Illegal Love: A Ugandan Refugee’s California Dream
It was early in the morning, when Eddris Sseguya got caught kissing another man. He was living in his native Uganda, where being gay is against the law. It’s one of more than 70 countries that still criminalize homosexuality. People who are found guilty are put in jail. Unless the neighbors come up with their own punishment first. Reporter Karina Saidi brings us this story of Eddris's journey from Uganda to California, in search of safety. Karina’s story is part of a collaboration with the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Working with us here on the California Report Magazine, students spent a semester examining what the California Dream means to people across Los Angeles.
San Francisco’s Long-Running Zen Hospice Project To Close
During the height of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, nurses were afraid to touch patients. Men dying of AIDS were left languishing alone in the hallways of county hospitals. It was during this time that the Zen Hospice Project was founded in San Francisco. Buddhist practitioners bought an old Victorian in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood, where AIDS patients could die with dignity and compassionate care. Then it evolved to care for people with all kinds of terminal illnesses. Now, after 30 years, the house is closing its doors. April Dembosky has more.
‘Blindspotting’ Actor Considers Damaging Effects of ‘White Voice’
This summer, we’re hearing a lot about “white voice.” Take the movie “BlacKkKlansman” out this week. It’s about a black cop who pretends to be white to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan. KQED’s Chloe Veltman brings us the story of one California actor who knows what it’s like to have to disguise your true voice to assimilate into a white dominated culture, both on and off the stage and screen.
A ‘Lost Boy of Sudan’ Looks Back at How Civil War Tore Him From His Mother
For most of his childhood, David Ayual Mayom barely saw his father. It was Sudan in the 1980s and his dad was fighting with a rebel group against the government during the Second Civil War. David lived with his mother, and when he was 8 years old, he had to make a painful choice: stay at home with her, and almost surely be killed. Or, set out on foot with thousands of other young boys to escape the government army. In the last of our series about the long-term impacts of childhood separation, KQED’s Laura Klivans tells us how David left his small village and eventually landed in San Jose.