you know I was able to use in my research for this Brattleboro newspaper Brattleboro Vermont that I could read through my do a search and find all of these mentions of my person. So one, Library of Congress is tremendous, a lot of free, wonderful resources, and also the Mormons are very good at record keeping I learned so much about my own family from family search. Or. I think it is where, you know, for whatever reason, the Mormons are keeping records of all of us and you could use those to your advantage. Thank you all so much. Heather, Alyssa. Julia. Thank you this has been marvelous. And thank you. Alyssa mechanics Institute. Another great session. Incredible deeply rich moving session that really incredible topics that layer and encourage us to be curious explorers of the world around us so I really take to heart looking at every plaque and figuring out who 100 years ago. I mean, that's fascinating so thank you for tipping us off on on a wonderful adventure of historical research and understanding. So just a couple quick things as we close out our session on this lovely Friday. Again, please mark your calendar for our next session on August 18, which will be on the joys and challenges of balancing authorship and publishing, moderated by Cheryl, with two multi talented writers, Jenny, gross and Sarah Cyrus. If it's been a while since you've come on site to mechanics Institute please come join us for a free tour every Wednesday at noon all over the building, or invite some friends and family and come check it out together. Please visit our website, my library.org to learn more about all of our upcoming programs and events, both on site and in person and virtually every day, all day throughout the year so definitely come visit us at the library chess room and event center at the mechanics Institute. With that we'll say a big thank you to Cheryl our moderator this afternoon, and our wonderful guest speakers, Alyssa Greenberg, Heather Borbo, and Julia Shearys, for this fantastic writers launch conversation. Thank you all and have a wonderful rest of your day and weekend. Thank you. Bye.