The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 10 May 2016
edited by James Brook, Chris Carlsson & Nancy J. Peters
It has long been a truism that history depends upon who gets to write it. There's the basic history we all learn in school, a list of events, dates and places, written by (mostly) men with scholarly degrees and a top-down gaze upon their topic. Then there's the "people's history", the stories told by those from below, who struggle in our society to be heard, the ones upon whom the greater culture depends, but also upon whom the culture feeds and rests. The undercurrents of society are full of stories of struggle and change. Howard Zinn had his famous A People's History of the United States. In this anthology of essays, San Francisco has its own people's history. It is by no means comprehensive, but it goes far to bringing to the reader a sense of the many threads of cultural history that make San Francisco what it is today, the living history that witnesses the changes in the city every day. Given its reference points in time, people who know San Francisco today may wonder what has become of the physical and human remnants of these stories.
So, here we have an eclectic look back upon some of the lesser known stories of San Francisco. At the same time, these essays reveal an undercurrent of social struggle for equality and justice for those less powerful. We read of the Barbary Coast era, in which a strapping young man may find himself kidnapped, Shanghai'ed! for service aboard ships that have stopped in port, and the astonishing historical fact that this practice was supported by American courts. We see an alternate history of the city for tourists. We read Nicholson Baker's exposé of the decimation of the public library, even when it built a fabulous new facility supported by the voters. There are stories of a subset of the gay community, of minorities and other communities seeking economic equality and decent affordable housing. In particular, we see, in several of these essays, mention of the epic battle of the International Hotel in 1977. This collection was published in 1998 and much of its history remains relevant. However, particularly with respect to economic equality and housing, and the writers' expectations that conditions will improve for the poor, given what's been going on in the intervening time, anyone familiar with San Francisco today would have to think You ain't seen nothing yet!
There are twenty-two essays in this collection published by City Lights Books. Some are dense and scholarly. Others are polemical and uneven. Many are entertaining and engrossing. All are informative. One may wish to pick and choose how to proceed through the volume. The book says a lot about San Francisco, the city that the tourists (and many residents today) rarely see. A sense of what has happened in the eighteen years since this book was published can help. And, if one is a long-time resident of the city, the reader may have waves of memory and enlightened nostalgia.
(At the time of this mini-review writing, a CDROM associated with this book had been converted to a web site rich with San Francisco's history, both conventional and alternative. Worth a look at FoundSF.)
See also:
[Imperial San Francisco by Gray Brechin]
[Erotic City by Josh Sides]
[A Negotiated Landscape by Jasper Rubin]
[Frog Music by Emma Donoghue]