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While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:00:00] I’m Erica Cruz Guevara and welcome to the Bay, local news to keep you rooted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:00:05] Your adorable beanie baby beanie hat is so cute with the little bouncy thing on top of your headphones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:00:13] This is my colleague Sasha Khokha. She’s the host of the California Report magazine, a weekly show bringing in-depth storytelling and documentaries about our beautiful state. And I really wanted to talk with Sasha, who’s been thinking a lot lately, about trans kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:00:35] You know, I have a lot of amazing trans and non-binary kids in my life, and talking to those kids and talking to their families, I heard a lot of frustration that the media coverage of trans kids right now often doesn’t even include the voices of trans kids. And often flattens kids into just one dimension of their identity, which is their gender.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:03] For Sasha, these kids are so much more than that. They’re students, athletes, dancers, and siblings. And some are also thriving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:01:15] I think there’s a lot of power in hearing from parents, from grandparents, from elders who love and support transgender and non-binary kids so they can thrive, so they can find joy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:33] So Sasha and her colleagues spent months putting together this series called Love You for You. Conversations between trans kids and the people who love them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Child \u003c/strong>[00:01:47] Thanks for letting me be who I am.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mother \u003c/strong>[00:01:49] Yeah. And thank you for letting me be your parent and for letting me love you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Child \u003c/strong>[00:01:56] You’re welcome. (laughs)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:02:00] The series Love You for You features six conversations between trans and non-binary kids and their loved ones. And today we’re gonna talk with Sasha about being a fly on the wall to these conversations as the trans community is under attack. That’s coming up right after the break.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:02:32] We’re talking about your series for the California Report magazine. I wonder if you can actually just start by walking me through the the thinking behind your series, the why.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:02:43] The thinking was there’s a lot out there about trans kids being in the crosshairs of the Trump administration right now. But I think what’s really missing are stories of what it looks like when kids have love and support from their families and because of that are insulated a little bit from what’s happening in the outside world. That’s not to say that backdrop doesn’t exist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:03:12] Yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:03:13] But I think there’s a lot of power in hearing from parents, from grandparents, from elders who love and support transgender and nonbinary kids so they can thrive, so they can find joy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:03:31] And these were essentially sort of like StoryCorps style episodes where you’re not in it but you just hear these kids talking with these people who are important in their lives about who they are and why they love them and just these very sweet conversations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:03:50] Right, and that’s part of why we wanted to do these as conversations that could unfold naturally without me as the journalist coming to their house and sticking a microphone in their face and getting a sound bite or two from a kid. And we also really wanted to give these kids agency so they picked the adults or the other people they wanted to be in conversation with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:04:17] With can you explain the range of people that we hear from in this series?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:04:23] So we start off with an eight year old non-binary kid in conversation with their mom. I like took this sock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Child \u003c/strong>[00:04:31] I like to play soccer and read, and my family’s from Asia like Vietnam and Taiwan and my pronouns they them and I’m eight years old.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:04:43] And that was actually the first conversation we recorded. And it was kind of hard because the kid was really shy and was only eight and was a little bit soft spoken on the microphone. It was a little bit stuffed up, so it was like a little bit hard to understand them. And their voice is so cute. Yeah, and I thought, oh my gosh, how’s this gonna go? Like, how are we gonna do all of these? But honestly, I think once they got warmed up and their mom really made them feel comfortable, it was quite a sweet conversation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Child \u003c/strong>[00:05:15] What are you most proud of about me?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mother \u003c/strong>[00:05:19] That you knew when you were very young. You were only about four years old and you just kinda told me that you weren’t sure that you fit being either a boy or a girl, and you felt maybe like you were neither or both. And that was something for us to learn because we didn’t think kids that young knew that about themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:05:47] And especially about navigating pronouns with their Vietnamese and Taiwanese relatives because in some of their families’ home languages there are not gendered pronouns. And so it was just a really interesting conversation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mother \u003c/strong>[00:06:03] And so for them everybody’s a they or they mix they mix he’s and she’s a lot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Child \u003c/strong>[00:06:09] Maybe like the future could just be like people accept they them or trans just as like would they accept she or he right now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:06:28] In some cases the kids chose actually to bring in someone who was not blood related to them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Hunter Stoval \u003c/strong>[00:06:33] Beyond you being my aunt, you’re one of my closest friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:06:37] One of the conversations was with sixteen year old Hunter Stoval, who decided to talk with his special auntie, whose name’s Shirin Amini. She actually came out as a lesbian in the nineteen nineties, and the first person she came out to was Hunter’s mom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Shirin Amini \u003c/strong>[00:06:56] I think honestly, that your mom was the most supportive person in my life that was kind of a rock, like my rock of Gibraltar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:07:11] And so it was just a really lovely sort of full circle conversation and it got at some of the queer and trans history that these kids also wanted to know about from their elders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Hunter Stoval \u003c/strong>[00:07:22] I think everyone should have a shrine in their life. Like an older role model who’s also your friend who you can tell anything and you know they won’t tell your parents unless you ask them to and call you when you need anything. And just having that mentor-friend combination is just so perfect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:07:47] The last two episodes are actually young people in conversation with transgender elders in their seventies who have seen the long arc of transgender history here in California and who have been through a lot and had a lot of wisdom to share with young people. And I think those are some of the most touching conversations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:08:15] I mean, were there any themes that really emerged from the conversations in this series?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:08:22] I mean, I think one of them is just intergenerational exchange.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andrea Horne \u003c/strong>[00:08:26] America teaches us not to really care about our old folks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:08:31] I’m thinking of a conversation with Andrea Horne, who is she says she’s a woman of a certain age. She didn’t want to give her age. But she is a transgender elder here in San Francisco. She came to San Francisco from LA when she was fifteen to get away from her very unsupportive family. She was an actress, a model, a performer. She hung out with Sylvester in the 70s. And now she’s a historian who’s writing a book called How Black Trans Women Changed the World.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andrea Horne \u003c/strong>[00:09:06] But before World War II, we were considered just part of the community. Mm-hmm. As long as you stay in your lane.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Zen Blossom \u003c/strong>[00:09:14] And what were those lanes?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andrea Horne \u003c/strong>[00:09:15] The lanes were hairdresser.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Zen Blossom \u003c/strong>[00:09:17] Okay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andrea Horne \u003c/strong>[00:09:18] Sex work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Zen Blossom \u003c/strong>[00:09:19] Okay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andrea Horne \u003c/strong>[00:09:20] Work in a bar of some sort. A show girl and housewife. But you know, that’s kinda that’s it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:09:29] And to see her in conversation with a younger black trans woman named Zen Blossom, talking about women from the 1800s, women from the early 1900s who lived their true authentic lives and passing down that wisdom was very intense, very moving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:09:51] Was there any moment that in any of these conversations that you sat in on that like surprised you?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:09:58] Yes, I am th I’m thinking of the ten year old transgender girl who came with her grandpa, who lives in a rural conservative county in Northern California, and her older sister who is sixteen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister \u003c/strong>[00:10:16] Popo what do you hope that the future is like for trans kids and what do you plan on doing to support trans kids?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa \u003c/strong>[00:10:25] Oh, I support this one all the time. I’d do anything for her and she knows that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:10:31] She was so funny and vivacious and great. And again, I was worried, how’s a ten year old gonna do in this studio with all these microphones? And she’s an actor and she’s a performer. And at one point in the interview sh as we were wrapping up, she’s like, By the way, if there are any agents out there listening and you need somebody to cast\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister \u003c/strong>[00:10:51] If I really want to be a child actor, if there’s any agents listening, hello, I’m here. Hi. But another thing is I would love to like this, I love how I get to like share knowledge to other people that might not know about being trans or stuff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:11:12] And another thing she did that was really surprising is when she was asked, you know, what do you do when you get bullied, she actually just burst into song.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister \u003c/strong>[00:11:19] They’re just doing it because they’re insecure about yourself and they just want to tear you down even though you’re a confident, amazing person and they’re not. So just walk away and say I’m better than you and sing your way out. That’s what I do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:11:39] So I guess what was most surprising to me was just how joyful and funny some of these kids were and their self-confidence. Sometimes transgender and non-binary kids, gender-expansive kids have to grow up a little bit faster because they’ve got to face the world that sometimes is hostile to them. Sometimes they have to make choices about gender-affirming care. A lot of decisions that sometimes make them have to, you know, have a level of maturity that we might not always see in other kids their age.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:12:16] Right. Like an awareness of of who you are. I don’t I don’t think I was that fully formed when I was ten, for example. But yeah\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:12:28] There’s authenticity in who these kids are because they’ve had to fight for who they are.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:12:35] What was your main takeaway from from sitting in these conversations, Sasha, and and working on this series?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:12:44] When we first thought about this series, I wanted to have something that parents of trans and non-binary kids could listen to with their kids. That was sort of the focus audience. But as we’ve put the episodes out and we’re hearing from people, it’s been actually so moving to hear how adults are connecting with the content and adults who may be in the trans community and not connected to young people in their lives are seeing themselves reflected. And also how people who may not have much connection with trans people at all are hearing the joy and the courage in these kids’ voices and really feeling moved by it.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In a new series called ‘Love You For You,’ KQED’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/californiareportmagazine\">The California Report Magazine\u003c/a> host Sasha Khokha sat in on conversations between trans and nonbinary kids and the people who love them. Today, we talk with Sasha about the series.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Links:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/love-you-for-you\">Check out the entire ‘Love You For You’ series \u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco-Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC5633152825&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:00:00] I’m Erica Cruz Guevara and welcome to the Bay, local news to keep you rooted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:00:05] Your adorable beanie baby beanie hat is so cute with the little bouncy thing on top of your headphones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:00:13] This is my colleague Sasha Khokha. She’s the host of the California Report magazine, a weekly show bringing in-depth storytelling and documentaries about our beautiful state. And I really wanted to talk with Sasha, who’s been thinking a lot lately, about trans kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:00:35] You know, I have a lot of amazing trans and non-binary kids in my life, and talking to those kids and talking to their families, I heard a lot of frustration that the media coverage of trans kids right now often doesn’t even include the voices of trans kids. And often flattens kids into just one dimension of their identity, which is their gender.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:03] For Sasha, these kids are so much more than that. They’re students, athletes, dancers, and siblings. And some are also thriving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:01:15] I think there’s a lot of power in hearing from parents, from grandparents, from elders who love and support transgender and non-binary kids so they can thrive, so they can find joy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:33] So Sasha and her colleagues spent months putting together this series called Love You for You. Conversations between trans kids and the people who love them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Child \u003c/strong>[00:01:47] Thanks for letting me be who I am.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mother \u003c/strong>[00:01:49] Yeah. And thank you for letting me be your parent and for letting me love you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Child \u003c/strong>[00:01:56] You’re welcome. (laughs)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:02:00] The series Love You for You features six conversations between trans and non-binary kids and their loved ones. And today we’re gonna talk with Sasha about being a fly on the wall to these conversations as the trans community is under attack. That’s coming up right after the break.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:02:32] We’re talking about your series for the California Report magazine. I wonder if you can actually just start by walking me through the the thinking behind your series, the why.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:02:43] The thinking was there’s a lot out there about trans kids being in the crosshairs of the Trump administration right now. But I think what’s really missing are stories of what it looks like when kids have love and support from their families and because of that are insulated a little bit from what’s happening in the outside world. That’s not to say that backdrop doesn’t exist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:03:12] Yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:03:13] But I think there’s a lot of power in hearing from parents, from grandparents, from elders who love and support transgender and nonbinary kids so they can thrive, so they can find joy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:03:31] And these were essentially sort of like StoryCorps style episodes where you’re not in it but you just hear these kids talking with these people who are important in their lives about who they are and why they love them and just these very sweet conversations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:03:50] Right, and that’s part of why we wanted to do these as conversations that could unfold naturally without me as the journalist coming to their house and sticking a microphone in their face and getting a sound bite or two from a kid. And we also really wanted to give these kids agency so they picked the adults or the other people they wanted to be in conversation with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:04:17] With can you explain the range of people that we hear from in this series?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:04:23] So we start off with an eight year old non-binary kid in conversation with their mom. I like took this sock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Child \u003c/strong>[00:04:31] I like to play soccer and read, and my family’s from Asia like Vietnam and Taiwan and my pronouns they them and I’m eight years old.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:04:43] And that was actually the first conversation we recorded. And it was kind of hard because the kid was really shy and was only eight and was a little bit soft spoken on the microphone. It was a little bit stuffed up, so it was like a little bit hard to understand them. And their voice is so cute. Yeah, and I thought, oh my gosh, how’s this gonna go? Like, how are we gonna do all of these? But honestly, I think once they got warmed up and their mom really made them feel comfortable, it was quite a sweet conversation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Child \u003c/strong>[00:05:15] What are you most proud of about me?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mother \u003c/strong>[00:05:19] That you knew when you were very young. You were only about four years old and you just kinda told me that you weren’t sure that you fit being either a boy or a girl, and you felt maybe like you were neither or both. And that was something for us to learn because we didn’t think kids that young knew that about themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:05:47] And especially about navigating pronouns with their Vietnamese and Taiwanese relatives because in some of their families’ home languages there are not gendered pronouns. And so it was just a really interesting conversation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mother \u003c/strong>[00:06:03] And so for them everybody’s a they or they mix they mix he’s and she’s a lot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Child \u003c/strong>[00:06:09] Maybe like the future could just be like people accept they them or trans just as like would they accept she or he right now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:06:28] In some cases the kids chose actually to bring in someone who was not blood related to them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Hunter Stoval \u003c/strong>[00:06:33] Beyond you being my aunt, you’re one of my closest friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:06:37] One of the conversations was with sixteen year old Hunter Stoval, who decided to talk with his special auntie, whose name’s Shirin Amini. She actually came out as a lesbian in the nineteen nineties, and the first person she came out to was Hunter’s mom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Shirin Amini \u003c/strong>[00:06:56] I think honestly, that your mom was the most supportive person in my life that was kind of a rock, like my rock of Gibraltar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:07:11] And so it was just a really lovely sort of full circle conversation and it got at some of the queer and trans history that these kids also wanted to know about from their elders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Hunter Stoval \u003c/strong>[00:07:22] I think everyone should have a shrine in their life. Like an older role model who’s also your friend who you can tell anything and you know they won’t tell your parents unless you ask them to and call you when you need anything. And just having that mentor-friend combination is just so perfect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:07:47] The last two episodes are actually young people in conversation with transgender elders in their seventies who have seen the long arc of transgender history here in California and who have been through a lot and had a lot of wisdom to share with young people. And I think those are some of the most touching conversations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:08:15] I mean, were there any themes that really emerged from the conversations in this series?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:08:22] I mean, I think one of them is just intergenerational exchange.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andrea Horne \u003c/strong>[00:08:26] America teaches us not to really care about our old folks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:08:31] I’m thinking of a conversation with Andrea Horne, who is she says she’s a woman of a certain age. She didn’t want to give her age. But she is a transgender elder here in San Francisco. She came to San Francisco from LA when she was fifteen to get away from her very unsupportive family. She was an actress, a model, a performer. She hung out with Sylvester in the 70s. And now she’s a historian who’s writing a book called How Black Trans Women Changed the World.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andrea Horne \u003c/strong>[00:09:06] But before World War II, we were considered just part of the community. Mm-hmm. As long as you stay in your lane.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Zen Blossom \u003c/strong>[00:09:14] And what were those lanes?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andrea Horne \u003c/strong>[00:09:15] The lanes were hairdresser.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Zen Blossom \u003c/strong>[00:09:17] Okay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andrea Horne \u003c/strong>[00:09:18] Sex work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Zen Blossom \u003c/strong>[00:09:19] Okay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andrea Horne \u003c/strong>[00:09:20] Work in a bar of some sort. A show girl and housewife. But you know, that’s kinda that’s it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:09:29] And to see her in conversation with a younger black trans woman named Zen Blossom, talking about women from the 1800s, women from the early 1900s who lived their true authentic lives and passing down that wisdom was very intense, very moving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:09:51] Was there any moment that in any of these conversations that you sat in on that like surprised you?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:09:58] Yes, I am th I’m thinking of the ten year old transgender girl who came with her grandpa, who lives in a rural conservative county in Northern California, and her older sister who is sixteen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister \u003c/strong>[00:10:16] Popo what do you hope that the future is like for trans kids and what do you plan on doing to support trans kids?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa \u003c/strong>[00:10:25] Oh, I support this one all the time. I’d do anything for her and she knows that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:10:31] She was so funny and vivacious and great. And again, I was worried, how’s a ten year old gonna do in this studio with all these microphones? And she’s an actor and she’s a performer. And at one point in the interview sh as we were wrapping up, she’s like, By the way, if there are any agents out there listening and you need somebody to cast\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister \u003c/strong>[00:10:51] If I really want to be a child actor, if there’s any agents listening, hello, I’m here. Hi. But another thing is I would love to like this, I love how I get to like share knowledge to other people that might not know about being trans or stuff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:11:12] And another thing she did that was really surprising is when she was asked, you know, what do you do when you get bullied, she actually just burst into song.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister \u003c/strong>[00:11:19] They’re just doing it because they’re insecure about yourself and they just want to tear you down even though you’re a confident, amazing person and they’re not. So just walk away and say I’m better than you and sing your way out. That’s what I do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:11:39] So I guess what was most surprising to me was just how joyful and funny some of these kids were and their self-confidence. Sometimes transgender and non-binary kids, gender-expansive kids have to grow up a little bit faster because they’ve got to face the world that sometimes is hostile to them. Sometimes they have to make choices about gender-affirming care. A lot of decisions that sometimes make them have to, you know, have a level of maturity that we might not always see in other kids their age.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:12:16] Right. Like an awareness of of who you are. I don’t I don’t think I was that fully formed when I was ten, for example. But yeah\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:12:28] There’s authenticity in who these kids are because they’ve had to fight for who they are.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:12:35] What was your main takeaway from from sitting in these conversations, Sasha, and and working on this series?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha \u003c/strong>[00:12:44] When we first thought about this series, I wanted to have something that parents of trans and non-binary kids could listen to with their kids. That was sort of the focus audience. But as we’ve put the episodes out and we’re hearing from people, it’s been actually so moving to hear how adults are connecting with the content and adults who may be in the trans community and not connected to young people in their lives are seeing themselves reflected. And also how people who may not have much connection with trans people at all are hearing the joy and the courage in these kids’ voices and really feeling moved by it.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "californias-trans-elders-share-decades-of-wisdom-and-advice-with-younger-generations",
"title": "'It's Self-Love': Trans Elder Donna Personna Shares Advice With a Younger Generation",
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"headTitle": "‘It’s Self-Love’: Trans Elder Donna Personna Shares Advice With a Younger Generation | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the last few weeks, we’ve been sharing conversations between transgender and nonbinary kids and the people in their lives who love and support them — a series called \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/love-you-for-you\">\u003cem>Love You for You.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As we enter \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13977169/transgender-history-bay-area-san-francisco-lgbtq-trans-bay\">Transgender Awareness Month\u003c/a>, we shift the lens toward intergenerational stories — young people in their twenties in conversation with transgender elders whose lives trace the long arc of LGBTQ+ activism in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These bonus episodes carry heavier histories and more mature themes than the family conversations featured earlier in the series. They offer deeper context to the ongoing fight for safety, dignity and self-expression.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This week, we meet \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13960471/donna-personna-interview-lgbtq-history\">Donna Personna\u003c/a>, a 79-year-old transgender Chicana artist, activist and playwright who grew up in San José and now lives in San Francisco. A longtime drag performer and advocate, Donna has devoted decades to uplifting the LGBTQ+ community. In 2019, she was named \u003ca href=\"https://cdn.sfpride.org/press/RELEASE-Community-Grand-Marshal-Announcement-SF-Pride-2019-FINAL.pdf\">Lifetime Achievement Grand Marshal of the San Francisco Pride Parade\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She also co-wrote \u003ca href=\"https://www.comptonscafeteriariot.com/\">Compton’s Cafeteria Riot\u003c/a>, an immersive play that brings to life a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/11838357/in-66-on-one-hot-august-night-trans-women-fought-for-their-rights\">1966 uprising in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District\u003c/a> — when trans women and drag queens stood up to police harassment, three years before Stonewall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12063818\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-2-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12063818\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-2-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-2-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-2-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-2-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A photo of Donna Personna from 2014 is displayed at her home in San Francisco on Nov. 6, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In this episode, Donna speaks with Quetzali (who also goes by “Q”), a 23-year-old Latinx nonbinary organizer from Sacramento who uses they/them/elle pronouns and who is using only their first name to protect their identity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Together, they reflect on how Latinx gender-expansive identities have evolved across generations, from quiet survival in the shadows to living freely. Donna also shares how she continues to cultivate self-love and resilience in a world that still tests both — grounding today’s struggles in a lifetime of resistance, care and optimism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Guests:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>79-year-old Donna Personna (she/her)\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>23-year-old Quetzali (they/them)\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC8007728606\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Music fades in\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sasha Khokha:\u003c/b> I’m Sasha Khokha, this is \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/californiareportmagazine\">The California Report Magazine.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the last few weeks, we’ve been bringing you conversations between transgender and nonbinary kids and the people in their lives who love and support them so they can thrive. The series is called “Love You for You.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This week, as we continue to mark Transgender Awareness month, we’re going to hear young people in their 20s in conversation with transgender elders. Their lives reflect the long arc of transgender and LGBTQ+ activism here in California.[aside postID=news_12061805 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/1.png']And a heads up, these intergenerational conversations carry heavier histories and more mature themes than the ones we’ve been diving into with the family conversations in “Love You for You.” So parents, you might want to listen before deciding whether to share with kids. This week, we hear from Donna Personna, a 79-year-old transgender Chicana activist who grew up in San José and now lives in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She’s a celebrated drag performer, artist, and playwright and she’s devoted decades of her life to activism for the LGBTQ+ community. In 2019, she was named Lifetime Achievement Grand Marshall of the San Francisco Pride Parade. She also co-wrote the immersive play Compton’s Cafeteria Riot. It’s about a 1966 uprising when transgender women in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District stood up to police brutality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Film clip fades in “I’d hammer out justice, I’d hammer out freedom, I’d hammer out love.” (singing)\u003cbr>\n\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nOften called the “Stonewall of the West,” the Compton’s Cafeteria riot marked a turning point for transgender visibility and rights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Film clip fades in “I’d hammer out justice…” (singing)]\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003c/i>We’re going to hear Donna in conversation with Quetzali, a 23-year-old Latinx, nonbinary activist from Sacramento, who also goes by Q and uses the pronouns they/them/elle. Just a note, we’re only using Quetzali’s first name to protect their identity. Donna and Quetzali reflect on cultivating self-love and resilience in a world that continues to test both.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12063821\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-23-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12063821\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-23-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-23-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-23-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-23-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Quetzali, left, places their hand on Donna Personna’s hand as Donna speaks about her life, at her home in San Francisco on Nov. 6, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Donna, you’re an amazing artist, a prominent transgender rights activist. You’ve used many different mediums of art to share important messages about civil rights, equity, inclusion. And I do hope that I can learn a lot from, you know, everything that you’ve been through and all of your wisdom and guidance and teachings. And so, I would like to start off by asking you how old you were when you came out and what was it like for you?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>Okay, well, I was born in 1946, and at that time, there was no community. In fact, it was not a thing to be homosexual or gay. And when it was brought up, it was an aberration. It was rebellious. And what I read was that a child that shows these signs should be separated from the family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Where did you read that?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>In a book in our home, we had a library and there was a medical book in there and I love to read. I mean, my father was a Baptist minister, and as a 10-year-old boy at that time, when I read that maybe this child should be separated from the family, I thought that I could ruin my family. That was on my shoulders. So I never breathed a word about that. And there was no one to talk to anyway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12063820\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-22-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12063820\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-22-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1270\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-22-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-22-KQED-160x102.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-22-KQED-1536x975.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Quetzali, left, places their hand on Donna Personna’s hand as Donna speaks about her life, at her home in San Francisco on Nov. 6, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>So it took me 59, at the age of 59, I came out. If you want to call it that, but I resent that, you know, coming out. Where was I to come out of? But so to answer your question. Now I’ll ask you, when did you come out?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>From a very young age, my parents have always been very supportive in a way in which I express myself, and so I feel like I’ve always been me. You know, there was really never that sort of time where I’m like, okay, I’m not myself or I have to be somebody else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna:\u003c/b> Q, you use the pronouns they, them. Can you tell me more about your gender identity?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>So as someone who is trying to get in deeper touch with their roots and practice sort of like more like indigenous native ways. I feel like I don’t align very much with Western gender binary. And so before the Spanish colonization, gender in many Mexican Indigenous cultures was not strictly binary, right, similarly to how here in North America, Indigenous tribes have, right, like the two-spirit gender identity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As I learn more from my elders in my community, I found that I deeply resonated with the idea of not being seen as a man or a woman and this sort of unique cultural identity that embodies both the masculine and the feminine and is sort of like a bridge between the two.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>That makes sense to me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>I feel like part of the reason why I didn’t formally come out, especially to the older generation of my family, is because I do worry, right, about their reactions, right? Like my parents, my sister, my inner circle of friends and close family, my chosen family all accept me as I am, but because our culture, right, is rooted in machismo. And violent patriarchal ideology, I worry about coming out to the rest of my family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>Yeah, well, I want to say that when the coming out, I’m old, I’m saying at 79, I was always this way and you know, the way that I wanna teach people if they need to, and I’ll say that I’m invited to, institutions that are now accepting transgender, gay people into their old folks’ homes, I’ll say. l, I teach the staff, don’t ask somebody about their preference, sexual preference because you know that that implies a choice see who I am was not a choice. It’s who I was born.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>I resonate with that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>So, like I heard you say, accepted, I am not here to be accepted. I come for approval. I don’t care about approval. I come pre-approved. So that’s an aggression too. Like, oh, when did you want acceptance? No, not from you. I’m rebellious in that sense. Like the thing is, whether or not I accept you, you know. Who gave you the power to accept me?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Music fades in\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>My father was a Baptist minister, my mother was a preacher’s wife. But also in my home, as it sounds like what happened to you, I got total, unconditional love. Yeah, unconditional love. And, you know, my brothers, my brothers were football players, amateur boxers, wrestlers. Never did any one of them ever say to me, “We wish you would act another way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s where I learned that this is where I belong. And so what’s happening outside, in a way, doesn’t matter, but I wanna stay safe. I wanna to stay safe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Did you ever talk to your family about your gender or sexual identity with them?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>No, I didn’t. I was in my own universe. There was nobody else in this universe. I had stories, you now, I’m gonna say they were secrets, kind of, that I did not give life to. And so, no, I didn’t tell my brothers and sisters and my mother and my father. But I do say this, my mother was my best friend. And I feel that she knew something that she wasn’t saying. Like, she was very protective of me. And I used to, I like to say, I was my mother’s favorite. But I had 14 brothers and sisters say, no, I was the favorite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>And I can relate with you on being very close to my mother, my mother and my sister [are] also my best friends and I also didn’t formally come out to anybody but when I took a human sexuality class in university, I actually feel like I got to understand both of my parents better, right? We had an assignment and I offhandedly asked my parents a question about, you know, their own sexual identities their own…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna: \u003c/b>You did?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Yes, and we actually had a great conversation, a very long conversation right at the dinner table and I feel like I’m very grateful for that time and for that class because I feel like otherwise I wouldn’t have got to know my parents, especially my mother, on a deeper level like that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>Well, I’m happy that that happened for you. In my case, my parents, nobody in my family ever talked about anything about sex. I didn’t have that, I’m going to teach you about the birds and the bees and tamales. No, there was no conversation like that. And that’s just the way it was. I’m glad for you that you had that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali\u003c/b>: So do you think that you being Latina, you being Mexicana has impacted your sexual identity or your gender identity in a way that, or in any way, I guess.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>I learned gentility, you know, and being kind and respecting each other. And the other thing that one of the things learned the most was do for other people. Nothing that you do is for yourself. Bring other people with you. Make this a better world. And you know, my father is a Baptist minister. Every week that I heard that, and you know I used to resent it as a child because, like my father, and I’m so proud of this, he founded nine churches in his lifetime, nine. Some of them are still operating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Fantastic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>Yes. People go to that place for shelter, for comfort, for help and to feel good about themselves. And I saw it over and over and again. Like a young woman would come to the church and her husband left her or something, she comes with her kids, her children. They found her a place to live. They connected her to a job, things like that. So, you know, without anybody, and my mother and father never told me, ever, did they say, ‘This is what we want you to do.’ They never did. It was modeling, they call modeling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Okay, so Donna, are you religious and does religion play a role in how you navigate your life then?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>I’m not religious, but I’m a saint. No, that’s a joke. I’m not religious because, and you know, I was a rebel. See, like, that’s another thing about me. I’m never anything but me, and that’s been all my life. And that gets me in trouble sometimes. The Sunday school teacher one day was talking about, saying dancing is bad. They said dancing leads to sex, basically. That’s what they said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I was a teenager. I liked to dance, and I didn’t want to think that’s a bad thing. At that time, we were planning a ski trip, our class, Sunday school class. The Sunday school teacher said, “What would you think if you saw Jesus dancing at one of your teen club dances?” And I said, “Well, how would it look if Jesus was skiing, going down a slope, ski slope, with his long hair and a long dress?” (Laughs) So they kicked me out of that church.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Music fades in\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Donna, you moved to San Francisco in the early ’60s as a teenager and found community at a diner called Compton’s Cafeteria in the Tenderloin. I didn’t really know much about that, the Stonewall of California, until I saw the play that you co-wrote about the violent and constant police brutality and harassment of trans people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Clip from the play fades in\u003cbr>\n“Why, why do you have to be like this? What did we do to you? somebody must have loved you at some point in your life. Are you finished, little girl? \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>It was amazingly produced. It evoked a lot of strong emotions about complex topics that, unfortunately, still persist today. The character Rusty is based on your life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Persona: \u003c/b>Yes, yes, it is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Clip from Compton’s Cafeteria Riot fades in\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\n\u003ci>“I’m not supposed to be here. My parents they would be out of their minds, my father is a preacher for God’s sake.” \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Could you talk a little bit more about what it was like to be out during the 60s and what it was [like] at Compton’s?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>I wanted to get away from San José and my mother and father and my brothers and sisters. And I wanted to explore what was going on. I was a little girl inside. And I want to explore that, but I didn’t want to do that in front of my family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So I took a Greyhound bus when I was 16, 17 years old. I’ll make a joke about it. I’ll say, Mom, I’m going to go to a young men’s group, a church, okay? I’ll be gone for a while. Then I got on a Greyhound bus and I came to San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So I walked around and I didn’t know what to do, and I came upon Compton’s, and Compton was an all-night diner in the Tenderloin. I walked in there, and I’ll say it like this, this is not kosher these days or culturally appropriate, but I was deceived. I saw these beautiful women and it turned out they were born males. Well, I became friends with them. I kept going there week after week after week. And I heard their stories. We would sit at the table drinking coffee and [eating] toast, staying there for hours, and I heard their stories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Clip from Compton’s Cafeteria Riot fades in\u003cbr>\n“If my family ever found out anything about this, they’d get an exorcist. I wish I were kidding.”\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali:\u003c/b> Donna, in the play, the character based on you, Rusty, is much younger and innocent. Being taught by other elders in the community about the hardships and the realities that trans women face.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Clip from Compton’s Cafeteria Riot fades in\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel like I’m leading a double life. Maybe I should just go home, something bad is gonna happen, I can feel it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali:\u003c/b> How do you feel about seeing yourself portrayed as that younger version [of] you today?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>I still relate to the Rusty character. That’s someone who doesn’t know the ropes and who doesn’t want to hurt their family, don’t want to bring danger to their family. I want the world to know that people like me and you are throwaways, or the world doesn’t care about us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Mm-hmm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>And so people can exploit us, they can harm us, and nobody is gonna care too much about it. And so I wanted that to be told. Our story is really not a story about transgender people in my mind. It’s a story about humans, people being human. I really want the world to know that transgender people are wonderful people. They’re ordinary people. They’re like everybody else, and they want only those things that everybody else gets invited to have.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Definitely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>So, I’m gonna guess that you don’t know a lot of these experiences at your age and where you come from and how you’ve lived, but that’s where I came from, and so down deep inside me I’m still that little Rusty.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>How were you able to create a safe space for yourself in the community and foster that sense of camaraderie and safety among by other queer individuals?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>Well, I, this is gonna sound conceited, because I am, I guess, I was always popular. I was the popular one. As a teenager, everybody liked me, and everybody wanted to be my friends, boys and girls and men and women. And I used to get invited to all these parties. It’s not unlike today. I had my choice of parties on Saturday night because when I went to a party, I would go up to the girls and say, “Let’s dance.” I started the dancing, I broke the ice for everybody. And so I always liked myself. It’s self-love. And that’s not a bad thing, and not on my block. But, and I used to have to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but I made it light.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, Q, you asked me about community and how it was for me. I’d like to know where you found community and like-minded people for you when you were younger than you are now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>And so, you know, thankfully, because of my upbringing, both of my parents are human rights activists, and so I was exposed to a diverse group of people from many different walks of life, and I was fortunate to be able to find mentors and elders that would give me love and guidance. But unfortunately, I haven’t really participated a lot in the queer community or queer activism due to the predominantly white nature of these spaces.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Music fades in\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali:\u003c/b> Do you have any advice, or what other advice do you have for trans and gender expansive people of my generation about resilience, about getting through these tough times, about being smarter, right? What sort of tidbits of wisdom do you give in this regard?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>The basic thing I would say is, first and foremost, love yourself. Love yourself. And I promise you, people will love you. Know that you have a right. You’re not asking for something, ‘maybe someday people will let me do this or let me do that or let me be this.’ No. You’re a human being and you deserve it all. I’ve had a cab driver told me, a transgender woman told me I don’t expect to live over 35. I said, I said, you know, I’m in my seventies. I’m not, they don’t just let me live. I’m thriving. I am loved. I get to do the mightiest things in life. And that’s because, and I would say, don’t be a victim. And I compare it to the animal kingdom. Like, I’m sorry to say that, but that’s the way it is. They look for the weakest one. And they say, let’s gnaw on this one. So I’m not a victim.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And I would say to my younger transgender community, don’t identify as a victim. Identify as a warrior, a fighter. And also, I would say, bring other people with you. Don’t do anything alone. You’re gonna be stronger.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>So find community and do things not for you. You know that sounds strong, but like really and truly. I don’t do anything. I don’t think I do anything for myself. I have it all, but I’m doing it for you. And I think that that’s lovely. I think it’s lovely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Sometimes it’s very easy to fall into the disappointment to only focus on the negativity and so it is really important to find your community, to find resilience, to find hope. And speaking of hope, do you feel more or less hopeful about the future of trans and gender expansive people now than before, especially considering our current administration?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>Well, I want to ask you the same question. How do you feel about that for yourself in 2025?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>You, for me, are one of the giants of the movement, the human rights movement focusing on queer transgender individuals. And so it is really important to acknowledge and validate all of the work that our elders have done for us. There are definitely still things that we need to work on to improve together, right? Mobilize to unify, and you know to continue to protest and to fight for these rights that everybody deserves. Everybody deserves dignity and respect, regardless of how they choose to identify themselves, because we’re human.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But I do feel hopeful. The play actually gave me a sort of boost of radical optimism. It’s important, you know, to continue to fight because there are other Rustys out there, you know, trying to figure out how to navigate the world being who they are. And so I do feel hopeful, and I feel that things can still continue to change for the better at the same time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna:\u003c/b> Harvey Milk, you know, was famous for saying, “You gotta give them hope.” Hope is essential, and you know, I, neither I nor you, I can’t see tomorrow, I can see next week. But I can fill it with, and I got to get up in the morning and go do something. We need it now more than ever. That’s how I feel. Because I would say something that’s different today than 50 years ago. I heard this somewhere, like the shy, I think they called it the shy Republican. Like, people weren’t telling me what they were thinking of me. Well, now they’re not shy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>And you know, that’s good and bad. I know my enemy, whereas I didn’t before. Right, so I take hope and this knowledge and like, yes, I need to know where I stand with you. But I, you know, on a very personal level, I am very terrified for myself. Because it’s out there. In a way, nothing has changed. We’ve come back, and I’ll say this, that man that just got killed, Charlie Kirk, I saw on the news the first moments after it happened. A news reporter talked to a student, a white young, white woman with bleached, blonde hair. And she said, oh, he was talking about how transgender people are the most violent, among the most violent people and do the most crimes in this country. What? You know, like I would have said, “Give me the names. Name some of these transgender people that are the most violent.” Me, Donna Personna, I’ve never slapped anyone in my life. I never have. Anyway, that, like, wow, and we have to push against that. So I’m hopeful, but I’m frightened out of my mind, and I have to keep going.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Music fades in\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Donna, I’d like to give you a really heartfelt thank you for speaking with me, for sharing your knowledge and your wisdom with me for continuing to be a fearless advocate for our community and I feel very empowered by you. I feel very hopeful. I feel very optimistic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>You’re welcome for that, Q, and I want to say, encouraged by you just being here. You know, I’ve done a lot. I’ve had many, many adventures where I was nervous, scared, and thinking, am I gonna come through? And to see you here right now, I understand that you are out of your comfort zone and you’re willing to go there for the greater good. And I’m also recognized that I’m going to get tired at some point. I only want to live to be 105 or something. I look at you and I think, I can see that they are going to be doing this for the next 50, 60 years. And that really encourages me, makes me feel good. And I appreciate that, and I want to thank you for that right now. You’re very intelligent, or I don’t need to say that, but I like your intelligence and you know what’s what and how to reach out to other people and have them hear you. So I’m grateful for that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>And thank you so much, that really means so much to me, Donna.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Music in\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>Did that feel good?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Yes. Yes. How does it feel to you? I was going to cry at some point.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>I feel, you know, like we’re friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>No, thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>I feel like we are friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sasha Khokha: \u003c/b>Celebrated transgender elder Donna Personna, in conversation with Quetzali, a youth activist from Sacramento. \u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And thats it for TCR Mag for this week. This interview was produced by me, Sasha Khokha, Srishti Prabha and Suzie Racho with help this week from Gabriela Glueck. Our senior editor is Victoria Mauleon. Our engineer is Brendan Willard. Special thanks to Tuck Woodstock, host of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.genderpodcast.com/\">Gender Reveal podcast,\u003c/a> for his help on this episode. And to KQED’s Robert Chehoski, Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Ana de Almeida Amaral and Anna Vignet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And if you didn’t catch our series on trans and nonbinary youth and people who love them, check out our \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/love-you-for-you\">Love You for You\u003c/a> series in our podcast feed. The California Report Magazine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Your State, Your Stories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the last few weeks, we’ve been sharing conversations between transgender and nonbinary kids and the people in their lives who love and support them — a series called \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/love-you-for-you\">\u003cem>Love You for You.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As we enter \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13977169/transgender-history-bay-area-san-francisco-lgbtq-trans-bay\">Transgender Awareness Month\u003c/a>, we shift the lens toward intergenerational stories — young people in their twenties in conversation with transgender elders whose lives trace the long arc of LGBTQ+ activism in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These bonus episodes carry heavier histories and more mature themes than the family conversations featured earlier in the series. They offer deeper context to the ongoing fight for safety, dignity and self-expression.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This week, we meet \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13960471/donna-personna-interview-lgbtq-history\">Donna Personna\u003c/a>, a 79-year-old transgender Chicana artist, activist and playwright who grew up in San José and now lives in San Francisco. A longtime drag performer and advocate, Donna has devoted decades to uplifting the LGBTQ+ community. In 2019, she was named \u003ca href=\"https://cdn.sfpride.org/press/RELEASE-Community-Grand-Marshal-Announcement-SF-Pride-2019-FINAL.pdf\">Lifetime Achievement Grand Marshal of the San Francisco Pride Parade\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She also co-wrote \u003ca href=\"https://www.comptonscafeteriariot.com/\">Compton’s Cafeteria Riot\u003c/a>, an immersive play that brings to life a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/11838357/in-66-on-one-hot-august-night-trans-women-fought-for-their-rights\">1966 uprising in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District\u003c/a> — when trans women and drag queens stood up to police harassment, three years before Stonewall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12063818\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-2-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12063818\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-2-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-2-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-2-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-2-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A photo of Donna Personna from 2014 is displayed at her home in San Francisco on Nov. 6, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In this episode, Donna speaks with Quetzali (who also goes by “Q”), a 23-year-old Latinx nonbinary organizer from Sacramento who uses they/them/elle pronouns and who is using only their first name to protect their identity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Together, they reflect on how Latinx gender-expansive identities have evolved across generations, from quiet survival in the shadows to living freely. Donna also shares how she continues to cultivate self-love and resilience in a world that still tests both — grounding today’s struggles in a lifetime of resistance, care and optimism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Guests:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>79-year-old Donna Personna (she/her)\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>23-year-old Quetzali (they/them)\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC8007728606\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Music fades in\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sasha Khokha:\u003c/b> I’m Sasha Khokha, this is \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/californiareportmagazine\">The California Report Magazine.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the last few weeks, we’ve been bringing you conversations between transgender and nonbinary kids and the people in their lives who love and support them so they can thrive. The series is called “Love You for You.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This week, as we continue to mark Transgender Awareness month, we’re going to hear young people in their 20s in conversation with transgender elders. Their lives reflect the long arc of transgender and LGBTQ+ activism here in California.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>And a heads up, these intergenerational conversations carry heavier histories and more mature themes than the ones we’ve been diving into with the family conversations in “Love You for You.” So parents, you might want to listen before deciding whether to share with kids. This week, we hear from Donna Personna, a 79-year-old transgender Chicana activist who grew up in San José and now lives in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She’s a celebrated drag performer, artist, and playwright and she’s devoted decades of her life to activism for the LGBTQ+ community. In 2019, she was named Lifetime Achievement Grand Marshall of the San Francisco Pride Parade. She also co-wrote the immersive play Compton’s Cafeteria Riot. It’s about a 1966 uprising when transgender women in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District stood up to police brutality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Film clip fades in “I’d hammer out justice, I’d hammer out freedom, I’d hammer out love.” (singing)\u003cbr>\n\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nOften called the “Stonewall of the West,” the Compton’s Cafeteria riot marked a turning point for transgender visibility and rights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Film clip fades in “I’d hammer out justice…” (singing)]\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003c/i>We’re going to hear Donna in conversation with Quetzali, a 23-year-old Latinx, nonbinary activist from Sacramento, who also goes by Q and uses the pronouns they/them/elle. Just a note, we’re only using Quetzali’s first name to protect their identity. Donna and Quetzali reflect on cultivating self-love and resilience in a world that continues to test both.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12063821\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-23-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12063821\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-23-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-23-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-23-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-23-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Quetzali, left, places their hand on Donna Personna’s hand as Donna speaks about her life, at her home in San Francisco on Nov. 6, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Donna, you’re an amazing artist, a prominent transgender rights activist. You’ve used many different mediums of art to share important messages about civil rights, equity, inclusion. And I do hope that I can learn a lot from, you know, everything that you’ve been through and all of your wisdom and guidance and teachings. And so, I would like to start off by asking you how old you were when you came out and what was it like for you?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>Okay, well, I was born in 1946, and at that time, there was no community. In fact, it was not a thing to be homosexual or gay. And when it was brought up, it was an aberration. It was rebellious. And what I read was that a child that shows these signs should be separated from the family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Where did you read that?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>In a book in our home, we had a library and there was a medical book in there and I love to read. I mean, my father was a Baptist minister, and as a 10-year-old boy at that time, when I read that maybe this child should be separated from the family, I thought that I could ruin my family. That was on my shoulders. So I never breathed a word about that. And there was no one to talk to anyway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12063820\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-22-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12063820\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-22-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1270\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-22-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-22-KQED-160x102.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251106_TRANSELDERSYOUTH_GC-22-KQED-1536x975.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Quetzali, left, places their hand on Donna Personna’s hand as Donna speaks about her life, at her home in San Francisco on Nov. 6, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>So it took me 59, at the age of 59, I came out. If you want to call it that, but I resent that, you know, coming out. Where was I to come out of? But so to answer your question. Now I’ll ask you, when did you come out?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>From a very young age, my parents have always been very supportive in a way in which I express myself, and so I feel like I’ve always been me. You know, there was really never that sort of time where I’m like, okay, I’m not myself or I have to be somebody else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna:\u003c/b> Q, you use the pronouns they, them. Can you tell me more about your gender identity?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>So as someone who is trying to get in deeper touch with their roots and practice sort of like more like indigenous native ways. I feel like I don’t align very much with Western gender binary. And so before the Spanish colonization, gender in many Mexican Indigenous cultures was not strictly binary, right, similarly to how here in North America, Indigenous tribes have, right, like the two-spirit gender identity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As I learn more from my elders in my community, I found that I deeply resonated with the idea of not being seen as a man or a woman and this sort of unique cultural identity that embodies both the masculine and the feminine and is sort of like a bridge between the two.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>That makes sense to me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>I feel like part of the reason why I didn’t formally come out, especially to the older generation of my family, is because I do worry, right, about their reactions, right? Like my parents, my sister, my inner circle of friends and close family, my chosen family all accept me as I am, but because our culture, right, is rooted in machismo. And violent patriarchal ideology, I worry about coming out to the rest of my family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>Yeah, well, I want to say that when the coming out, I’m old, I’m saying at 79, I was always this way and you know, the way that I wanna teach people if they need to, and I’ll say that I’m invited to, institutions that are now accepting transgender, gay people into their old folks’ homes, I’ll say. l, I teach the staff, don’t ask somebody about their preference, sexual preference because you know that that implies a choice see who I am was not a choice. It’s who I was born.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>I resonate with that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>So, like I heard you say, accepted, I am not here to be accepted. I come for approval. I don’t care about approval. I come pre-approved. So that’s an aggression too. Like, oh, when did you want acceptance? No, not from you. I’m rebellious in that sense. Like the thing is, whether or not I accept you, you know. Who gave you the power to accept me?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Music fades in\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>My father was a Baptist minister, my mother was a preacher’s wife. But also in my home, as it sounds like what happened to you, I got total, unconditional love. Yeah, unconditional love. And, you know, my brothers, my brothers were football players, amateur boxers, wrestlers. Never did any one of them ever say to me, “We wish you would act another way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s where I learned that this is where I belong. And so what’s happening outside, in a way, doesn’t matter, but I wanna stay safe. I wanna to stay safe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Did you ever talk to your family about your gender or sexual identity with them?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>No, I didn’t. I was in my own universe. There was nobody else in this universe. I had stories, you now, I’m gonna say they were secrets, kind of, that I did not give life to. And so, no, I didn’t tell my brothers and sisters and my mother and my father. But I do say this, my mother was my best friend. And I feel that she knew something that she wasn’t saying. Like, she was very protective of me. And I used to, I like to say, I was my mother’s favorite. But I had 14 brothers and sisters say, no, I was the favorite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>And I can relate with you on being very close to my mother, my mother and my sister [are] also my best friends and I also didn’t formally come out to anybody but when I took a human sexuality class in university, I actually feel like I got to understand both of my parents better, right? We had an assignment and I offhandedly asked my parents a question about, you know, their own sexual identities their own…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna: \u003c/b>You did?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Yes, and we actually had a great conversation, a very long conversation right at the dinner table and I feel like I’m very grateful for that time and for that class because I feel like otherwise I wouldn’t have got to know my parents, especially my mother, on a deeper level like that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>Well, I’m happy that that happened for you. In my case, my parents, nobody in my family ever talked about anything about sex. I didn’t have that, I’m going to teach you about the birds and the bees and tamales. No, there was no conversation like that. And that’s just the way it was. I’m glad for you that you had that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali\u003c/b>: So do you think that you being Latina, you being Mexicana has impacted your sexual identity or your gender identity in a way that, or in any way, I guess.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>I learned gentility, you know, and being kind and respecting each other. And the other thing that one of the things learned the most was do for other people. Nothing that you do is for yourself. Bring other people with you. Make this a better world. And you know, my father is a Baptist minister. Every week that I heard that, and you know I used to resent it as a child because, like my father, and I’m so proud of this, he founded nine churches in his lifetime, nine. Some of them are still operating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Fantastic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>Yes. People go to that place for shelter, for comfort, for help and to feel good about themselves. And I saw it over and over and again. Like a young woman would come to the church and her husband left her or something, she comes with her kids, her children. They found her a place to live. They connected her to a job, things like that. So, you know, without anybody, and my mother and father never told me, ever, did they say, ‘This is what we want you to do.’ They never did. It was modeling, they call modeling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Okay, so Donna, are you religious and does religion play a role in how you navigate your life then?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>I’m not religious, but I’m a saint. No, that’s a joke. I’m not religious because, and you know, I was a rebel. See, like, that’s another thing about me. I’m never anything but me, and that’s been all my life. And that gets me in trouble sometimes. The Sunday school teacher one day was talking about, saying dancing is bad. They said dancing leads to sex, basically. That’s what they said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I was a teenager. I liked to dance, and I didn’t want to think that’s a bad thing. At that time, we were planning a ski trip, our class, Sunday school class. The Sunday school teacher said, “What would you think if you saw Jesus dancing at one of your teen club dances?” And I said, “Well, how would it look if Jesus was skiing, going down a slope, ski slope, with his long hair and a long dress?” (Laughs) So they kicked me out of that church.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Music fades in\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Donna, you moved to San Francisco in the early ’60s as a teenager and found community at a diner called Compton’s Cafeteria in the Tenderloin. I didn’t really know much about that, the Stonewall of California, until I saw the play that you co-wrote about the violent and constant police brutality and harassment of trans people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Clip from the play fades in\u003cbr>\n“Why, why do you have to be like this? What did we do to you? somebody must have loved you at some point in your life. Are you finished, little girl? \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>It was amazingly produced. It evoked a lot of strong emotions about complex topics that, unfortunately, still persist today. The character Rusty is based on your life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Persona: \u003c/b>Yes, yes, it is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Clip from Compton’s Cafeteria Riot fades in\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\n\u003ci>“I’m not supposed to be here. My parents they would be out of their minds, my father is a preacher for God’s sake.” \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Could you talk a little bit more about what it was like to be out during the 60s and what it was [like] at Compton’s?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>I wanted to get away from San José and my mother and father and my brothers and sisters. And I wanted to explore what was going on. I was a little girl inside. And I want to explore that, but I didn’t want to do that in front of my family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So I took a Greyhound bus when I was 16, 17 years old. I’ll make a joke about it. I’ll say, Mom, I’m going to go to a young men’s group, a church, okay? I’ll be gone for a while. Then I got on a Greyhound bus and I came to San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So I walked around and I didn’t know what to do, and I came upon Compton’s, and Compton was an all-night diner in the Tenderloin. I walked in there, and I’ll say it like this, this is not kosher these days or culturally appropriate, but I was deceived. I saw these beautiful women and it turned out they were born males. Well, I became friends with them. I kept going there week after week after week. And I heard their stories. We would sit at the table drinking coffee and [eating] toast, staying there for hours, and I heard their stories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Clip from Compton’s Cafeteria Riot fades in\u003cbr>\n“If my family ever found out anything about this, they’d get an exorcist. I wish I were kidding.”\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali:\u003c/b> Donna, in the play, the character based on you, Rusty, is much younger and innocent. Being taught by other elders in the community about the hardships and the realities that trans women face.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Clip from Compton’s Cafeteria Riot fades in\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel like I’m leading a double life. Maybe I should just go home, something bad is gonna happen, I can feel it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali:\u003c/b> How do you feel about seeing yourself portrayed as that younger version [of] you today?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>I still relate to the Rusty character. That’s someone who doesn’t know the ropes and who doesn’t want to hurt their family, don’t want to bring danger to their family. I want the world to know that people like me and you are throwaways, or the world doesn’t care about us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Mm-hmm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>And so people can exploit us, they can harm us, and nobody is gonna care too much about it. And so I wanted that to be told. Our story is really not a story about transgender people in my mind. It’s a story about humans, people being human. I really want the world to know that transgender people are wonderful people. They’re ordinary people. They’re like everybody else, and they want only those things that everybody else gets invited to have.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Definitely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>So, I’m gonna guess that you don’t know a lot of these experiences at your age and where you come from and how you’ve lived, but that’s where I came from, and so down deep inside me I’m still that little Rusty.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>How were you able to create a safe space for yourself in the community and foster that sense of camaraderie and safety among by other queer individuals?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>Well, I, this is gonna sound conceited, because I am, I guess, I was always popular. I was the popular one. As a teenager, everybody liked me, and everybody wanted to be my friends, boys and girls and men and women. And I used to get invited to all these parties. It’s not unlike today. I had my choice of parties on Saturday night because when I went to a party, I would go up to the girls and say, “Let’s dance.” I started the dancing, I broke the ice for everybody. And so I always liked myself. It’s self-love. And that’s not a bad thing, and not on my block. But, and I used to have to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but I made it light.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, Q, you asked me about community and how it was for me. I’d like to know where you found community and like-minded people for you when you were younger than you are now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>And so, you know, thankfully, because of my upbringing, both of my parents are human rights activists, and so I was exposed to a diverse group of people from many different walks of life, and I was fortunate to be able to find mentors and elders that would give me love and guidance. But unfortunately, I haven’t really participated a lot in the queer community or queer activism due to the predominantly white nature of these spaces.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Music fades in\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali:\u003c/b> Do you have any advice, or what other advice do you have for trans and gender expansive people of my generation about resilience, about getting through these tough times, about being smarter, right? What sort of tidbits of wisdom do you give in this regard?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>The basic thing I would say is, first and foremost, love yourself. Love yourself. And I promise you, people will love you. Know that you have a right. You’re not asking for something, ‘maybe someday people will let me do this or let me do that or let me be this.’ No. You’re a human being and you deserve it all. I’ve had a cab driver told me, a transgender woman told me I don’t expect to live over 35. I said, I said, you know, I’m in my seventies. I’m not, they don’t just let me live. I’m thriving. I am loved. I get to do the mightiest things in life. And that’s because, and I would say, don’t be a victim. And I compare it to the animal kingdom. Like, I’m sorry to say that, but that’s the way it is. They look for the weakest one. And they say, let’s gnaw on this one. So I’m not a victim.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And I would say to my younger transgender community, don’t identify as a victim. Identify as a warrior, a fighter. And also, I would say, bring other people with you. Don’t do anything alone. You’re gonna be stronger.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>So find community and do things not for you. You know that sounds strong, but like really and truly. I don’t do anything. I don’t think I do anything for myself. I have it all, but I’m doing it for you. And I think that that’s lovely. I think it’s lovely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Sometimes it’s very easy to fall into the disappointment to only focus on the negativity and so it is really important to find your community, to find resilience, to find hope. And speaking of hope, do you feel more or less hopeful about the future of trans and gender expansive people now than before, especially considering our current administration?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>Well, I want to ask you the same question. How do you feel about that for yourself in 2025?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>You, for me, are one of the giants of the movement, the human rights movement focusing on queer transgender individuals. And so it is really important to acknowledge and validate all of the work that our elders have done for us. There are definitely still things that we need to work on to improve together, right? Mobilize to unify, and you know to continue to protest and to fight for these rights that everybody deserves. Everybody deserves dignity and respect, regardless of how they choose to identify themselves, because we’re human.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But I do feel hopeful. The play actually gave me a sort of boost of radical optimism. It’s important, you know, to continue to fight because there are other Rustys out there, you know, trying to figure out how to navigate the world being who they are. And so I do feel hopeful, and I feel that things can still continue to change for the better at the same time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna:\u003c/b> Harvey Milk, you know, was famous for saying, “You gotta give them hope.” Hope is essential, and you know, I, neither I nor you, I can’t see tomorrow, I can see next week. But I can fill it with, and I got to get up in the morning and go do something. We need it now more than ever. That’s how I feel. Because I would say something that’s different today than 50 years ago. I heard this somewhere, like the shy, I think they called it the shy Republican. Like, people weren’t telling me what they were thinking of me. Well, now they’re not shy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>And you know, that’s good and bad. I know my enemy, whereas I didn’t before. Right, so I take hope and this knowledge and like, yes, I need to know where I stand with you. But I, you know, on a very personal level, I am very terrified for myself. Because it’s out there. In a way, nothing has changed. We’ve come back, and I’ll say this, that man that just got killed, Charlie Kirk, I saw on the news the first moments after it happened. A news reporter talked to a student, a white young, white woman with bleached, blonde hair. And she said, oh, he was talking about how transgender people are the most violent, among the most violent people and do the most crimes in this country. What? You know, like I would have said, “Give me the names. Name some of these transgender people that are the most violent.” Me, Donna Personna, I’ve never slapped anyone in my life. I never have. Anyway, that, like, wow, and we have to push against that. So I’m hopeful, but I’m frightened out of my mind, and I have to keep going.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Music fades in\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Donna, I’d like to give you a really heartfelt thank you for speaking with me, for sharing your knowledge and your wisdom with me for continuing to be a fearless advocate for our community and I feel very empowered by you. I feel very hopeful. I feel very optimistic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>You’re welcome for that, Q, and I want to say, encouraged by you just being here. You know, I’ve done a lot. I’ve had many, many adventures where I was nervous, scared, and thinking, am I gonna come through? And to see you here right now, I understand that you are out of your comfort zone and you’re willing to go there for the greater good. And I’m also recognized that I’m going to get tired at some point. I only want to live to be 105 or something. I look at you and I think, I can see that they are going to be doing this for the next 50, 60 years. And that really encourages me, makes me feel good. And I appreciate that, and I want to thank you for that right now. You’re very intelligent, or I don’t need to say that, but I like your intelligence and you know what’s what and how to reach out to other people and have them hear you. So I’m grateful for that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>And thank you so much, that really means so much to me, Donna.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Music in\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>Did that feel good?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>Yes. Yes. How does it feel to you? I was going to cry at some point.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>I feel, you know, like we’re friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Quetzali: \u003c/b>No, thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Donna Personna: \u003c/b>I feel like we are friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sasha Khokha: \u003c/b>Celebrated transgender elder Donna Personna, in conversation with Quetzali, a youth activist from Sacramento. \u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And thats it for TCR Mag for this week. This interview was produced by me, Sasha Khokha, Srishti Prabha and Suzie Racho with help this week from Gabriela Glueck. Our senior editor is Victoria Mauleon. Our engineer is Brendan Willard. Special thanks to Tuck Woodstock, host of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.genderpodcast.com/\">Gender Reveal podcast,\u003c/a> for his help on this episode. And to KQED’s Robert Chehoski, Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Ana de Almeida Amaral and Anna Vignet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And if you didn’t catch our series on trans and nonbinary youth and people who love them, check out our \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/love-you-for-you\">Love You for You\u003c/a> series in our podcast feed. The California Report Magazine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Your State, Your Stories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "'Love You for You:' Trans Kids Talk to Their Grandparents",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2025/11/03/introducing-love-you-for-you-conversations-between-trans-kids-and-their-loved-ones/\">Love You for You\u003c/a>\u003c/em> series features conversations between trans and nonbinary youth from across California and the people in their lives who love and mentor them: parents, grandparents, siblings and others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This week, we’ll hear how grandparents’ hearts can be moved by having a transgender grandchild, and how that can expand the worldview of someone who may not be connected to the LGBTQ+ community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’ll hear from a 10-year-old transgender girl in conversation with her older sister and their grandfather. He lives in a rural California county, where many of his neighbors and hunting buddies don’t have much exposure to the transgender community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’ll also meet a 14-year-old nonbinary kid whose grandmother lives in India, where she’s become a fierce advocate for transgender and nonbinary youth. She’s taken on the challenge of explaining her grandchild’s gender to her relatives, some of whom are 90 or older.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC3553005698\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Love You for You Episode 2: A Grandparent’s Love\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha: \u003c/strong>I’m Sasha Khokha, and this is The California Report Magazine. We’re continuing our series this week about transgender and gender-expansive kids across California and the people in their lives who love, support and mentor them so they can thrive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12063357\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/3.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12063357\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/3.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/3.png 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/3-160x90.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/3-1536x864.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/3-1200x675.png 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An illustration of a 10-year-old transgender girl in a photo booth with her older sister and their grandfather. Many families in this series have chosen to remain anonymous and not use their names or show their faces out of fear that they could face harm in this current climate. \u003ccite>(Anna Vignet/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Montage of voices\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Being trans, of course, it’s a big deal, but I wish it didn’t feel like such a big deal. I wish I just felt like, you now, another fun thing about me instead of my whole identity? \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>What do you want people who are targeting trans kids right now to know about your grandkid? \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Just about how special she is. That you gotta know the person. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Thanks for letting me be who I am. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>And thank you for letting me be your parent and for letting me love you. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>What are you hopeful for the future will look like for trans kids?\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>All the trans people I know have one vision, and it is just a society where being trans isn’t this whole like thing, right? Where I can just say, ‘Hey, I’m trans,’ and everyone’s like, ‘OK, cool.’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades out\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha: \u003c/strong>We’re calling the series \u003cem>Love You for You\u003c/em>, and this week we’re going to hear two conversations between kids and their grandparents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>I’m 16. I’m a sophomore in high school. Uh, my pronouns are she, her, and this is my sister.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Hi, I’m 10. In two days, I’m about to be 11. Um, my pronouns are she, her, and this is my Grandpa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa:\u003c/strong> Um. I’m old, I’m their Grandparent, and I’m very proud of being their Grandparent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha: \u003c/strong>This family — an older sister, a younger sister who is trans, and their grandfather — sat down to talk together to talk about their relationship. And just a note, this family, like many in this series, has chosen to stay anonymous and not use their names out of fear that they could face harm in this current climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades out\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister:\u003c/strong> When you first came out, what was that experience like for you?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>I think I was like nine or eight, and it was like during the summertime, like it was right, it was kind of like in the beginning of the summer. I kind of just realized, like, yeah, that’s who I am. I’m trans, like I’m not a boy. I’m a girl. And I remember I texted my mom, “Hey, you know how I’m a boy, I think I’m actually a girl.” And she called me and she was like, “What do you mean?” And I was just like, “I’m a girl.” It was like, kind of scary because I didn’t know what anyone would think. It was kinda like awkward because like when my grandma, like I go to my grandma’s house every Friday and she used to hug me and say “Oh my little boy,” and I would look to my mom like in like disgust and like it was like kinda like weird and it was still like when I was like figuring out who I was and stuff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Papa, how did it feel when my sister came out to you?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>We always knew, so it was not a big surprise. When you were just three years old, we were putting on your dress. I think it was your…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Which one?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>When you’re going through, I think, the Dorothy years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Oh, \u003cem>Wizard of Oz\u003c/em> phase?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>I was helping you with your dress, and we were having a hard time. And I said, it’d be a lot easier if you just dressed up like a boy, and you just turned to me at the age of three and said, “I wish I was a girl.” And from then on, we knew. I knew. There’s no doubt about it. And that was it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah. Like, I feel like a lot of people don’t understand how little of a change it really was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>It was not a…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister\u003c/strong>: Yeah, and like I’m sure it was a bigger change for you, obviously.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister\u003c/strong>: Yes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister\u003c/strong>: But like for us, it was like nothing, it was like nothing had changed. Same old you. You know? I was proud of you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister:\u003c/strong> Thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister:\u003c/strong> You’re welcome. So do you feel that you’ve never really identified with, like, male?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>No, I feel like I never did that, I always wore wigs, I’ve always loved doing makeup and stuff. I remember one day where I was like, I’m just going to do like a classic glam. Two minutes later, I had polka dots on my face looking like I was Minnie Mouse’s dress because I thought it was so funny and that I looked amazing and yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister:\u003c/strong> Uh, do you wish you would have transitioned sooner?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Yes, everyone kind of like already knew, like I said, I loved costumes, I love dressing up, but not like when I was like a baby. Not when I, yep. But I feel maybe like, I feel like a good age I wanted to was probably like seven.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah. What’s something that you do that makes you feel most like yourself?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger Sister: \u003c/strong>I love expressing myself in different ways that aren’t talking. Like I love dance, I do ballet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades in\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger Sister:\u003c/strong> And I think it’s such a fun way to express myself because you can like jump up in the air and like you can show your expressions, like when you’re doing ballet, you can like spin and doing a jump, that you’re sad or you’re happy. Like I love expressing myself in dance and in music and stuff like that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah, you are definitely one of the most creative people I know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades out\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older Sister: \u003c/strong>How does it feel when somebody uses your old name?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Um on like on purpose, like to be mean, I feel like like it annoys me, but also like I don’t get it because if you are trying to do this on purpose, it just fades through to, it’s like you should just stop. It’s not funny, it’s not cute, it’s just annoying, and if you do this, I’m calling you out right now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>You just don’t let it affect you?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I don’t.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>Are there any other trans kids at your school?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Uh. I don’t think so, I don’t know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>What would you say if a new kid came to school and was trans? What would you say to make the school easier?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Um, stay away from certain people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa:\u003c/strong> OK.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Would you like give them any advice on how to stand up to bullies, or, like …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Oh yeah, don’t let it fade to you. They are just doing that because they are insecure about yourself. They just want to tear you down, even though you’re a confident, amazing person and they’re not. So just walk away and say, “I’m better than you,” and sing your way out. That’s what I do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>OK.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Yes, like this has been going on for a long time. You guys are so unoriginal. Be like, stop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>It must be exhausting being so strong all the time, and like standing up and not letting it bother you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Um, not really.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>It’s just your norm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades in\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Do you guys think that, like, younger kids are better at learning new pronouns and new names than older people are? Because the older people have been calling you by your old name for so long.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>I think the older people have a hard time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I would agree.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>Isn’t that right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah, also because, like I said, our whole family is very supportive, so once they found out, I feel like I heard that some of them bought their kids gender books. I’m very glad that there’s authors and stuff and people that, oh, let’s write about this stuff, so the younger kids and younger generations can know about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah, just like teaching younger kids, just educating them more about everything that goes into it. I definitely think that younger kids have an easier time with like switching names and pronouns.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>Does it hurt your feelings when Papa accidentally calls you by your old name?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>No, because I’m not that surprised at it, like yeah. Well, not in like a mean way. I’m just like, like I’ve been used to like everyone calling me it like for so long on accident, that I’m just like, yeah, OK, like, it’s fine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>It’s to be expected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah, like there’s like it’s kind of like they’re forgetting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades in\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Papa, have you like told any of your friends or people around you, like people that don’t include our close family, about my sister being trans?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>Yes, yes, all my close friends. They all know. I have not told my neighbors. But my friends that I go hunting with and fishing with, they were all Trump supporters, but I told them, and they’ve never said, I don’t know really how they feel about it, but they’ve said anything bad about it, or you know, saying that’s a terrible thing or…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister:\u003c/strong> Yeah. Do you think that like people around you would have a reaction?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>Some, yes, I do, yes. A lot of them would not understand at all. So they’re, what you don’t know they’re afraid of, kind of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah. For people that you don’t think would be supportive or people that would have a negative reaction, what would you want to tell them to try and change their mind or redirect their thinking?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>It’s hard to tell someone to change their mind without knowing somebody or, you know, I just can’t say she’s a beautiful person; she does, she has a great heart. Um, I don’t think that’d change their mind. I think over time, if they actually met somebody and were closer to them, that’s how I think that they’d lose their opinion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah, you think that they would need to have personal experience with someone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>Personal experience, exactly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>What do you want people who are targeting trans kids right now to know about your grandkid?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>Just about how special she is. That you gotta know the person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah, that’s a good answer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister:\u003c/strong> Yeah!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Like, I don’t, it just doesn’t make sense, people who just are homophobic for no good reason. Like, for things that don’t affect them, people that they don’t know. Doesn’t make sense to me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah, like cyberbullying, like when people cyberbully people like you don’t know this person personally, but like, why do you want to be mean to them for no reason? Like you actually like the person, like if you’re taking time every day to, be rude like…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah. Like, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister:\u003c/strong> Yes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>What do you want the future to look like for trans kids?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Uh, I hope that in the future everyone’s really supportive of them and that homophobia kind of disappears. It’s probably not, but like…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>That would be wonderful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Honestly, like, there’s nothing we can really do about people having their own opinions, but like, I feel like sometimes we can just keep our opinions to ourselves, you know, just like, shush.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades in\u003c/em>\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>What are you most excited about for your future?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister \u003c/strong>Well, there’s two things, one, becoming an actor, like, I really want to be a child actor if there’s any agents listening. Hello, I’m here! Hi. But another thing is I would love to, like this, I love how I get to like share knowledge to other people that might not know about being trans or stuff. So I love to…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older Sister:\u003c/strong> To educate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah, to educate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Good answer. Papa, what do you hope that the future is like for trans kids, and what do you plan on doing to support trans kids?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>Oh, I support this one all the time. Uh, I’d do anything for her, and she knows that. I just, I don’t want the hurt that people give to trans people for there’s no reason. That’s uh, that’s what really gets me and your grandma the most. We just hate to see you hurt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades in\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>Well, I got a question for you. Have you ever talked so much to your sister before? Actually sat and chatted with your sister?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>I don’t think that a conversation like this has ever really come up. I regret not asking you more about being trans, but I’m glad that we have this opportunity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah, like we never really have time, like you have a bunch of school and homework, and I have like Monday I have singing, Tuesday I have ballet…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>You have lots of commitments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger Sister: \u003c/strong>Yes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>I think that this has been very, very helpful, educational for me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger Sister: \u003c/strong>Mm-hmm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister \u003c/strong>And I think that having this conversation and just learning more about you and like who you are as a person will help me to better explain it to other people, you know, like to my friends and the rest of my family.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nYounger sister: \u003c/strong>And I hope for all the other trans kids and other trans people that this is very educational for them. Really, people that are not, like people that still trying to figure out who they are. I hope this helps people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>I’m excited to see what you do in the future. I know that you’ll achieve your dreams of being an actress.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>I can’t tell you how proud I am of you two doing this. This is amazing to me. I could never ever do this at your age, especially.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa:\u003c/strong> And you guys are doing a great job. Just very special, both of you guys are.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades in\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha: \u003c/strong>In our next conversation, we’re gonna hear a kid talking with their mom and their grandmother.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades out\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ba: \u003c/strong>It’s important in these times, you know, with all the misconceptions that are there, that we make our voice be heard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha: \u003c/strong>They discuss what it’s meant to have their family’s support across generations. And by the way, we’re just using this kid’s first name to protect their privacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan \u003c/strong>Hi, my name is Rohan, I’m 14 years old, non-binary, and my pronouns are they, them. I’m here with my mom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ma\u003c/strong>: Hi.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan\u003c/strong>: And my grandma, who I call Ba.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ba\u003c/strong>: Hello.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan:\u003c/strong> She’s visiting from India.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>It’s not really our family culture to speak very publicly about you being trans, and in general, we’re very open about it, actually, in our community and our family. And so it’s not something secret at all, but we’re not used to talking about it publicly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades in\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>There’s not really a moment I can think of when I like found out I was trans or something, I’ve always felt like I didn’t fit into either of the main gender categories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades out\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom:\u003c/strong> Yeah, and as your mom, I can say that. You’ve always been you. Even when you were one years old, two years old, three years old, you know, really very young.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ba: \u003c/strong>When they actually came out with it, I was very glad because I just never liked the fact of anyone having to hide something because I feel that it affects their personality, and all, whereas Rohan came out with it, we all were happy to share it with friends, you know, and that’s been good. And if I can go further, actually, for me, what has been very important is to see the child thrive. And I’ve seen Rohan thriving. I mean, I’ve seen them playing football, doing those miniature paintings, being good at school, and just more than anything else, being a very sensitive, loving child. And that for me has been most important.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>There were a few things in your childhood that were very distinctive, like you never wore conventional like the short swimsuit, you know, you always wanted to wear the top as well, otherwise you would refuse to, even when you were very small, two, three years old.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ba: \u003c/strong>You know, for me, there’s just that one memory where we were at the dining table and a friend was visiting and Rohan whispered to you to say that share, and I said it is such a good moment for me that you know not only was there a coming out but there was such a confidence about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>Oh my gosh, I had forgotten that moment. That was a really precious moment. You were such a little one. And when you were excited, I also remember when we were discussing with the counselor, you know, she was advising that you could come out. Actually, we didn’t know about non-binary and they/them pronouns. So when we were talking about your gender fluidity and she asked you what’s your coming out plan. You were a little kid, Rohan of seven, eight years old. And she asked, “Who would you like to come out to?” And you said, “Everybody.” And I remember that was really one of my favorite moments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>I feel like one of the things was it really like, somehow I feel like I was opened up to an even bigger community, like, and that was really special, I think, like of all the different, you know, like LGBTQ kids and…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>So yeah, that’s one of the unexpected boons, isn’t it, Rohan, finding that community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>Yeah, there’s so many nice moments like going to Pride and going to like groups where there’s like so many other like trans and non-binary or anyone who’s LGBTQ kids, and I just feel like I can connect with people so well there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades in\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>Yeah, do you want to talk about some of the challenges on the other side, the challenges of being trans in this world?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades out\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>For me, one of the biggest things is bathroom dysphoria, like especially being non-binary, I never know, I don’t want to go in either of the like male or female bathrooms and like especially in like big public spaces. Even if it’s like in a like area that’s very supportive, I feel really uncomfortable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom\u003c/strong>: If there’s a non-binary, if there’s an all-gender bathroom available, does that make it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>Yeah, definitely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>That addresses it, huh? So that’s the solution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>Yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>Any other challenges you’ve experienced or difficulties?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>So, also, another thing is immigration when we’re going to see my grandparents in India, sometimes it’s tough explaining to the immigration agent like what non-binary is and sometimes like the, they’re like trying to talk to me in Hindi or like, and that’s sometimes a language barrier and like what it says on the passport may not match how they perceive me. I feel like worried. If we get into the country or not is based on their decisions. So it’s always a very stressful time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>I think my mom and I have talked about this, that as parents, as grandparents, we just want to protect our child and protect their right to be a child and dealing with these types of things with how to use the bathroom and navigating immigration. These are things which I know I, as a child, never had to think about. The adults in the world took care of it and made it easy and safe for me. I think that’s the toughest as an adult to not be able to control that I can make a world that children can be carefree and safe in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ba:\u003c/strong> This is such an important part of caring for our own children and, by extension, our grandchildren, and what it would mean not just for our grandchildren but for communities at large to see. We all feel it, and we all are together in it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom:\u003c/strong> The safety of children is a community sport. It’s a team sport. Putting flags, rainbow flags and trans flags everywhere. Whenever I see a rainbow flag anywhere, I feel that it’s a signal that I am safe to be myself there. I know it makes difference to me as the parent of a trans child. I’ll be biking through the neighborhood, and in a way, it’s such a small cosmetic thing, putting a flag up outside your house, but it makes big difference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I really feel like that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>Do you feel that too?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>Yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>Buy some flags.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades in\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ba: \u003c/strong>I think we are able to have conversations and just feel more open, more close to each other as family. And then I realized that it opened up another horizon for me. Like one day, I walked into an LGBTQ meeting in Bombay. I’d never done that before. And there were only two of us who were not in that category. Maybe we all are a bit in that category, but strikingly so. So it was a universe which I entered in because of you. And then one time, during a literary festival, I went to listen to transgender poetry. And I had not been aware of that whole scene in Bombay, and so my college, where I had studied, has an LGBTQ club. And I’ve got connected to that. And I’m looking forward to an opportunity to talk to grandparents through that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan:\u003c/strong> I mean, Ba, you saw this firsthand, but like, where the family in India, especially like the family that was like 90 or more years older, like still really tries and understands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom\u003c/strong>: The way that she explained, the way you explained, mama and helped people understand how Rohan is, you know what it’s like because for many of them they had no exposure whatsoever to, maybe not even to LGBTQ, for some of our really elderly, forget trans. Just to have you know my 80 plus, 90 plus relative unanimously, not had one relative who when we go back home Rohan can’t be themselves with that even and so by extension I can’t be myself with. And that, even though it’s around this topic of being trans, I think in a way made me feel more safe about being myself, myself, in general. Because I realize that people are more capable than I might have guessed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>India has been such like a happy memory in general for me, like, and I’m always excited to go now because it’s like there’s so much support and love there in that family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ba: \u003c/strong>And I just want to give the context that the family that my husband comes from is really a Marwadi, conservative family, and my own family, maybe a little forward, but otherwise a bit right-wing, you get the picture. And yet, before Rohan came to India, last time especially, because now they had grown up, I wanted them all to know before they met them, you know, so that there would really be no quizzical looks or anything, there’d just be a joyful feeling of a grandchild visiting. We’ve got a large family, so I would tell one person from the family to inform everybody else. If one talks in a certain way, then awareness does increase and something does shift.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>Yeah, Ba, thanks for sharing that. Can you reflect on whether there was something about the way that you introduced people to the topic that got the reaction that you got?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ba: \u003c/strong>I realized that there’s no sense in being forceful or angry, you know. I just, it’s important to reach, not to confront anyone. People always love it when somebody wants to share something. I didn’t say, I want to tell you, or I want you to know. Get into a conversation in some form, like encourage them to ask if a question popped up in their mind. I remember that there was an 83-year-old woman who was like you know, I’ve never heard of this do you mind if I ask more questions? I said no, I want you to ask more questions, and if you can talk to others about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>You know, Ba, you’re a real leader, you are held in high respect in our family. And I think also you drew on that in the sense on the trust and respect people have for you. So you were sharing very much about how you feel. They could feel your comfort with it, your not just comfort, but joy about who Rohan is, your pride in Rohan, and then I think that people follow suit a little bit with someone they respect and trust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ba: \u003c/strong>One thing was my own intrinsic love for Rohan. That’s the first, but also, I think my own experience as having grown up in India at a time when there was so much gender discrimination and bias against women. So I somehow know in my bones how it feels, you know, so that the combined effect of that, think, gave me a certain energy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades in and out\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>Rohan, you also have family in Wyoming from your dad’s side. And so how has that story played out?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I mean, I feel like it’s kind of like a bit of an unfinished story. Like we haven’t yet told them, but like in Wyoming, like that community, it is a bit of a conservative community. But I mean I’m still hopeful that maybe, you know, it could be the same situation as what happened in India. Like, we kind of expected the worst, but then it was so amazing to see all these like, people understanding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>Yeah. And so though it’s unfinished, do you feel sad about that? Or kind of a sense of anything negative, dread or uncertainty or?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan\u003c/strong>: Not really. I feel like I’m kind of hopeful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades in\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom:\u003c/strong> Rohan, have you ever imagined or thought about not being trans or wished you were cisgender?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>Um, I feel like sometimes, yeah, maybe I think about what it might have been like if I wasn’t trans, but it’s never like a, like it’s almost like thinking about what would it be like for a different person who’s not trans. It’s not like, what if I was not trans? I mean, it’s who I am, I’d be a different person if I wasn’t trans. Like it’s almost like saying like, oh, what if I had chosen to be a different height? Or what if I had chosen for my skin color to be different? Like, it’s kind of who you are, and I’m happy to be who I am.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ba: \u003c/strong>I very, very strongly feel that everyone has a right to be what they are. I think change happens. It happens slowly, but it does happen. So we keep our faith alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom:\u003c/strong> Great. And now the most important question, which family member has supported you best? Who gets the award?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan\u003c/strong>: Everyone!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom:\u003c/strong> Rohan, I know that you were very hesitant to do this, so thanks for doing it. Thanks for taking a chance on it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>I mean, I feel like in the end, all the stress when we did this fully went away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ba: \u003c/strong>I have to say that I felt teary in between. Just we’ve talked about these things, it’s not new, but talking like this, I think I feel very heartened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades in\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>Yeah, that’s how I feel. My heart feels very full.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>I’m really happy we did this. You know, I feel like we’re giving a message out to people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha: \u003c/strong>Next week in the \u003cem>Love You for You\u003c/em> series, we’ll hear a dad talking with his two gender-expansive teenagers. Both rugby players who’ve faced different kinds of challenges on the field.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kid: \u003c/strong>I am a person like you, and I am just here to play rugby and now I will tackle you, please stop being patronizing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha: \u003c/strong>That’s next week on \u003cem>The California Report Magazine\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The interviews in our \u003cem>Love You for You\u003c/em> series were produced by me, Sasha Khokha, Tessa Paoli, Srishti Prabha and Suzie Racho with help this week from Gabriela Glueck. Our senior editor is Victoria Mauleon. Our engineer is Brendan Willard, with additional mixing from Katherine Monahan. Srishti Prabha is our intern. Special thanks to Tuck Woodstock, host of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.genderpodcast.com/\">Gender Reveal podcast\u003c/a>, for his help on the series. And to KQED’s Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Ana de Almeida Amaral and Anna Vignet. We’ll be releasing all of the stories in our \u003cem>Love You for You\u003c/em> series on our podcast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California Report Magazine, Your State, Your stories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades out\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2025/11/03/introducing-love-you-for-you-conversations-between-trans-kids-and-their-loved-ones/\">Love You for You\u003c/a>\u003c/em> series features conversations between trans and nonbinary youth from across California and the people in their lives who love and mentor them: parents, grandparents, siblings and others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This week, we’ll hear how grandparents’ hearts can be moved by having a transgender grandchild, and how that can expand the worldview of someone who may not be connected to the LGBTQ+ community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’ll hear from a 10-year-old transgender girl in conversation with her older sister and their grandfather. He lives in a rural California county, where many of his neighbors and hunting buddies don’t have much exposure to the transgender community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’ll also meet a 14-year-old nonbinary kid whose grandmother lives in India, where she’s become a fierce advocate for transgender and nonbinary youth. She’s taken on the challenge of explaining her grandchild’s gender to her relatives, some of whom are 90 or older.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC3553005698\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Love You for You Episode 2: A Grandparent’s Love\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha: \u003c/strong>I’m Sasha Khokha, and this is The California Report Magazine. We’re continuing our series this week about transgender and gender-expansive kids across California and the people in their lives who love, support and mentor them so they can thrive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12063357\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/3.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12063357\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/3.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/3.png 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/3-160x90.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/3-1536x864.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/3-1200x675.png 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An illustration of a 10-year-old transgender girl in a photo booth with her older sister and their grandfather. Many families in this series have chosen to remain anonymous and not use their names or show their faces out of fear that they could face harm in this current climate. \u003ccite>(Anna Vignet/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Montage of voices\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Being trans, of course, it’s a big deal, but I wish it didn’t feel like such a big deal. I wish I just felt like, you now, another fun thing about me instead of my whole identity? \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>What do you want people who are targeting trans kids right now to know about your grandkid? \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Just about how special she is. That you gotta know the person. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Thanks for letting me be who I am. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>And thank you for letting me be your parent and for letting me love you. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>What are you hopeful for the future will look like for trans kids?\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>All the trans people I know have one vision, and it is just a society where being trans isn’t this whole like thing, right? Where I can just say, ‘Hey, I’m trans,’ and everyone’s like, ‘OK, cool.’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades out\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha: \u003c/strong>We’re calling the series \u003cem>Love You for You\u003c/em>, and this week we’re going to hear two conversations between kids and their grandparents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>I’m 16. I’m a sophomore in high school. Uh, my pronouns are she, her, and this is my sister.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Hi, I’m 10. In two days, I’m about to be 11. Um, my pronouns are she, her, and this is my Grandpa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa:\u003c/strong> Um. I’m old, I’m their Grandparent, and I’m very proud of being their Grandparent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha: \u003c/strong>This family — an older sister, a younger sister who is trans, and their grandfather — sat down to talk together to talk about their relationship. And just a note, this family, like many in this series, has chosen to stay anonymous and not use their names out of fear that they could face harm in this current climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades out\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister:\u003c/strong> When you first came out, what was that experience like for you?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>I think I was like nine or eight, and it was like during the summertime, like it was right, it was kind of like in the beginning of the summer. I kind of just realized, like, yeah, that’s who I am. I’m trans, like I’m not a boy. I’m a girl. And I remember I texted my mom, “Hey, you know how I’m a boy, I think I’m actually a girl.” And she called me and she was like, “What do you mean?” And I was just like, “I’m a girl.” It was like, kind of scary because I didn’t know what anyone would think. It was kinda like awkward because like when my grandma, like I go to my grandma’s house every Friday and she used to hug me and say “Oh my little boy,” and I would look to my mom like in like disgust and like it was like kinda like weird and it was still like when I was like figuring out who I was and stuff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Papa, how did it feel when my sister came out to you?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>We always knew, so it was not a big surprise. When you were just three years old, we were putting on your dress. I think it was your…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Which one?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>When you’re going through, I think, the Dorothy years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Oh, \u003cem>Wizard of Oz\u003c/em> phase?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>I was helping you with your dress, and we were having a hard time. And I said, it’d be a lot easier if you just dressed up like a boy, and you just turned to me at the age of three and said, “I wish I was a girl.” And from then on, we knew. I knew. There’s no doubt about it. And that was it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah. Like, I feel like a lot of people don’t understand how little of a change it really was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>It was not a…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister\u003c/strong>: Yeah, and like I’m sure it was a bigger change for you, obviously.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister\u003c/strong>: Yes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister\u003c/strong>: But like for us, it was like nothing, it was like nothing had changed. Same old you. You know? I was proud of you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister:\u003c/strong> Thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister:\u003c/strong> You’re welcome. So do you feel that you’ve never really identified with, like, male?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>No, I feel like I never did that, I always wore wigs, I’ve always loved doing makeup and stuff. I remember one day where I was like, I’m just going to do like a classic glam. Two minutes later, I had polka dots on my face looking like I was Minnie Mouse’s dress because I thought it was so funny and that I looked amazing and yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister:\u003c/strong> Uh, do you wish you would have transitioned sooner?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Yes, everyone kind of like already knew, like I said, I loved costumes, I love dressing up, but not like when I was like a baby. Not when I, yep. But I feel maybe like, I feel like a good age I wanted to was probably like seven.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah. What’s something that you do that makes you feel most like yourself?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger Sister: \u003c/strong>I love expressing myself in different ways that aren’t talking. Like I love dance, I do ballet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades in\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger Sister:\u003c/strong> And I think it’s such a fun way to express myself because you can like jump up in the air and like you can show your expressions, like when you’re doing ballet, you can like spin and doing a jump, that you’re sad or you’re happy. Like I love expressing myself in dance and in music and stuff like that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah, you are definitely one of the most creative people I know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades out\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older Sister: \u003c/strong>How does it feel when somebody uses your old name?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Um on like on purpose, like to be mean, I feel like like it annoys me, but also like I don’t get it because if you are trying to do this on purpose, it just fades through to, it’s like you should just stop. It’s not funny, it’s not cute, it’s just annoying, and if you do this, I’m calling you out right now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>You just don’t let it affect you?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I don’t.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>Are there any other trans kids at your school?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Uh. I don’t think so, I don’t know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>What would you say if a new kid came to school and was trans? What would you say to make the school easier?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Um, stay away from certain people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa:\u003c/strong> OK.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Would you like give them any advice on how to stand up to bullies, or, like …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Oh yeah, don’t let it fade to you. They are just doing that because they are insecure about yourself. They just want to tear you down, even though you’re a confident, amazing person and they’re not. So just walk away and say, “I’m better than you,” and sing your way out. That’s what I do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>OK.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Yes, like this has been going on for a long time. You guys are so unoriginal. Be like, stop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>It must be exhausting being so strong all the time, and like standing up and not letting it bother you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Um, not really.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>It’s just your norm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades in\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Do you guys think that, like, younger kids are better at learning new pronouns and new names than older people are? Because the older people have been calling you by your old name for so long.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>I think the older people have a hard time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I would agree.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>Isn’t that right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah, also because, like I said, our whole family is very supportive, so once they found out, I feel like I heard that some of them bought their kids gender books. I’m very glad that there’s authors and stuff and people that, oh, let’s write about this stuff, so the younger kids and younger generations can know about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah, just like teaching younger kids, just educating them more about everything that goes into it. I definitely think that younger kids have an easier time with like switching names and pronouns.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>Does it hurt your feelings when Papa accidentally calls you by your old name?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>No, because I’m not that surprised at it, like yeah. Well, not in like a mean way. I’m just like, like I’ve been used to like everyone calling me it like for so long on accident, that I’m just like, yeah, OK, like, it’s fine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>It’s to be expected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah, like there’s like it’s kind of like they’re forgetting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades in\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Papa, have you like told any of your friends or people around you, like people that don’t include our close family, about my sister being trans?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>Yes, yes, all my close friends. They all know. I have not told my neighbors. But my friends that I go hunting with and fishing with, they were all Trump supporters, but I told them, and they’ve never said, I don’t know really how they feel about it, but they’ve said anything bad about it, or you know, saying that’s a terrible thing or…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister:\u003c/strong> Yeah. Do you think that like people around you would have a reaction?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>Some, yes, I do, yes. A lot of them would not understand at all. So they’re, what you don’t know they’re afraid of, kind of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah. For people that you don’t think would be supportive or people that would have a negative reaction, what would you want to tell them to try and change their mind or redirect their thinking?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>It’s hard to tell someone to change their mind without knowing somebody or, you know, I just can’t say she’s a beautiful person; she does, she has a great heart. Um, I don’t think that’d change their mind. I think over time, if they actually met somebody and were closer to them, that’s how I think that they’d lose their opinion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah, you think that they would need to have personal experience with someone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>Personal experience, exactly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>What do you want people who are targeting trans kids right now to know about your grandkid?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>Just about how special she is. That you gotta know the person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah, that’s a good answer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister:\u003c/strong> Yeah!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Like, I don’t, it just doesn’t make sense, people who just are homophobic for no good reason. Like, for things that don’t affect them, people that they don’t know. Doesn’t make sense to me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah, like cyberbullying, like when people cyberbully people like you don’t know this person personally, but like, why do you want to be mean to them for no reason? Like you actually like the person, like if you’re taking time every day to, be rude like…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah. Like, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister:\u003c/strong> Yes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>What do you want the future to look like for trans kids?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Uh, I hope that in the future everyone’s really supportive of them and that homophobia kind of disappears. It’s probably not, but like…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>That would be wonderful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Honestly, like, there’s nothing we can really do about people having their own opinions, but like, I feel like sometimes we can just keep our opinions to ourselves, you know, just like, shush.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades in\u003c/em>\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>What are you most excited about for your future?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister \u003c/strong>Well, there’s two things, one, becoming an actor, like, I really want to be a child actor if there’s any agents listening. Hello, I’m here! Hi. But another thing is I would love to, like this, I love how I get to like share knowledge to other people that might not know about being trans or stuff. So I love to…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older Sister:\u003c/strong> To educate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah, to educate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Good answer. Papa, what do you hope that the future is like for trans kids, and what do you plan on doing to support trans kids?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>Oh, I support this one all the time. Uh, I’d do anything for her, and she knows that. I just, I don’t want the hurt that people give to trans people for there’s no reason. That’s uh, that’s what really gets me and your grandma the most. We just hate to see you hurt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades in\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>Well, I got a question for you. Have you ever talked so much to your sister before? Actually sat and chatted with your sister?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>I don’t think that a conversation like this has ever really come up. I regret not asking you more about being trans, but I’m glad that we have this opportunity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger sister: \u003c/strong>Yeah, like we never really have time, like you have a bunch of school and homework, and I have like Monday I have singing, Tuesday I have ballet…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>You have lots of commitments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger Sister: \u003c/strong>Yes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>I think that this has been very, very helpful, educational for me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Younger Sister: \u003c/strong>Mm-hmm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister \u003c/strong>And I think that having this conversation and just learning more about you and like who you are as a person will help me to better explain it to other people, you know, like to my friends and the rest of my family.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nYounger sister: \u003c/strong>And I hope for all the other trans kids and other trans people that this is very educational for them. Really, people that are not, like people that still trying to figure out who they are. I hope this helps people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>I’m excited to see what you do in the future. I know that you’ll achieve your dreams of being an actress.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa: \u003c/strong>I can’t tell you how proud I am of you two doing this. This is amazing to me. I could never ever do this at your age, especially.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Older sister: \u003c/strong>Thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grandpa:\u003c/strong> And you guys are doing a great job. Just very special, both of you guys are.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades in\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha: \u003c/strong>In our next conversation, we’re gonna hear a kid talking with their mom and their grandmother.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades out\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ba: \u003c/strong>It’s important in these times, you know, with all the misconceptions that are there, that we make our voice be heard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha: \u003c/strong>They discuss what it’s meant to have their family’s support across generations. And by the way, we’re just using this kid’s first name to protect their privacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan \u003c/strong>Hi, my name is Rohan, I’m 14 years old, non-binary, and my pronouns are they, them. I’m here with my mom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ma\u003c/strong>: Hi.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan\u003c/strong>: And my grandma, who I call Ba.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ba\u003c/strong>: Hello.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan:\u003c/strong> She’s visiting from India.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>It’s not really our family culture to speak very publicly about you being trans, and in general, we’re very open about it, actually, in our community and our family. And so it’s not something secret at all, but we’re not used to talking about it publicly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades in\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>There’s not really a moment I can think of when I like found out I was trans or something, I’ve always felt like I didn’t fit into either of the main gender categories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades out\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom:\u003c/strong> Yeah, and as your mom, I can say that. You’ve always been you. Even when you were one years old, two years old, three years old, you know, really very young.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ba: \u003c/strong>When they actually came out with it, I was very glad because I just never liked the fact of anyone having to hide something because I feel that it affects their personality, and all, whereas Rohan came out with it, we all were happy to share it with friends, you know, and that’s been good. And if I can go further, actually, for me, what has been very important is to see the child thrive. And I’ve seen Rohan thriving. I mean, I’ve seen them playing football, doing those miniature paintings, being good at school, and just more than anything else, being a very sensitive, loving child. And that for me has been most important.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>There were a few things in your childhood that were very distinctive, like you never wore conventional like the short swimsuit, you know, you always wanted to wear the top as well, otherwise you would refuse to, even when you were very small, two, three years old.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ba: \u003c/strong>You know, for me, there’s just that one memory where we were at the dining table and a friend was visiting and Rohan whispered to you to say that share, and I said it is such a good moment for me that you know not only was there a coming out but there was such a confidence about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>Oh my gosh, I had forgotten that moment. That was a really precious moment. You were such a little one. And when you were excited, I also remember when we were discussing with the counselor, you know, she was advising that you could come out. Actually, we didn’t know about non-binary and they/them pronouns. So when we were talking about your gender fluidity and she asked you what’s your coming out plan. You were a little kid, Rohan of seven, eight years old. And she asked, “Who would you like to come out to?” And you said, “Everybody.” And I remember that was really one of my favorite moments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>I feel like one of the things was it really like, somehow I feel like I was opened up to an even bigger community, like, and that was really special, I think, like of all the different, you know, like LGBTQ kids and…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>So yeah, that’s one of the unexpected boons, isn’t it, Rohan, finding that community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>Yeah, there’s so many nice moments like going to Pride and going to like groups where there’s like so many other like trans and non-binary or anyone who’s LGBTQ kids, and I just feel like I can connect with people so well there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades in\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>Yeah, do you want to talk about some of the challenges on the other side, the challenges of being trans in this world?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades out\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>For me, one of the biggest things is bathroom dysphoria, like especially being non-binary, I never know, I don’t want to go in either of the like male or female bathrooms and like especially in like big public spaces. Even if it’s like in a like area that’s very supportive, I feel really uncomfortable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom\u003c/strong>: If there’s a non-binary, if there’s an all-gender bathroom available, does that make it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>Yeah, definitely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>That addresses it, huh? So that’s the solution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>Yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>Any other challenges you’ve experienced or difficulties?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>So, also, another thing is immigration when we’re going to see my grandparents in India, sometimes it’s tough explaining to the immigration agent like what non-binary is and sometimes like the, they’re like trying to talk to me in Hindi or like, and that’s sometimes a language barrier and like what it says on the passport may not match how they perceive me. I feel like worried. If we get into the country or not is based on their decisions. So it’s always a very stressful time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>I think my mom and I have talked about this, that as parents, as grandparents, we just want to protect our child and protect their right to be a child and dealing with these types of things with how to use the bathroom and navigating immigration. These are things which I know I, as a child, never had to think about. The adults in the world took care of it and made it easy and safe for me. I think that’s the toughest as an adult to not be able to control that I can make a world that children can be carefree and safe in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ba:\u003c/strong> This is such an important part of caring for our own children and, by extension, our grandchildren, and what it would mean not just for our grandchildren but for communities at large to see. We all feel it, and we all are together in it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom:\u003c/strong> The safety of children is a community sport. It’s a team sport. Putting flags, rainbow flags and trans flags everywhere. Whenever I see a rainbow flag anywhere, I feel that it’s a signal that I am safe to be myself there. I know it makes difference to me as the parent of a trans child. I’ll be biking through the neighborhood, and in a way, it’s such a small cosmetic thing, putting a flag up outside your house, but it makes big difference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I really feel like that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>Do you feel that too?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>Yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>Buy some flags.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades in\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ba: \u003c/strong>I think we are able to have conversations and just feel more open, more close to each other as family. And then I realized that it opened up another horizon for me. Like one day, I walked into an LGBTQ meeting in Bombay. I’d never done that before. And there were only two of us who were not in that category. Maybe we all are a bit in that category, but strikingly so. So it was a universe which I entered in because of you. And then one time, during a literary festival, I went to listen to transgender poetry. And I had not been aware of that whole scene in Bombay, and so my college, where I had studied, has an LGBTQ club. And I’ve got connected to that. And I’m looking forward to an opportunity to talk to grandparents through that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan:\u003c/strong> I mean, Ba, you saw this firsthand, but like, where the family in India, especially like the family that was like 90 or more years older, like still really tries and understands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom\u003c/strong>: The way that she explained, the way you explained, mama and helped people understand how Rohan is, you know what it’s like because for many of them they had no exposure whatsoever to, maybe not even to LGBTQ, for some of our really elderly, forget trans. Just to have you know my 80 plus, 90 plus relative unanimously, not had one relative who when we go back home Rohan can’t be themselves with that even and so by extension I can’t be myself with. And that, even though it’s around this topic of being trans, I think in a way made me feel more safe about being myself, myself, in general. Because I realize that people are more capable than I might have guessed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>India has been such like a happy memory in general for me, like, and I’m always excited to go now because it’s like there’s so much support and love there in that family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ba: \u003c/strong>And I just want to give the context that the family that my husband comes from is really a Marwadi, conservative family, and my own family, maybe a little forward, but otherwise a bit right-wing, you get the picture. And yet, before Rohan came to India, last time especially, because now they had grown up, I wanted them all to know before they met them, you know, so that there would really be no quizzical looks or anything, there’d just be a joyful feeling of a grandchild visiting. We’ve got a large family, so I would tell one person from the family to inform everybody else. If one talks in a certain way, then awareness does increase and something does shift.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>Yeah, Ba, thanks for sharing that. Can you reflect on whether there was something about the way that you introduced people to the topic that got the reaction that you got?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ba: \u003c/strong>I realized that there’s no sense in being forceful or angry, you know. I just, it’s important to reach, not to confront anyone. People always love it when somebody wants to share something. I didn’t say, I want to tell you, or I want you to know. Get into a conversation in some form, like encourage them to ask if a question popped up in their mind. I remember that there was an 83-year-old woman who was like you know, I’ve never heard of this do you mind if I ask more questions? I said no, I want you to ask more questions, and if you can talk to others about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>You know, Ba, you’re a real leader, you are held in high respect in our family. And I think also you drew on that in the sense on the trust and respect people have for you. So you were sharing very much about how you feel. They could feel your comfort with it, your not just comfort, but joy about who Rohan is, your pride in Rohan, and then I think that people follow suit a little bit with someone they respect and trust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ba: \u003c/strong>One thing was my own intrinsic love for Rohan. That’s the first, but also, I think my own experience as having grown up in India at a time when there was so much gender discrimination and bias against women. So I somehow know in my bones how it feels, you know, so that the combined effect of that, think, gave me a certain energy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades in and out\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>Rohan, you also have family in Wyoming from your dad’s side. And so how has that story played out?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I mean, I feel like it’s kind of like a bit of an unfinished story. Like we haven’t yet told them, but like in Wyoming, like that community, it is a bit of a conservative community. But I mean I’m still hopeful that maybe, you know, it could be the same situation as what happened in India. Like, we kind of expected the worst, but then it was so amazing to see all these like, people understanding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>Yeah. And so though it’s unfinished, do you feel sad about that? Or kind of a sense of anything negative, dread or uncertainty or?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan\u003c/strong>: Not really. I feel like I’m kind of hopeful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades in\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom:\u003c/strong> Rohan, have you ever imagined or thought about not being trans or wished you were cisgender?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>Um, I feel like sometimes, yeah, maybe I think about what it might have been like if I wasn’t trans, but it’s never like a, like it’s almost like thinking about what would it be like for a different person who’s not trans. It’s not like, what if I was not trans? I mean, it’s who I am, I’d be a different person if I wasn’t trans. Like it’s almost like saying like, oh, what if I had chosen to be a different height? Or what if I had chosen for my skin color to be different? Like, it’s kind of who you are, and I’m happy to be who I am.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ba: \u003c/strong>I very, very strongly feel that everyone has a right to be what they are. I think change happens. It happens slowly, but it does happen. So we keep our faith alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom:\u003c/strong> Great. And now the most important question, which family member has supported you best? Who gets the award?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan\u003c/strong>: Everyone!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom:\u003c/strong> Rohan, I know that you were very hesitant to do this, so thanks for doing it. Thanks for taking a chance on it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>I mean, I feel like in the end, all the stress when we did this fully went away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ba: \u003c/strong>I have to say that I felt teary in between. Just we’ve talked about these things, it’s not new, but talking like this, I think I feel very heartened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades in\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mom: \u003c/strong>Yeah, that’s how I feel. My heart feels very full.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rohan: \u003c/strong>I’m really happy we did this. You know, I feel like we’re giving a message out to people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha: \u003c/strong>Next week in the \u003cem>Love You for You\u003c/em> series, we’ll hear a dad talking with his two gender-expansive teenagers. Both rugby players who’ve faced different kinds of challenges on the field.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kid: \u003c/strong>I am a person like you, and I am just here to play rugby and now I will tackle you, please stop being patronizing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sasha Khokha: \u003c/strong>That’s next week on \u003cem>The California Report Magazine\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The interviews in our \u003cem>Love You for You\u003c/em> series were produced by me, Sasha Khokha, Tessa Paoli, Srishti Prabha and Suzie Racho with help this week from Gabriela Glueck. Our senior editor is Victoria Mauleon. Our engineer is Brendan Willard, with additional mixing from Katherine Monahan. Srishti Prabha is our intern. Special thanks to Tuck Woodstock, host of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.genderpodcast.com/\">Gender Reveal podcast\u003c/a>, for his help on the series. And to KQED’s Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Ana de Almeida Amaral and Anna Vignet. We’ll be releasing all of the stories in our \u003cem>Love You for You\u003c/em> series on our podcast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California Report Magazine, Your State, Your stories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades out\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "can-a-raga-bring-rain-to-la-reena-esmail-makes-music-for-drought-wildfire",
"title": "Sitars and Symphonies: LA Composer Reena Esmail Fuses Indian Ragas with Western Rhythms",
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"headTitle": "Sitars and Symphonies: LA Composer Reena Esmail Fuses Indian Ragas with Western Rhythms | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is part of The California Report Magazine’s series about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/california-composers\">\u003cem>California composers\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. You can hear Esmail’s compositions and learn more about her work by listening to the audio story above, or by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-california-report-magazine/id1314750545?mt=2\">\u003cem>subscribing\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> to The California Report Magazine podcast.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reena Esmail’s childhood in Los Angeles had two soundtracks: the Western classical music her parents loved, and the old, scratchy Bollywood tapes her paternal grandparents would play over and over.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Western classical music was Esmail’s first love, inherited from her mom’s side. That branch of the family — Catholics from Goa, a part of India once colonized by Portugal — eventually relocated to Kenya.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It would be some really hot night in Mombasa. And my grandfather would turn off all the lights and put on a record of a Beethoven symphony,” Esmail recalled. “He would just sit in the dark and listen as if it was a religious experience.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, her dad’s parents, who lived with her in L.A., loved Bollywood soundtracks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those multicultural influences shaped what would become the driving question of her work: how do you invite people from different cultures onto the same stage to build a relationship and create music together?\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12039910\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1772px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-3-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12039910\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-3-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1772\" height=\"1182\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-3-KQED.jpg 1772w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-3-KQED-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-3-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-3-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-3-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1772px) 100vw, 1772px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A photograph taken in 1997, after Esmail’s first time playing a piano concerto with an orchestra at age 14, with her grandparents, Zaitoon Esmail and Esmail Abdul Kader. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Reena Esmail/Ozair Esmail)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It starts the dialogue because you’ve both already created beauty together,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As an elementary school student, Esmail would beg her parents to tag along to classical music concerts. It was too heavy, they told her. She wouldn’t appreciate it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Esmail’s response? “I will appreciate it. I will figure out how to appreciate it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I remember thinking, ‘I need to figure out how this music works,” she added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Esmail’s talent soon became clear. She began playing piano at age 11.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I had a practice curfew. My dad would kick me off the piano at 11:00 p.m. every night, [saying] ‘You have to be done. We need to go to sleep.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12039918\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 1331px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-5-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12039918\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-5-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1331\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-5-KQED.jpg 1331w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-5-KQED-800x1202.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-5-KQED-1020x1533.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-5-KQED-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-5-KQED-1022x1536.jpg 1022w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1331px) 100vw, 1331px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Reena Esmail studied Western classical music at Juilliard and Yale, and spent time as a Fulbright scholar studying Hindustani music in India. She’s drawn on both of those influences in her work over the past two decades. \u003ccite>(Hannah Arista)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But performing on stage was a different story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My arms would shake. My legs would be shaking. Sometimes when you panic, your fingers get sweaty and then your hands are sliding off the keys,” Esmail recalled. “Just an avalanche of disaster.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You are terrified every time you have to play in front of people,” she recalls her parents telling her. “Are you sure you want to do this for the rest of your life?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her teachers at the L.A. County High School for the Arts encouraged her to consider a different way of making music without having to perform on stage: composing. Her early compositions got her into Juilliard, earned her a Fulbright in India and launched a career that’s earned her countless accolades, including her current stint as \u003ca href=\"https://lamasterchorale.org/artist-details/117/reena-esmail\">artist-in-residence with the L.A. Master Chorale.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Composing is how Esmail has made her mark — by putting Western classical musicians in conversation with Indian artists, building bridges between violinists and sitar players, tabla drummers and Western singers. Her music has been performed by major orchestras and choirs all over the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I just feel like I’m living my dream because as a young child, there were so many times where I couldn’t rectify the cultures that I was living in,” Esmail said. Now, her music is helping others bridge those worlds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[Indian American] teenagers… now actually say to me, ‘We had that same feeling. We felt like we couldn’t rectify these cultures. And then we heard your music and it was everything that we are in one piece.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12041201\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1296px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/Tarekita.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12041201\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/Tarekita.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1296\" height=\"864\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/Tarekita.jpg 1296w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/Tarekita-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/Tarekita-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/Tarekita-160x107.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1296px) 100vw, 1296px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Reena Esmail performs “Tarekita” with the Urban Voices Project in 2016. They are a choir of people who are currently or have recently experienced homelessness on Skid Row in Los Angeles. \u003ccite>(Photo courtesy of Reena Esmail)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>One of her most-performed compositions is a piece called \u003ca href=\"https://www.reenaesmail.com/catalog-item/tarekita/\">Ta Re Ki Ta\u003c/a>, originally created with singers from the \u003ca href=\"https://urbanvoicesproject.org/\">Urban Voices Project\u003c/a> who have currently or recently experienced being unhoused on L.A.’s Skid Row.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“How [do] these people who have so many major life concerns find the time to sing?” Esmail remembers wondering. “Then when you meet them,” Esmail said, “you realize this is how they’re getting through all those things.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Esmail taught the singers onomatopoeic sounds that imitate the sound of a tabla, kind of like scatting in jazz. Today, choirs around the world can follow Esmail’s instructions to pronounce the syllables using different parts of the mouth and tongue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKK1YKfcGAw\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of Esmail’s most ambitious works for the L.A. Master Chorale, called \u003ca href=\"https://www.reenaesmail.com/catalog-item/malhaar-requiem-for-water/\">Malhaar,\u003c/a> focuses on drought and water in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The project is inspired by music Esmail heard while attending Catholic church, listening to requiems, or songs of mourning.[aside postID=news_12000787 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240611-DestinyMuhammad-10-BL_qut-1020x680.jpg'] To capture the sense of loss she felt when thinking about drought and climate change, she chose lyrics by \u003ca href=\"https://williamodaly.com/bio/\">William O’Daly\u003c/a> — a poet and translator — who also worked for the state’s Department of Water Resources as lead author of the recent California Water Plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The piece brings together choral singers with a tabla player and a Hindustani singer performing ragas, a traditional melodic framework for improvisation in Indian music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Malhaar is a family of ragas that are supposed to beckon rain,” Esmail said. “The lore goes that if it is the driest desert and someone sings the most perfect Malhaar, suddenly water droplets are going to form in the air.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, on the day of Malhaar’s premiere at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2023, L.A. was drenched in a record rainstorm, as the choir sang: \u003cem>“Without you, how will we weep when we need to? How will the earth smell after the last drops of rain?”\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNYsF550DUM\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s this slow march towards grief that will just flatten you and change you,” Esmail said. “Without water, how can we actually cry tears?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Esmail lives in\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12038756/an-historic-altadena-church-lost-to-the-eaton-fire-begins-the-long-journey-to-resurrection\"> Altadena, a community full of grief\u003c/a> right now. Luckily, the house she shares with her husband, violinist Vijay Gupta, is still standing after the Eaton Fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Esmail kept returning to that line: how will the earth smell after the last drops of rain? Now, she said, she knows. It’s the smell of ash in the air after a fire has torn through a drought-stricken landscape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These days, Esmail is working on a harp concerto about wildfire. The piece ends with the harpist holding a light in her hand. While fire can easily destroy everything in its path, Esmail said, it can also help find a way forward as it lights the path to whatever comes next.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is part of The California Report Magazine’s series about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/california-composers\">\u003cem>California composers\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. You can hear Esmail’s compositions and learn more about her work by listening to the audio story above, or by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-california-report-magazine/id1314750545?mt=2\">\u003cem>subscribing\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> to The California Report Magazine podcast.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reena Esmail’s childhood in Los Angeles had two soundtracks: the Western classical music her parents loved, and the old, scratchy Bollywood tapes her paternal grandparents would play over and over.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Western classical music was Esmail’s first love, inherited from her mom’s side. That branch of the family — Catholics from Goa, a part of India once colonized by Portugal — eventually relocated to Kenya.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It would be some really hot night in Mombasa. And my grandfather would turn off all the lights and put on a record of a Beethoven symphony,” Esmail recalled. “He would just sit in the dark and listen as if it was a religious experience.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, her dad’s parents, who lived with her in L.A., loved Bollywood soundtracks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those multicultural influences shaped what would become the driving question of her work: how do you invite people from different cultures onto the same stage to build a relationship and create music together?\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12039910\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1772px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-3-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12039910\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-3-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1772\" height=\"1182\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-3-KQED.jpg 1772w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-3-KQED-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-3-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-3-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-3-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1772px) 100vw, 1772px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A photograph taken in 1997, after Esmail’s first time playing a piano concerto with an orchestra at age 14, with her grandparents, Zaitoon Esmail and Esmail Abdul Kader. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Reena Esmail/Ozair Esmail)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It starts the dialogue because you’ve both already created beauty together,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As an elementary school student, Esmail would beg her parents to tag along to classical music concerts. It was too heavy, they told her. She wouldn’t appreciate it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Esmail’s response? “I will appreciate it. I will figure out how to appreciate it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I remember thinking, ‘I need to figure out how this music works,” she added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Esmail’s talent soon became clear. She began playing piano at age 11.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I had a practice curfew. My dad would kick me off the piano at 11:00 p.m. every night, [saying] ‘You have to be done. We need to go to sleep.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12039918\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 1331px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-5-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12039918\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-5-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1331\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-5-KQED.jpg 1331w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-5-KQED-800x1202.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-5-KQED-1020x1533.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-5-KQED-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250513-REENA-ESMAIL-5-KQED-1022x1536.jpg 1022w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1331px) 100vw, 1331px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Reena Esmail studied Western classical music at Juilliard and Yale, and spent time as a Fulbright scholar studying Hindustani music in India. She’s drawn on both of those influences in her work over the past two decades. \u003ccite>(Hannah Arista)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But performing on stage was a different story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My arms would shake. My legs would be shaking. Sometimes when you panic, your fingers get sweaty and then your hands are sliding off the keys,” Esmail recalled. “Just an avalanche of disaster.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You are terrified every time you have to play in front of people,” she recalls her parents telling her. “Are you sure you want to do this for the rest of your life?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her teachers at the L.A. County High School for the Arts encouraged her to consider a different way of making music without having to perform on stage: composing. Her early compositions got her into Juilliard, earned her a Fulbright in India and launched a career that’s earned her countless accolades, including her current stint as \u003ca href=\"https://lamasterchorale.org/artist-details/117/reena-esmail\">artist-in-residence with the L.A. Master Chorale.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Composing is how Esmail has made her mark — by putting Western classical musicians in conversation with Indian artists, building bridges between violinists and sitar players, tabla drummers and Western singers. Her music has been performed by major orchestras and choirs all over the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I just feel like I’m living my dream because as a young child, there were so many times where I couldn’t rectify the cultures that I was living in,” Esmail said. Now, her music is helping others bridge those worlds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[Indian American] teenagers… now actually say to me, ‘We had that same feeling. We felt like we couldn’t rectify these cultures. And then we heard your music and it was everything that we are in one piece.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12041201\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1296px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/Tarekita.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12041201\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/Tarekita.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1296\" height=\"864\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/Tarekita.jpg 1296w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/Tarekita-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/Tarekita-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/Tarekita-160x107.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1296px) 100vw, 1296px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Reena Esmail performs “Tarekita” with the Urban Voices Project in 2016. They are a choir of people who are currently or have recently experienced homelessness on Skid Row in Los Angeles. \u003ccite>(Photo courtesy of Reena Esmail)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>One of her most-performed compositions is a piece called \u003ca href=\"https://www.reenaesmail.com/catalog-item/tarekita/\">Ta Re Ki Ta\u003c/a>, originally created with singers from the \u003ca href=\"https://urbanvoicesproject.org/\">Urban Voices Project\u003c/a> who have currently or recently experienced being unhoused on L.A.’s Skid Row.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“How [do] these people who have so many major life concerns find the time to sing?” Esmail remembers wondering. “Then when you meet them,” Esmail said, “you realize this is how they’re getting through all those things.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Esmail taught the singers onomatopoeic sounds that imitate the sound of a tabla, kind of like scatting in jazz. Today, choirs around the world can follow Esmail’s instructions to pronounce the syllables using different parts of the mouth and tongue.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/rKK1YKfcGAw'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/rKK1YKfcGAw'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>One of Esmail’s most ambitious works for the L.A. Master Chorale, called \u003ca href=\"https://www.reenaesmail.com/catalog-item/malhaar-requiem-for-water/\">Malhaar,\u003c/a> focuses on drought and water in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The project is inspired by music Esmail heard while attending Catholic church, listening to requiems, or songs of mourning.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp> To capture the sense of loss she felt when thinking about drought and climate change, she chose lyrics by \u003ca href=\"https://williamodaly.com/bio/\">William O’Daly\u003c/a> — a poet and translator — who also worked for the state’s Department of Water Resources as lead author of the recent California Water Plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The piece brings together choral singers with a tabla player and a Hindustani singer performing ragas, a traditional melodic framework for improvisation in Indian music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Malhaar is a family of ragas that are supposed to beckon rain,” Esmail said. “The lore goes that if it is the driest desert and someone sings the most perfect Malhaar, suddenly water droplets are going to form in the air.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, on the day of Malhaar’s premiere at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2023, L.A. was drenched in a record rainstorm, as the choir sang: \u003cem>“Without you, how will we weep when we need to? How will the earth smell after the last drops of rain?”\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/zNYsF550DUM'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/zNYsF550DUM'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>“It’s this slow march towards grief that will just flatten you and change you,” Esmail said. “Without water, how can we actually cry tears?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Esmail lives in\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12038756/an-historic-altadena-church-lost-to-the-eaton-fire-begins-the-long-journey-to-resurrection\"> Altadena, a community full of grief\u003c/a> right now. Luckily, the house she shares with her husband, violinist Vijay Gupta, is still standing after the Eaton Fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Esmail kept returning to that line: how will the earth smell after the last drops of rain? Now, she said, she knows. It’s the smell of ash in the air after a fire has torn through a drought-stricken landscape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These days, Esmail is working on a harp concerto about wildfire. The piece ends with the harpist holding a light in her hand. While fire can easily destroy everything in its path, Esmail said, it can also help find a way forward as it lights the path to whatever comes next.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "How Experimental Composer and Performer Kishi Bashi Brings New Ideas to Life",
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"content": "\u003cp>Whether Kishi Bashi is composing new music or performing it on stage, he is open to improvisation and imperfection. This might explain why he’s not afraid to release albums that experiment with genre and keep fans guessing. Kishi Bashi’s music moves between classical, rock, electronic, and indie pop — his lyrics are a combination of English and Japanese.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At his home near San José, Kishi Bashi demonstrated his spontaneous approach to composition. “If I want something super epic, I imagine what that could be in my head, and then I try to verbalize it,” he said, beatboxing an epic fanfare off the top of his head as an example.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kishi Bashi is also an accomplished multi-instrumentalist. He picked up a guitar and made up a riff on the spot. As he strummed, he began humming and then singing, not worrying if his stray phrases about love and longing made any sense. Kishi Bashi called this “mouthing words.” Even as improvised sketches, his easy playing and sweet falsetto were captivating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kishi Bashi took the same playful approach to demonstrating how he composes, using each of his violins. The first violin he picked up was tuned differently than a Western classical violin. The second was built with an extra string so that Kishi Bashi could play the violin down into the lower range of a viola. He was playing around on that five-string violin-viola when he composed “For Every Voice That Never Sang.” The finished song is rich with musical layers, but you can hear those initial arpeggios in the background.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSWMx8-0-i0\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whenever Kishi Bashi explores an idea for a new song, he records it onto his phone so he can review it later. For example, “Violin Akai” is the first song on \u003cem>Kantos\u003c/em>, his latest album. In the recording he made of his initial “Violin Akai” idea, he sang a melody with a swinging beat, his voice serving as the violin. It’s a very rough sketch — a few pencil lines, really — that Bashi later built into an exuberant, multi-instrument song for his band.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt5jUFjf8qg\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before Bashi became the solo artist Kishi Bashi, he was born Kaoru Ishibishi (now Kaoru Dill-Ishibashi). Kishi Bashi’s parents grew up in Japan and met at the University of Washington in Seattle. Kishi Bashi was born there, though the family soon moved to Ithaca, New York.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My parents moved every 5 to 10 years,” Kishi Bashi said. “So I never felt grounded anywhere.” Bashi also regularly visited family in Japan while trying to fit in with predominantly white classmates at school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Ithaca, Kishi Bashi started learning the Suzuki violin, a method created by Japanese violinist Shinichi Suzuki that teaches children to learn violin as though learning a second language. Kishi Bashi started playing violin at age 7 — relatively late for a Suzuki student — yet he was soon called a child prodigy. By high school, Bashi and his family had moved to Virginia, where Kishi Bashi was exposed to jazz violin and improvisation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After high school, Kishi Bashi attended Cornell University, where he continued playing jazz violin. Officially, though, he was majoring in engineering. It took him a couple of years to realize that music could be more than a hobby. Once that realization hit, he dropped out of Cornell and went to the Berklee School of Music to study film scoring. After graduating, he moved to New York to score films and write jingles for commercials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12020444\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12020444 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00056.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00056.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00056-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00056-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00056-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00056-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00056-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bashi holds a custom guitar decorated with Manga cartoons at his home. \u003ccite>(David M. Barreda/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kishi Bashi’s true passion, however, was composing indie rock songs and playing in a band. In 2003, he founded a band called Jupiter One and explored another instrument: his voice. He recalled the moment things started taking off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[Before], we had tens of people — maybe all our friends — showing up at our shows,” Kishi Bashi said. “But then, once I started singing, more and more people started showing up. Girls and their boyfriends show up when you start singing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wlpmnAvGwk\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2010, after touring with Jupiter One and opening for \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sondre_Lerche\">Sondre Lerche\u003c/a>, he decided to go solo. This was when he became the artist “Kishi Bashi.” He was 35, married, and had a young daughter. He and his family moved back in with his parents while he made the Kishi Bashi leap.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kishi Bashi was no stranger to the challenge musicians face in making a living and being creative. Going solo was both exciting and risky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I was starting my debut album, I was kind of struggling with the idea of imperfection,” he said. “I’m very self-conscious and afraid of judgment because one negative thing can crush my excitement. To me, that’s dangerous.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12020446\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12020446 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00140.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00140.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00140-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00140-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00140-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00140-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00140-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bashi plays a 1970s Wurlitzer electric piano at his home. \u003ccite>(David M. Barreda/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Bashi needn’t have been afraid. Once he finally released his first album, \u003cem>151a\u003c/em>, in 2012, it was well-received. When read in Japanese, \u003cem>151a\u003c/em> resembles the Japanese phrase \u003cem>ichi-go ichi-e\u003c/em>, which Bashi explained means “that one time, that one meeting; it is unique to itself, even with its imperfections.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That debut album launched a successful solo career. Kishi Bashi recently released his fifth solo album and went on an international tour. At his San Francisco show last September, long-time fan Kevin Adamski described a typical Kishi Bashi concert as “a very joyful experience, very optimistic, very hopeful. The whole crowd is dancing. There’s confetti.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EewB7xHHIvE\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much of that San Francisco show was upbeat and celebratory, but in the middle, there was a moment of calm. The band exited the stage for a costume change, leaving Kishi Bashi standing alone in a spotlight with his violin. He plucked a rhythm, which continued looping as he added layers of mournful strings. Then he sang. As though under a spell, the audience’s boisterous energy settled into momentary stillness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kishi Bashi looked utterly at ease on stage with the surprises and improvisations of live performance. At one point, he started a violin loop for a new song and then stopped and restarted, saying he could do better. Everyone cheered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12020447\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12020447 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00151.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00151.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00151-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00151-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00151-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00151-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00151-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kishi Bashi received this award from the Roger Ebert’s Film Festival in 2024, photographed in his home last month. \u003ccite>(David M. Barreda/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Early in Kishi Bashi’s career, messing up on stage felt like a big deal. One time, back when he was opening for Sondre Lerche, he had to restart a loop over and over again because the timing was off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I started to realize that I was just really not nailing it that night,” he said. That might seem like a panic-inducing moment for a live performer, but Kishi Bashi kept going, and the crowd started cheering. They kept cheering until he finally got the loop right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They wanted to see me succeed,” he said. It taught him a valuable lesson about live performance. “[The audience] are not just there to hear a perfect iteration of something … they [like] the idea that they’re supporting someone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJUQzs4n_3c\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the end of every Kishi Bashi show, the band does an acoustic encore. Kishi Bashi said it started when a venue told them to stop playing. “I got really annoyed and took the music to the crowd.” Taking the music into the crowd was an unexpected, almost spiritual end to the recent San Francisco show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After playing with mics and amps on an elevated stage during the entire show, the band left the stage, grabbed acoustic instruments, and walked down into the middle of the audience. A couple of hundred fans clustered around the band, and then Kishi Bashi led everyone in a giant and intimate sing-along. Whatever improvisations and imperfections led to this unique moment, it was the perfect experience to share with other people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12020448\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12020448\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00206.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00206.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00206-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00206-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00206-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00206-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00206-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Composer Kishi Bashi poses for a portrait at his home. \u003ccite>(David M. Barreda/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Whether Kishi Bashi is composing new music or performing it on stage, he is open to improvisation and imperfection. This might explain why he’s not afraid to release albums that experiment with genre and keep fans guessing. Kishi Bashi’s music moves between classical, rock, electronic, and indie pop — his lyrics are a combination of English and Japanese.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At his home near San José, Kishi Bashi demonstrated his spontaneous approach to composition. “If I want something super epic, I imagine what that could be in my head, and then I try to verbalize it,” he said, beatboxing an epic fanfare off the top of his head as an example.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kishi Bashi is also an accomplished multi-instrumentalist. He picked up a guitar and made up a riff on the spot. As he strummed, he began humming and then singing, not worrying if his stray phrases about love and longing made any sense. Kishi Bashi called this “mouthing words.” Even as improvised sketches, his easy playing and sweet falsetto were captivating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kishi Bashi took the same playful approach to demonstrating how he composes, using each of his violins. The first violin he picked up was tuned differently than a Western classical violin. The second was built with an extra string so that Kishi Bashi could play the violin down into the lower range of a viola. He was playing around on that five-string violin-viola when he composed “For Every Voice That Never Sang.” The finished song is rich with musical layers, but you can hear those initial arpeggios in the background.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/kSWMx8-0-i0'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/kSWMx8-0-i0'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Whenever Kishi Bashi explores an idea for a new song, he records it onto his phone so he can review it later. For example, “Violin Akai” is the first song on \u003cem>Kantos\u003c/em>, his latest album. In the recording he made of his initial “Violin Akai” idea, he sang a melody with a swinging beat, his voice serving as the violin. It’s a very rough sketch — a few pencil lines, really — that Bashi later built into an exuberant, multi-instrument song for his band.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/Yt5jUFjf8qg'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/Yt5jUFjf8qg'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Before Bashi became the solo artist Kishi Bashi, he was born Kaoru Ishibishi (now Kaoru Dill-Ishibashi). Kishi Bashi’s parents grew up in Japan and met at the University of Washington in Seattle. Kishi Bashi was born there, though the family soon moved to Ithaca, New York.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My parents moved every 5 to 10 years,” Kishi Bashi said. “So I never felt grounded anywhere.” Bashi also regularly visited family in Japan while trying to fit in with predominantly white classmates at school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Ithaca, Kishi Bashi started learning the Suzuki violin, a method created by Japanese violinist Shinichi Suzuki that teaches children to learn violin as though learning a second language. Kishi Bashi started playing violin at age 7 — relatively late for a Suzuki student — yet he was soon called a child prodigy. By high school, Bashi and his family had moved to Virginia, where Kishi Bashi was exposed to jazz violin and improvisation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After high school, Kishi Bashi attended Cornell University, where he continued playing jazz violin. Officially, though, he was majoring in engineering. It took him a couple of years to realize that music could be more than a hobby. Once that realization hit, he dropped out of Cornell and went to the Berklee School of Music to study film scoring. After graduating, he moved to New York to score films and write jingles for commercials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12020444\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12020444 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00056.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00056.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00056-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00056-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00056-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00056-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00056-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bashi holds a custom guitar decorated with Manga cartoons at his home. \u003ccite>(David M. Barreda/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kishi Bashi’s true passion, however, was composing indie rock songs and playing in a band. In 2003, he founded a band called Jupiter One and explored another instrument: his voice. He recalled the moment things started taking off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[Before], we had tens of people — maybe all our friends — showing up at our shows,” Kishi Bashi said. “But then, once I started singing, more and more people started showing up. Girls and their boyfriends show up when you start singing.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/7wlpmnAvGwk'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/7wlpmnAvGwk'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>In 2010, after touring with Jupiter One and opening for \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sondre_Lerche\">Sondre Lerche\u003c/a>, he decided to go solo. This was when he became the artist “Kishi Bashi.” He was 35, married, and had a young daughter. He and his family moved back in with his parents while he made the Kishi Bashi leap.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kishi Bashi was no stranger to the challenge musicians face in making a living and being creative. Going solo was both exciting and risky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I was starting my debut album, I was kind of struggling with the idea of imperfection,” he said. “I’m very self-conscious and afraid of judgment because one negative thing can crush my excitement. To me, that’s dangerous.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12020446\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12020446 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00140.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00140.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00140-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00140-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00140-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00140-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00140-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bashi plays a 1970s Wurlitzer electric piano at his home. \u003ccite>(David M. Barreda/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Bashi needn’t have been afraid. Once he finally released his first album, \u003cem>151a\u003c/em>, in 2012, it was well-received. When read in Japanese, \u003cem>151a\u003c/em> resembles the Japanese phrase \u003cem>ichi-go ichi-e\u003c/em>, which Bashi explained means “that one time, that one meeting; it is unique to itself, even with its imperfections.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That debut album launched a successful solo career. Kishi Bashi recently released his fifth solo album and went on an international tour. At his San Francisco show last September, long-time fan Kevin Adamski described a typical Kishi Bashi concert as “a very joyful experience, very optimistic, very hopeful. The whole crowd is dancing. There’s confetti.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/EewB7xHHIvE'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/EewB7xHHIvE'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Much of that San Francisco show was upbeat and celebratory, but in the middle, there was a moment of calm. The band exited the stage for a costume change, leaving Kishi Bashi standing alone in a spotlight with his violin. He plucked a rhythm, which continued looping as he added layers of mournful strings. Then he sang. As though under a spell, the audience’s boisterous energy settled into momentary stillness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kishi Bashi looked utterly at ease on stage with the surprises and improvisations of live performance. At one point, he started a violin loop for a new song and then stopped and restarted, saying he could do better. Everyone cheered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12020447\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12020447 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00151.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00151.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00151-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00151-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00151-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00151-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00151-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kishi Bashi received this award from the Roger Ebert’s Film Festival in 2024, photographed in his home last month. \u003ccite>(David M. Barreda/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Early in Kishi Bashi’s career, messing up on stage felt like a big deal. One time, back when he was opening for Sondre Lerche, he had to restart a loop over and over again because the timing was off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I started to realize that I was just really not nailing it that night,” he said. That might seem like a panic-inducing moment for a live performer, but Kishi Bashi kept going, and the crowd started cheering. They kept cheering until he finally got the loop right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They wanted to see me succeed,” he said. It taught him a valuable lesson about live performance. “[The audience] are not just there to hear a perfect iteration of something … they [like] the idea that they’re supporting someone.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/LJUQzs4n_3c'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/LJUQzs4n_3c'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>At the end of every Kishi Bashi show, the band does an acoustic encore. Kishi Bashi said it started when a venue told them to stop playing. “I got really annoyed and took the music to the crowd.” Taking the music into the crowd was an unexpected, almost spiritual end to the recent San Francisco show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After playing with mics and amps on an elevated stage during the entire show, the band left the stage, grabbed acoustic instruments, and walked down into the middle of the audience. A couple of hundred fans clustered around the band, and then Kishi Bashi led everyone in a giant and intimate sing-along. Whatever improvisations and imperfections led to this unique moment, it was the perfect experience to share with other people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12020448\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12020448\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00206.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00206.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00206-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00206-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00206-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00206-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/20250106_KishiBashi_DMB_00206-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Composer Kishi Bashi poses for a portrait at his home. \u003ccite>(David M. Barreda/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "How Kev Choice Made Room for Hip-Hop in Classical Music",
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"headTitle": "How Kev Choice Made Room for Hip-Hop in Classical Music | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ci>This story is part of The California Report Magazine’s series about \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/california-composers\">California composers\u003c/a>. Listen to this and more in-depth storytelling by \u003ca href=\"http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-california-report-magazine/id1314750545?mt=2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">subscribing\u003c/a> to The California Report Magazine podcast.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a Wednesday morning in \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/kevchoice/?hl=en\">Kev Choice\u003c/a>’s studio, tucked away in the back of an industrial warehouse in East Oakland. The small, dark-purple room looks something like a wizard’s lair out of a fantasy novel, with tall, epic columns and dark curtains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Kev Choice Ensemble is rehearsing for a conference that’s bringing 2,000 activists, artists and academics from across the nation to Oakland to discuss topics like the Indigenous Land Back movement and Palestinian liberation. Choice sits at his keyboard, rapping about the painful legacy of slavery before affirming the power of everyday people to make change. As his jazz band grooves, they alchemize devastation into hope.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What I try to bring is the purpose, the intention, of the message, and uplift the issues while giving people encouragement,” he says. “[I try] to create an environment where we can just have fun and be free and enjoy together for a moment in time, before we get back to the work.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Choice speaks with the ease of someone who knows who he is and owns it, but it took him decades to move comfortably between his roots in hip-hop culture, his love of jazz and his classical training. Classical music used to turn its nose up at hip-hop. But in recent years orchestras have begun looking to collaborate with rappers to appeal to younger, more diverse audiences — basically, to stay relevant in the 21st century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, the world is finally catching up to the forward-thinking vision Kev Choice has had for decades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://youtu.be/RMQbdElhnEo?si=itDr1mRXyofFuwJE\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Navigating separate musical worlds\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>For Choice, breaking boundaries wasn’t easy — and not just musical boundaries, but those of race, class and culture. Growing up in Oakland in the ’80s and ’90s, he began writing rhymes and studying piano seriously in middle school. Even back then, he knew he’d have to compartmentalize his two worlds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I couldn’t talk to any of my teachers about hip-hop or making beats. They had no connection to that,” he says. “And then my hip-hop friends would kind of tease me about playing the piano.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13967710\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 960px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13967710\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/60325271_10155974893232027_2182473221847121920_n.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/60325271_10155974893232027_2182473221847121920_n.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/60325271_10155974893232027_2182473221847121920_n-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/60325271_10155974893232027_2182473221847121920_n-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/60325271_10155974893232027_2182473221847121920_n-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kev Choice at his graduation from Xavier University in 1998. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Kev Choice)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Still, Choice was undeterred: He excelled in high school orchestra and big band, and continued to rap and make beats after school. After nailing an audition at Xavier University, an HBCU in New Orleans, he got a full scholarship on the spot to study piano performance in the birthplace of jazz. Afterwards, he took off to Southern Illinois University for his master’s degree.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Choice excelled in classical piano, but he couldn’t see himself going the traditional orchestral route.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Number one, because of the lack of diversity in that world,” he says. “It just seemed like it was such a narrow opportunity for a young African American pianist who wasn’t a prodigy at age four.” [ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>An international tour with Michael Franti\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>After grad school, Choice decided it was time to return to his roots. In 2000, he moved back to Oakland with the ambition of becoming a rap star. It was a fertile time for Bay Area hip-hop. Artists like E-40 and Too Short had already reached major-label success in years prior. Alternative hip-hop artists like \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13927692/del-funky-homosapien-no-need-for-alarm-30-years-anniversary\">Deltron 3030\u003c/a> were also making waves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13967711\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13967711\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/IMG_4260-scaled-e1730831891144.jpg\" alt=\"A photocopied flyer reads: "88 Keys to the Mind, Body and Soul. A classical graduate piano recital presented by Kevin Choice. Most sought after pianist for campus occasions. Live you've never seen him before!!!!!!!!!!!! All the way live!!!!!!!!!!!! A must see for music lovers!!!!!!!!! This brotha is real!!!!!!!!"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/IMG_4260-scaled-e1730831891144.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/IMG_4260-scaled-e1730831891144-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/IMG_4260-scaled-e1730831891144-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/IMG_4260-scaled-e1730831891144-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/IMG_4260-scaled-e1730831891144-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/IMG_4260-scaled-e1730831891144-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/IMG_4260-scaled-e1730831891144-1536x2048.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The flyer for Kev Choice’s graduation recital at Southern Illinois University. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Kev Choice)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>While working on his own music, Choice would also regularly pop up behind the keys at jam sessions, open mics or really anywhere there was a piano. Calls for auditions started coming, and he got hired to join Michael Franti and Spearhead on an international tour.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Franti had come out of the Bay Area’s underground hip-hop scene, and he attracted a global fan base with his fusion of hip-hop, reggae and funk. The opportunity expanded Choice’s world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Being a kid from Oakland and, you know, to be walking down the street in Switzerland or France or Belgium,” he reflects, “it blew my mind on what the world looked like and the connection of people to music as well. Like, how strong that was.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The tour pushed Choice to grow his skillset — he had to trade his sheet music and piano for playing by ear on an electric keyboard. He had his own ambitions as a solo artist. But word got out after the Spearhead tour, and he became an in-demand sideman. In the years that followed, he went on the road with alternative and conscious hip-hop artists like Zion I and Lyrics Born.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Around the world with Lauryn Hill\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In 2006, Choice got the opportunity of a lifetime: performing with Lauryn Hill. He even worked with her on a demo for a track that became “\u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/kUvtyBW0Q_A?si=d3791VyTs2p4UAWJ\">Lose Myself\u003c/a>.” (It was featured on the soundtrack of \u003cem>Surf’s Up\u003c/em>, a 2007 animated film about surfing penguins.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13967716\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 768px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13967716\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/kev-choice-and-lauryn-hill.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"768\" height=\"960\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/kev-choice-and-lauryn-hill.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/kev-choice-and-lauryn-hill-160x200.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kev Choice and Lauryn Hill on tour in 2006. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Kev Choice)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Choice says their collaboration came together in a complete whirlwind. One day he got a call to meet Hill at an Emeryville studio. She was one of his idols, so of course, he said yes. It turned out to be an audition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As she started playing her guitar, he began playing along on his keyboard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think the other guys were, like, just confused,” he says, laughing. “They were like, what the hell is going on?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Afterwards, Choice got another call: Could he put a band together for her? He scrambled, calling everyone he knew. Before long he was the musical director of an all-Bay Area band that accompanied Hill to shows in Hawaii, Japan and Brazil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPjcgZPGAq8\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On tour, Choice was inspired by the way Hill carried herself, how she charted her own path and defied expectations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It gave me the courage that I could achieve anything in this industry,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Giving it his all as a solo artist\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Choice came back to Oakland fired up. He was ready to dedicate himself to his own music, wholeheartedly. It paid off in 2014 when he came out with an album that made waves: \u003ca href=\"https://kevchoice.bandcamp.com/album/oakland-riviera\">\u003cem>Oakland Riviera\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. With lyrics addressing racial injustice, healing and Oakland pride, the project’s elaborate, propulsive instrumentation has a funky, jazzy Afrofuturist vibe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJoftyUh8a0\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At this point, Choice had cemented his reputation in hip-hop and jazz. And after \u003cem>Oakland Riviera\u003c/em>, he got the chance to show the world what he could do with his classical training. The opportunity arrived thanks to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13901635/michael-morgan-visionary-oakland-symphony-conductor-dies-at-age-63\">Michael Morgan\u003c/a>, the late music director of the Oakland Symphony, who passed away in 2021.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Morgan was one of the nation’s few Black leaders of a major orchestra — and Choice had looked up to him since high school. When they met at a Recording Academy mixer, it turned out the maestro was already familiar with the younger man’s work. He invited Choice to compose his first piece for a full orchestra: 2018’s \u003cem>Soul Restoration Suite\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tiv9_GovdHY\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The five-movement piece took that blend of hip-hop, classical and jazz that Choice had been trying to pull off for decades, and brought it to the next level. Choice conceptualized it as a love letter to Oakland through all of its struggles and triumphs. The first movement tells the story of the Spanish conquest of the area’s Ohlone inhabitants, and Choice’s words flow over lush orchestration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before this, Choice had composed for quartets and smaller ensembles, but he had never written for a full orchestra before. In Morgan, he found an open-minded mentor who took hip-hop seriously as an art form and appreciated Choice’s personal voice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel like he just kept encouraging me to take what I do as a band director, as a musician, as a hip-hop artist, and use the orchestra to enhance it,” he says. “And keep my original style. Like, don’t try to write like Beethoven. Don’t try to do Stravinsky, do your original music. But using the orchestra as another palette or as more colors to enhance.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13964203\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13964203\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/240912-KEVCHOICE-08-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/240912-KEVCHOICE-08-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/240912-KEVCHOICE-08-BL-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/240912-KEVCHOICE-08-BL-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/240912-KEVCHOICE-08-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/240912-KEVCHOICE-08-BL-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/240912-KEVCHOICE-08-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/240912-KEVCHOICE-08-BL-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kev Choice plays the piano at his studio in Oakland on Sept. 12, 2024. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Morgan had charted a path for Choice and so many others. He used his position and influence to create more space for Black musicians to be themselves in a largely white and notoriously elitist industry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, Choice sits on the Oakland Symphony’s board, and he’s made it his mission to create opportunities for the next generation. In fact, if you drive past the intersection of 51st Street and Shattuck Avenue in North Oakland, you’ll see Choice and Michael Morgan in a mural together, looking hopefully out at a starry sky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like his mentor, who championed public music education, Choice spent nearly eight years teaching at Oakland School for the Arts. Today, he continues to serve the community in the music education program Elevate Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13967779\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13967779\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/kev-choice-mural-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/kev-choice-mural-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/kev-choice-mural-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/kev-choice-mural-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/kev-choice-mural-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/kev-choice-mural-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/kev-choice-mural-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/kev-choice-mural-2048x1152.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/kev-choice-mural-1920x1080.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An Oakland mural by Hungry Ghost Studio features Michael Morgan (center left) and Kev Choice (center right). \u003ccite>(Nastia Voynovskaya/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>A singular vision emerges\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Back at Choice’s rehearsal space, I chat with saxophonist \u003ca href=\"https://www.ayobrame.com/\">Ayo Brame\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Kev is definitely the reason I’m a musician today,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brame is one of Choice’s former students. At only 17 years old, he’s already headlined two sold-out shows at the jazz club Yoshi’s. He says it’s Choice’s versatility that inspires him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It shows how important that skillset is to know all genres of music and not be like, I don’t play classical or I don’t play rock music,” Brame adds. “He knows all of it. So yeah definitely, that’s one of my inspirations.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These days, Choice might be busy with community work, but he hasn’t lost sight of his own music. His 2024 EP, \u003ca href=\"https://open.spotify.com/album/2WoxdPZgSbsJ6lVlgCGBJe\">\u003cem>All My Love\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, is the clearest distillation yet of his personal voice and vision.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a vulnerable project that takes stock of how he’s shown up in relationships over the years. It examines his personal growth and maturation as a man.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The project culminates in the bittersweet song “Congratulations.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://youtu.be/52eYIEiDLXw?si=eK08m1l0u9QtBx4Z\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Choice raps over moving piano arrangements, accompanied by a string quartet, harp and upright bass. In the lyrics, he speaks to an ex who is now getting married.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’s happy for her and a little regretful, looking back at what went wrong and what could have been.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At his piano, Choice breaks down how his arrangements underscore the emotion of the track.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Whenever I play ninth chords or minor chords, sometimes it can be dark. Some people say it may be very sad,” he says. “But I almost feel like it’s more sentimental. I’m thinking about what I was going through. And that chord really offers a lot of space to me for reflection.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As I listen to him play, it’s hard not to feel an appreciation for the complicated beauty of the life lessons all of us go through.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Choice says \u003cem>All My Love\u003c/em> is just a teaser for a full-length project that’ll come out later this year. He also recently accepted a position as a tenure-track music professor at San Francisco State University. Over two decades into his career as a musician, educator and community advocate, Choice is finally getting the recognition he deserves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel like as a hip hop artist, I’m always trying to grow, try to get more expressive, try to stay relevant,” Choice affirms. “I don’t want my sound to ever get stale or not continue to evolve.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That growth mindset has been a theme in Choice’s career since the very beginning, and it’s propelled so much more than his personal evolution. The hundreds of students he’s taught, and the countless audience members who’ve seen him live, have left with a little piece of his vision: to look beyond arbitrary boundaries, to come together and to better ourselves and our communities through art.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ci>This story is part of The California Report Magazine’s series about \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/california-composers\">California composers\u003c/a>. Listen to this and more in-depth storytelling by \u003ca href=\"http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-california-report-magazine/id1314750545?mt=2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">subscribing\u003c/a> to The California Report Magazine podcast.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a Wednesday morning in \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/kevchoice/?hl=en\">Kev Choice\u003c/a>’s studio, tucked away in the back of an industrial warehouse in East Oakland. The small, dark-purple room looks something like a wizard’s lair out of a fantasy novel, with tall, epic columns and dark curtains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Kev Choice Ensemble is rehearsing for a conference that’s bringing 2,000 activists, artists and academics from across the nation to Oakland to discuss topics like the Indigenous Land Back movement and Palestinian liberation. Choice sits at his keyboard, rapping about the painful legacy of slavery before affirming the power of everyday people to make change. As his jazz band grooves, they alchemize devastation into hope.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What I try to bring is the purpose, the intention, of the message, and uplift the issues while giving people encouragement,” he says. “[I try] to create an environment where we can just have fun and be free and enjoy together for a moment in time, before we get back to the work.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Choice speaks with the ease of someone who knows who he is and owns it, but it took him decades to move comfortably between his roots in hip-hop culture, his love of jazz and his classical training. Classical music used to turn its nose up at hip-hop. But in recent years orchestras have begun looking to collaborate with rappers to appeal to younger, more diverse audiences — basically, to stay relevant in the 21st century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, the world is finally catching up to the forward-thinking vision Kev Choice has had for decades.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/RMQbdElhnEo'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/RMQbdElhnEo'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003ch2>Navigating separate musical worlds\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>For Choice, breaking boundaries wasn’t easy — and not just musical boundaries, but those of race, class and culture. Growing up in Oakland in the ’80s and ’90s, he began writing rhymes and studying piano seriously in middle school. Even back then, he knew he’d have to compartmentalize his two worlds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I couldn’t talk to any of my teachers about hip-hop or making beats. They had no connection to that,” he says. “And then my hip-hop friends would kind of tease me about playing the piano.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13967710\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 960px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13967710\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/60325271_10155974893232027_2182473221847121920_n.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/60325271_10155974893232027_2182473221847121920_n.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/60325271_10155974893232027_2182473221847121920_n-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/60325271_10155974893232027_2182473221847121920_n-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/60325271_10155974893232027_2182473221847121920_n-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kev Choice at his graduation from Xavier University in 1998. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Kev Choice)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Still, Choice was undeterred: He excelled in high school orchestra and big band, and continued to rap and make beats after school. After nailing an audition at Xavier University, an HBCU in New Orleans, he got a full scholarship on the spot to study piano performance in the birthplace of jazz. Afterwards, he took off to Southern Illinois University for his master’s degree.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Choice excelled in classical piano, but he couldn’t see himself going the traditional orchestral route.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Number one, because of the lack of diversity in that world,” he says. “It just seemed like it was such a narrow opportunity for a young African American pianist who wasn’t a prodigy at age four.” \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>An international tour with Michael Franti\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>After grad school, Choice decided it was time to return to his roots. In 2000, he moved back to Oakland with the ambition of becoming a rap star. It was a fertile time for Bay Area hip-hop. Artists like E-40 and Too Short had already reached major-label success in years prior. Alternative hip-hop artists like \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13927692/del-funky-homosapien-no-need-for-alarm-30-years-anniversary\">Deltron 3030\u003c/a> were also making waves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13967711\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13967711\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/IMG_4260-scaled-e1730831891144.jpg\" alt=\"A photocopied flyer reads: "88 Keys to the Mind, Body and Soul. A classical graduate piano recital presented by Kevin Choice. Most sought after pianist for campus occasions. Live you've never seen him before!!!!!!!!!!!! All the way live!!!!!!!!!!!! A must see for music lovers!!!!!!!!! This brotha is real!!!!!!!!"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/IMG_4260-scaled-e1730831891144.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/IMG_4260-scaled-e1730831891144-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/IMG_4260-scaled-e1730831891144-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/IMG_4260-scaled-e1730831891144-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/IMG_4260-scaled-e1730831891144-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/IMG_4260-scaled-e1730831891144-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/IMG_4260-scaled-e1730831891144-1536x2048.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The flyer for Kev Choice’s graduation recital at Southern Illinois University. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Kev Choice)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>While working on his own music, Choice would also regularly pop up behind the keys at jam sessions, open mics or really anywhere there was a piano. Calls for auditions started coming, and he got hired to join Michael Franti and Spearhead on an international tour.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Franti had come out of the Bay Area’s underground hip-hop scene, and he attracted a global fan base with his fusion of hip-hop, reggae and funk. The opportunity expanded Choice’s world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Being a kid from Oakland and, you know, to be walking down the street in Switzerland or France or Belgium,” he reflects, “it blew my mind on what the world looked like and the connection of people to music as well. Like, how strong that was.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The tour pushed Choice to grow his skillset — he had to trade his sheet music and piano for playing by ear on an electric keyboard. He had his own ambitions as a solo artist. But word got out after the Spearhead tour, and he became an in-demand sideman. In the years that followed, he went on the road with alternative and conscious hip-hop artists like Zion I and Lyrics Born.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Around the world with Lauryn Hill\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In 2006, Choice got the opportunity of a lifetime: performing with Lauryn Hill. He even worked with her on a demo for a track that became “\u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/kUvtyBW0Q_A?si=d3791VyTs2p4UAWJ\">Lose Myself\u003c/a>.” (It was featured on the soundtrack of \u003cem>Surf’s Up\u003c/em>, a 2007 animated film about surfing penguins.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13967716\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 768px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13967716\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/kev-choice-and-lauryn-hill.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"768\" height=\"960\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/kev-choice-and-lauryn-hill.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/kev-choice-and-lauryn-hill-160x200.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kev Choice and Lauryn Hill on tour in 2006. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Kev Choice)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Choice says their collaboration came together in a complete whirlwind. One day he got a call to meet Hill at an Emeryville studio. She was one of his idols, so of course, he said yes. It turned out to be an audition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As she started playing her guitar, he began playing along on his keyboard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think the other guys were, like, just confused,” he says, laughing. “They were like, what the hell is going on?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Afterwards, Choice got another call: Could he put a band together for her? He scrambled, calling everyone he knew. Before long he was the musical director of an all-Bay Area band that accompanied Hill to shows in Hawaii, Japan and Brazil.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/OPjcgZPGAq8'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/OPjcgZPGAq8'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>On tour, Choice was inspired by the way Hill carried herself, how she charted her own path and defied expectations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It gave me the courage that I could achieve anything in this industry,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Giving it his all as a solo artist\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Choice came back to Oakland fired up. He was ready to dedicate himself to his own music, wholeheartedly. It paid off in 2014 when he came out with an album that made waves: \u003ca href=\"https://kevchoice.bandcamp.com/album/oakland-riviera\">\u003cem>Oakland Riviera\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. With lyrics addressing racial injustice, healing and Oakland pride, the project’s elaborate, propulsive instrumentation has a funky, jazzy Afrofuturist vibe.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/aJoftyUh8a0'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/aJoftyUh8a0'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>At this point, Choice had cemented his reputation in hip-hop and jazz. And after \u003cem>Oakland Riviera\u003c/em>, he got the chance to show the world what he could do with his classical training. The opportunity arrived thanks to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13901635/michael-morgan-visionary-oakland-symphony-conductor-dies-at-age-63\">Michael Morgan\u003c/a>, the late music director of the Oakland Symphony, who passed away in 2021.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Morgan was one of the nation’s few Black leaders of a major orchestra — and Choice had looked up to him since high school. When they met at a Recording Academy mixer, it turned out the maestro was already familiar with the younger man’s work. He invited Choice to compose his first piece for a full orchestra: 2018’s \u003cem>Soul Restoration Suite\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/Tiv9_GovdHY'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/Tiv9_GovdHY'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>The five-movement piece took that blend of hip-hop, classical and jazz that Choice had been trying to pull off for decades, and brought it to the next level. Choice conceptualized it as a love letter to Oakland through all of its struggles and triumphs. The first movement tells the story of the Spanish conquest of the area’s Ohlone inhabitants, and Choice’s words flow over lush orchestration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before this, Choice had composed for quartets and smaller ensembles, but he had never written for a full orchestra before. In Morgan, he found an open-minded mentor who took hip-hop seriously as an art form and appreciated Choice’s personal voice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel like he just kept encouraging me to take what I do as a band director, as a musician, as a hip-hop artist, and use the orchestra to enhance it,” he says. “And keep my original style. Like, don’t try to write like Beethoven. Don’t try to do Stravinsky, do your original music. But using the orchestra as another palette or as more colors to enhance.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13964203\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13964203\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/240912-KEVCHOICE-08-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/240912-KEVCHOICE-08-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/240912-KEVCHOICE-08-BL-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/240912-KEVCHOICE-08-BL-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/240912-KEVCHOICE-08-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/240912-KEVCHOICE-08-BL-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/240912-KEVCHOICE-08-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/240912-KEVCHOICE-08-BL-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kev Choice plays the piano at his studio in Oakland on Sept. 12, 2024. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Morgan had charted a path for Choice and so many others. He used his position and influence to create more space for Black musicians to be themselves in a largely white and notoriously elitist industry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, Choice sits on the Oakland Symphony’s board, and he’s made it his mission to create opportunities for the next generation. In fact, if you drive past the intersection of 51st Street and Shattuck Avenue in North Oakland, you’ll see Choice and Michael Morgan in a mural together, looking hopefully out at a starry sky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like his mentor, who championed public music education, Choice spent nearly eight years teaching at Oakland School for the Arts. Today, he continues to serve the community in the music education program Elevate Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13967779\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13967779\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/kev-choice-mural-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/kev-choice-mural-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/kev-choice-mural-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/kev-choice-mural-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/kev-choice-mural-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/kev-choice-mural-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/kev-choice-mural-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/kev-choice-mural-2048x1152.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/11/kev-choice-mural-1920x1080.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An Oakland mural by Hungry Ghost Studio features Michael Morgan (center left) and Kev Choice (center right). \u003ccite>(Nastia Voynovskaya/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>A singular vision emerges\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Back at Choice’s rehearsal space, I chat with saxophonist \u003ca href=\"https://www.ayobrame.com/\">Ayo Brame\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Kev is definitely the reason I’m a musician today,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brame is one of Choice’s former students. At only 17 years old, he’s already headlined two sold-out shows at the jazz club Yoshi’s. He says it’s Choice’s versatility that inspires him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It shows how important that skillset is to know all genres of music and not be like, I don’t play classical or I don’t play rock music,” Brame adds. “He knows all of it. So yeah definitely, that’s one of my inspirations.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These days, Choice might be busy with community work, but he hasn’t lost sight of his own music. His 2024 EP, \u003ca href=\"https://open.spotify.com/album/2WoxdPZgSbsJ6lVlgCGBJe\">\u003cem>All My Love\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, is the clearest distillation yet of his personal voice and vision.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a vulnerable project that takes stock of how he’s shown up in relationships over the years. It examines his personal growth and maturation as a man.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The project culminates in the bittersweet song “Congratulations.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/52eYIEiDLXw'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/52eYIEiDLXw'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Choice raps over moving piano arrangements, accompanied by a string quartet, harp and upright bass. In the lyrics, he speaks to an ex who is now getting married.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’s happy for her and a little regretful, looking back at what went wrong and what could have been.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At his piano, Choice breaks down how his arrangements underscore the emotion of the track.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Whenever I play ninth chords or minor chords, sometimes it can be dark. Some people say it may be very sad,” he says. “But I almost feel like it’s more sentimental. I’m thinking about what I was going through. And that chord really offers a lot of space to me for reflection.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As I listen to him play, it’s hard not to feel an appreciation for the complicated beauty of the life lessons all of us go through.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Choice says \u003cem>All My Love\u003c/em> is just a teaser for a full-length project that’ll come out later this year. He also recently accepted a position as a tenure-track music professor at San Francisco State University. Over two decades into his career as a musician, educator and community advocate, Choice is finally getting the recognition he deserves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel like as a hip hop artist, I’m always trying to grow, try to get more expressive, try to stay relevant,” Choice affirms. “I don’t want my sound to ever get stale or not continue to evolve.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That growth mindset has been a theme in Choice’s career since the very beginning, and it’s propelled so much more than his personal evolution. The hundreds of students he’s taught, and the countless audience members who’ve seen him live, have left with a little piece of his vision: to look beyond arbitrary boundaries, to come together and to better ourselves and our communities through art.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Chef Chu’s, the Family-Owned Chinese Restaurant that Grew Up With Silicon Valley",
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"headTitle": "Chef Chu’s, the Family-Owned Chinese Restaurant that Grew Up With Silicon Valley | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>For more than ten years, I’ve been traveling all over the state, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/lmorehouse\">reporting stories\u003c/a> about food and farming from every county in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/california\">the state\u003c/a>. Now, for the 58th and very last story in the series, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/californiafoodways\">California Foodways,\u003c/a> I went back to where I grew up — \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/santa-clara-county\">Santa Clara County\u003c/a>, to a special-occasion restaurant from my childhood: Chef Chu’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the restaurant opened in 1970, it was a small family business, and the area around it was a relatively sleepy suburb. Now, it’s at the heart of Silicon Valley — but they don’t deliver, and there’s no online ordering.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, Chef Chu’s is an institution. It’s been visited by luminaries in entertainment, politics and business. Throughout all of the change in the last 55 years, Chef Chu’s has adapted and held on, and remained true to its identity as a family business.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Earlier this year, I met my cousin Billy and his family here — his wife Kimberly, teenagers Will and Guinevere and toddler Imogen. They’re regulars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even early on a weeknight, the lobby at Chef Chu’s was bustling. One whole wall is a glass window, looking into the kitchen where 82-year-old Chef Lawrence Chu and his cooks work. At the bar, a staff member took phone orders, and waiters in crisp white shirts and bow ties moved efficiently from room to room.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067137\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00667_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067137\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00667_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00667_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00667_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00667_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Customers dine at Chef Chu’s in Los Altos on December 11, 2025. Chef Chu’s is a family run business, owned by Lawrence Chu, which has been operating since 1970 and is known for not only the food, but also for hosting celebrities and tech innovators. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As we waited for our table we checked out a long wall of celebrity photos including Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chef Chu’s opened the year I was born, and while I went there as a kid, I hadn’t eaten there in decades. For a white girl raised in the suburbs in the ‘70s and ‘80s, this was one of the few Chinese restaurants around. If I didn’t learn to eat with chopsticks at Chef Chu’s, I certainly practiced there, and I have a vague memory of my late grandma teaching me to spin a lazy Susan in the dining room.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That just made it more special when Will, who has heard a lot of my stories in the car with his parents, suggested I do a story on Chef Chu’s. I asked him to co-report it with me, and many of the best questions in our interviews were his.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neither of us had met \u003cem>the\u003c/em> Chef Chu before, in spite of eating there countless times. We met him in a private dining room where he made us feel comfortable by pouring some tea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout our time with Lawrence Chu, it was a little hard to see the differences between the man, the job, the restaurant and the brand. He’s been at this a long time.\u003cbr>\n[aside postID=news_12065744 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-45-BL-KQED.jpg']He was just 26 years old when he opened Chef Chu’s. His wife — girlfriend at the time — was only 20.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I told her ‘I have a dream. I want to open a fast food Chinese joint in every corner of America. That sounds so terrific.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She disagreed. She said, he recalled, that if he found one good location, and opened one restaurant, she would join him. He said he’s followed her advice ever since.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But why open a restaurant?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I liked to eat. I liked to talk. I liked cooking things. Making things a little different. And I liked to be the boss. I liked running things,” he said, which was evident in the large kitchen. The scene was fast-paced but very controlled, with 17 cooks prepping food, each at a different station: chopping vegetables, working the fryer, making soup. The cooks assigned to stir fry with huge woks had tidy prep stations at waist height, filled with ingredients from fresh ginger to chili paste.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just before the waiters carried the dishes — Mongolian beef, Kung Pau tofu, chicken salad — into the dining room, Chef Chu gave them a once-over. On one plate, he adjusted a chili pepper so the plate looked exactly how he wanted it to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chef Chu stepped away from the kitchen to do something he’s known for: taking a turn around the dining room, stopping to talk with customers. He asked each how their meals were, what they were eating and thanked them for coming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One set of customers even told me that they were here on the day Chef Chu’s opened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Except for the location, the restaurant didn’t look anything like Chef Chu’s does today. Chu said he started with just twelve items.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067805\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-chefchu00588_TV_qed.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067805\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-chefchu00588_TV_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-chefchu00588_TV_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-chefchu00588_TV_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-chefchu00588_TV_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Larry Chu, son of owner Lawrence Chu, sets a table at Chef Chu’s in Los Altos on December 11, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tam Vu/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>His oldest son, Larry, and the restaurant’s general manager, was born in 1973, a few years after the restaurant opened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All these customers come in and say, ‘Oh yeah, you were sitting in a baby bassinet, underneath the air conditioner, which was dripping, while your dad was stir-frying and your mom was doing everything in the front: cashier, waitress, take-out,’” he remembered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They were in a small space at the intersection of El Camino Real and San Antonio Road in Los Altos, in a strip mall shared with a hairdresser, a sewing machine and vacuum repair shop and accounting offices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a small Chinese takeout place with one door and a countertop, like at a diner, and you could sit at the counter, maybe five stools,” Larry recalled. “You could look right into the kitchen where they were stir-frying. ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At first, everything looked like it was going great, the elder Chu said. But after six months, business was down. When they asked customers, they heard that they wanted more choices, and a dining room where their kids could throw rice and be messy. Chef Chu’s had to expand. When the sewing repair shop’s lease was up, they opened a dining room there, and kept growing until they bought the whole building complex.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They also expanded the menu. To appeal to a wider customer base, Chef Chu started making food from four different regions of China.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067766\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/Side-by-side-Downpage-5-e1766084498689.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067766\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/Side-by-side-Downpage-5-e1766084498689.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"666\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Left: The original Chef Chu’s, next door to the current location at the intersection of El Camino Real and San Antonio Road in Los Altos. Right: A family portrait of the Chus. Chu said his mother wanted the family to be the “Asian Kennedys.” \u003ccite>(Jon M. Chu)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And the family also grew — to five children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We pretty much lived here,” said Larry. “If we wanted to see my dad, we had to come to Chef Chu’s.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The restaurant grew in parallel with the community around it. Larry remembers this area — which is totally developed now — looking really different.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This area here in Los Altos was known for their apricot orchards. So, a lot of the houses of my friends that I grew up with — they had apricot trees growing in their backyards.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I remembered this, too, growing up in Cupertino, but 16-year-old Will hasn’t ever seen an orchard in Santa Clara County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the 1970s, the term “Silicon Valley” wasn’t popular — yet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I had a number of friends whose parents had companies that were building these chips that were going into these computers,” Larry said.[aside postID=news_12058556 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/20251002_REDWOODEMPIRE_GC-28-KQED.jpg']He saw computers change from monstrosities that filled whole rooms, to desktops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Chef Chu saw all of that develop.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many Silicon Valley pioneers became Chef Chu’s regulars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Mr. Tramiel was the founder of Atari, Chuck Geshke who founded Adobe, Gordon Moore, Paul Allen, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs — when he was just a kid — all these people from Silicon Valley ate at Chef Chu’s,” Larry remembered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though they were in different businesses, his dad shared a certain approach with some of these customers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Silicon Valley people are very quick to adapt to change,” Larry said. “They’re not scared of trying new things. And that’s just part of the community that is around you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After college, Larry moved to Hong Kong and worked in sports marketing for years. And the youngest of the kids, Jon Chu, tried his luck as a Hollywood director.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yeah, Jon M. Chu — the director of\u003cem> Crazy Rich Asians\u003c/em>, \u003cem>In the Heights\u003c/em> and the \u003cem>Wicked\u003c/em> movies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When we reached out to him, Jon was on a world-wide press tour promoting \u003cem>Wicked: For Good\u003c/em>, but he sent us some voice memos from Brazil in response to our questions about growing up in Silicon Valley in the ‘80s and ‘90s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067135\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00508_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067135\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00508_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00508_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00508_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00508_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An assortment of dishes at Chef Chu’s in Los Altos on December 11, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Everywhere I turned, people were thinking of new ways of how to change the world,” Jon told us. “What tomorrow looked like was on everybody’s mind. The engineer was revered. This was before they were on the cover of magazines or drove fancy cars. It was all about work and discovery and invention and innovation there,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, like his brother Larry already told us, many of those people converged at the restaurant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Sharing stories, sharing space, sharing ideas was such a central part to Chef Chu’s itself. Now going into a fairly selfish business, the entertainment business, I think that that sense of ‘What does tomorrow look like?’ still stays in me in the stories that I tell.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His family’s dedication and hard work has also stayed with him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I saw my dad and my mom work their butts off in the kitchen, out in the front. I saw many sides to it. There was the side that no one saw, which is the grind, the deboning the chicken, getting the deliveries in the back, my grandma doing the books with her abacus,” Jon remembered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And he saw his parents act as the ultimate hosts: “Being the ambassadors to people who may or may not have ever met a Chinese family, whoever have had or not had Chinese food, introducing them to new flavors.”[aside postID=news_12047368 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/250702-OaklandProduceMarket-13-BL_qed.jpg']There are a lot of similarities between running a restaurant and making a movie, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Everyone knows the red carpet and when the movie’s out, but they don’t see how hard it is to begin. They don’t know how hard it is in the messy middle. They don’t know the pressures before anyone ever sees it sort of nicely colored and presented.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though he can’t visit as often as he likes, Jon said that Chef Chu’s will always be home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s been the place that I return to to get grounded. It’s a place I return to get fed physically but also emotionally.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Especially with his five kids in tow. His movie posters are on the walls, but he really likes having customers catch him up on all their family stories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a connection point [between] what I’m doing out in Los Angeles or out in the world. The thread pulls all the way back home.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there’s a world in which this story could have gone really differently, with Chef Chu’s closing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the early 2000s when Jon was trying to get a foothold in Hollywood and Larry was in Hong Kong, their dad was starting to feel the strain of running the restaurant for more than 30 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067138\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00689_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067138\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00689_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00689_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00689_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00689_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chef Chu’s is located in Los Altos on December 11, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I was burned out at the time,” said Lawrence Chu.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He had business collaborations, and cookbooks, but the pressure had built up over the years. Plus, his beloved wife, Ruth, had breast cancer. He knew he couldn’t run the restaurant alone forever.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He spoke with Larry about his future plans, a conversation Larry remembers well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I could never imagine Los Altos without a Chef Chu’s there. What if when I have kids, I won’t have a Chef Chu’s to bring my kids to and eat? That’s when I decided: “Yes, Dad, I’ll come back and join the family business.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s how it was meant to be, Jon said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We were all very proud to have Larry come back. It felt like the legacy was continuing,” the director said. “There were a lot of hopes and dreams pinned on him. Coming back was like the return of the king, or the return of the prince, is a better way to say it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For his father, when Larry joined the restaurant, he gave him a shot in the arm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He let me feel that this is \u003cem>a life —\u003c/em> the restaurant business — instead of work.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067812\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-chefchu00496_TV_qed.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067812\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-chefchu00496_TV_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-chefchu00496_TV_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-chefchu00496_TV_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-chefchu00496_TV_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lawrence Chu (right) greets David Huff (left) at Chef Chu’s in Los Altos on December 11, 2025.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When he gets tired, he said, Larry reminds him of one of Chef Chu’s own mantras that’s carried him all these years: “Treat every day like opening day,” with the same energy and drive the family felt back in 1970.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As much as Silicon Valley and Chef Chu’s have grown in parallel, Larry explained that he and his dad decided to take a deliberate path away from today’s tech climate of scaling up. They have one location, and no franchises.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you walk into a restaurant where the chef comes out and talks to you, you can feel that this restaurant’s got a little soul to it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because their customers keep coming back, Larry said, “that makes us feel like what we’re doing is worthwhile. We didn’t have to scale. Maybe enough is enough. Maybe you could be happy with what you have.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As our interviews wrapped up, and Will and I were about to leave, he had one more question for Larry: What’s the future of Chef Chu’s?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the question Larry asked himself 20 years ago, and now, he has a very sure answer: “You don’t have to worry about that. When my kids have their kids, there will be a Chef Chu’s here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>For more than ten years, I’ve been traveling all over the state, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/lmorehouse\">reporting stories\u003c/a> about food and farming from every county in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/california\">the state\u003c/a>. Now, for the 58th and very last story in the series, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/californiafoodways\">California Foodways,\u003c/a> I went back to where I grew up — \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/santa-clara-county\">Santa Clara County\u003c/a>, to a special-occasion restaurant from my childhood: Chef Chu’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the restaurant opened in 1970, it was a small family business, and the area around it was a relatively sleepy suburb. Now, it’s at the heart of Silicon Valley — but they don’t deliver, and there’s no online ordering.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, Chef Chu’s is an institution. It’s been visited by luminaries in entertainment, politics and business. Throughout all of the change in the last 55 years, Chef Chu’s has adapted and held on, and remained true to its identity as a family business.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Earlier this year, I met my cousin Billy and his family here — his wife Kimberly, teenagers Will and Guinevere and toddler Imogen. They’re regulars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even early on a weeknight, the lobby at Chef Chu’s was bustling. One whole wall is a glass window, looking into the kitchen where 82-year-old Chef Lawrence Chu and his cooks work. At the bar, a staff member took phone orders, and waiters in crisp white shirts and bow ties moved efficiently from room to room.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067137\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00667_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067137\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00667_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00667_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00667_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00667_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Customers dine at Chef Chu’s in Los Altos on December 11, 2025. Chef Chu’s is a family run business, owned by Lawrence Chu, which has been operating since 1970 and is known for not only the food, but also for hosting celebrities and tech innovators. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As we waited for our table we checked out a long wall of celebrity photos including Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chef Chu’s opened the year I was born, and while I went there as a kid, I hadn’t eaten there in decades. For a white girl raised in the suburbs in the ‘70s and ‘80s, this was one of the few Chinese restaurants around. If I didn’t learn to eat with chopsticks at Chef Chu’s, I certainly practiced there, and I have a vague memory of my late grandma teaching me to spin a lazy Susan in the dining room.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That just made it more special when Will, who has heard a lot of my stories in the car with his parents, suggested I do a story on Chef Chu’s. I asked him to co-report it with me, and many of the best questions in our interviews were his.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neither of us had met \u003cem>the\u003c/em> Chef Chu before, in spite of eating there countless times. We met him in a private dining room where he made us feel comfortable by pouring some tea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout our time with Lawrence Chu, it was a little hard to see the differences between the man, the job, the restaurant and the brand. He’s been at this a long time.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>He was just 26 years old when he opened Chef Chu’s. His wife — girlfriend at the time — was only 20.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I told her ‘I have a dream. I want to open a fast food Chinese joint in every corner of America. That sounds so terrific.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She disagreed. She said, he recalled, that if he found one good location, and opened one restaurant, she would join him. He said he’s followed her advice ever since.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But why open a restaurant?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I liked to eat. I liked to talk. I liked cooking things. Making things a little different. And I liked to be the boss. I liked running things,” he said, which was evident in the large kitchen. The scene was fast-paced but very controlled, with 17 cooks prepping food, each at a different station: chopping vegetables, working the fryer, making soup. The cooks assigned to stir fry with huge woks had tidy prep stations at waist height, filled with ingredients from fresh ginger to chili paste.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just before the waiters carried the dishes — Mongolian beef, Kung Pau tofu, chicken salad — into the dining room, Chef Chu gave them a once-over. On one plate, he adjusted a chili pepper so the plate looked exactly how he wanted it to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chef Chu stepped away from the kitchen to do something he’s known for: taking a turn around the dining room, stopping to talk with customers. He asked each how their meals were, what they were eating and thanked them for coming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One set of customers even told me that they were here on the day Chef Chu’s opened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Except for the location, the restaurant didn’t look anything like Chef Chu’s does today. Chu said he started with just twelve items.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067805\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-chefchu00588_TV_qed.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067805\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-chefchu00588_TV_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-chefchu00588_TV_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-chefchu00588_TV_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-chefchu00588_TV_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Larry Chu, son of owner Lawrence Chu, sets a table at Chef Chu’s in Los Altos on December 11, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tam Vu/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>His oldest son, Larry, and the restaurant’s general manager, was born in 1973, a few years after the restaurant opened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All these customers come in and say, ‘Oh yeah, you were sitting in a baby bassinet, underneath the air conditioner, which was dripping, while your dad was stir-frying and your mom was doing everything in the front: cashier, waitress, take-out,’” he remembered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They were in a small space at the intersection of El Camino Real and San Antonio Road in Los Altos, in a strip mall shared with a hairdresser, a sewing machine and vacuum repair shop and accounting offices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a small Chinese takeout place with one door and a countertop, like at a diner, and you could sit at the counter, maybe five stools,” Larry recalled. “You could look right into the kitchen where they were stir-frying. ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At first, everything looked like it was going great, the elder Chu said. But after six months, business was down. When they asked customers, they heard that they wanted more choices, and a dining room where their kids could throw rice and be messy. Chef Chu’s had to expand. When the sewing repair shop’s lease was up, they opened a dining room there, and kept growing until they bought the whole building complex.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They also expanded the menu. To appeal to a wider customer base, Chef Chu started making food from four different regions of China.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067766\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/Side-by-side-Downpage-5-e1766084498689.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067766\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/Side-by-side-Downpage-5-e1766084498689.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"666\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Left: The original Chef Chu’s, next door to the current location at the intersection of El Camino Real and San Antonio Road in Los Altos. Right: A family portrait of the Chus. Chu said his mother wanted the family to be the “Asian Kennedys.” \u003ccite>(Jon M. Chu)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And the family also grew — to five children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We pretty much lived here,” said Larry. “If we wanted to see my dad, we had to come to Chef Chu’s.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The restaurant grew in parallel with the community around it. Larry remembers this area — which is totally developed now — looking really different.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This area here in Los Altos was known for their apricot orchards. So, a lot of the houses of my friends that I grew up with — they had apricot trees growing in their backyards.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I remembered this, too, growing up in Cupertino, but 16-year-old Will hasn’t ever seen an orchard in Santa Clara County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the 1970s, the term “Silicon Valley” wasn’t popular — yet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I had a number of friends whose parents had companies that were building these chips that were going into these computers,” Larry said.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>He saw computers change from monstrosities that filled whole rooms, to desktops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Chef Chu saw all of that develop.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many Silicon Valley pioneers became Chef Chu’s regulars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Mr. Tramiel was the founder of Atari, Chuck Geshke who founded Adobe, Gordon Moore, Paul Allen, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs — when he was just a kid — all these people from Silicon Valley ate at Chef Chu’s,” Larry remembered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though they were in different businesses, his dad shared a certain approach with some of these customers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Silicon Valley people are very quick to adapt to change,” Larry said. “They’re not scared of trying new things. And that’s just part of the community that is around you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After college, Larry moved to Hong Kong and worked in sports marketing for years. And the youngest of the kids, Jon Chu, tried his luck as a Hollywood director.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yeah, Jon M. Chu — the director of\u003cem> Crazy Rich Asians\u003c/em>, \u003cem>In the Heights\u003c/em> and the \u003cem>Wicked\u003c/em> movies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When we reached out to him, Jon was on a world-wide press tour promoting \u003cem>Wicked: For Good\u003c/em>, but he sent us some voice memos from Brazil in response to our questions about growing up in Silicon Valley in the ‘80s and ‘90s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067135\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00508_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067135\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00508_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00508_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00508_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00508_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An assortment of dishes at Chef Chu’s in Los Altos on December 11, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Everywhere I turned, people were thinking of new ways of how to change the world,” Jon told us. “What tomorrow looked like was on everybody’s mind. The engineer was revered. This was before they were on the cover of magazines or drove fancy cars. It was all about work and discovery and invention and innovation there,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, like his brother Larry already told us, many of those people converged at the restaurant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Sharing stories, sharing space, sharing ideas was such a central part to Chef Chu’s itself. Now going into a fairly selfish business, the entertainment business, I think that that sense of ‘What does tomorrow look like?’ still stays in me in the stories that I tell.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His family’s dedication and hard work has also stayed with him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I saw my dad and my mom work their butts off in the kitchen, out in the front. I saw many sides to it. There was the side that no one saw, which is the grind, the deboning the chicken, getting the deliveries in the back, my grandma doing the books with her abacus,” Jon remembered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And he saw his parents act as the ultimate hosts: “Being the ambassadors to people who may or may not have ever met a Chinese family, whoever have had or not had Chinese food, introducing them to new flavors.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>There are a lot of similarities between running a restaurant and making a movie, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Everyone knows the red carpet and when the movie’s out, but they don’t see how hard it is to begin. They don’t know how hard it is in the messy middle. They don’t know the pressures before anyone ever sees it sort of nicely colored and presented.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though he can’t visit as often as he likes, Jon said that Chef Chu’s will always be home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s been the place that I return to to get grounded. It’s a place I return to get fed physically but also emotionally.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Especially with his five kids in tow. His movie posters are on the walls, but he really likes having customers catch him up on all their family stories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a connection point [between] what I’m doing out in Los Angeles or out in the world. The thread pulls all the way back home.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there’s a world in which this story could have gone really differently, with Chef Chu’s closing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the early 2000s when Jon was trying to get a foothold in Hollywood and Larry was in Hong Kong, their dad was starting to feel the strain of running the restaurant for more than 30 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067138\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00689_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067138\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00689_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00689_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00689_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-CHEFCHU00689_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chef Chu’s is located in Los Altos on December 11, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I was burned out at the time,” said Lawrence Chu.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He had business collaborations, and cookbooks, but the pressure had built up over the years. Plus, his beloved wife, Ruth, had breast cancer. He knew he couldn’t run the restaurant alone forever.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He spoke with Larry about his future plans, a conversation Larry remembers well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I could never imagine Los Altos without a Chef Chu’s there. What if when I have kids, I won’t have a Chef Chu’s to bring my kids to and eat? That’s when I decided: “Yes, Dad, I’ll come back and join the family business.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s how it was meant to be, Jon said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We were all very proud to have Larry come back. It felt like the legacy was continuing,” the director said. “There were a lot of hopes and dreams pinned on him. Coming back was like the return of the king, or the return of the prince, is a better way to say it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For his father, when Larry joined the restaurant, he gave him a shot in the arm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He let me feel that this is \u003cem>a life —\u003c/em> the restaurant business — instead of work.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067812\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-chefchu00496_TV_qed.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067812\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-chefchu00496_TV_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-chefchu00496_TV_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-chefchu00496_TV_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251211-chefchu00496_TV_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lawrence Chu (right) greets David Huff (left) at Chef Chu’s in Los Altos on December 11, 2025.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When he gets tired, he said, Larry reminds him of one of Chef Chu’s own mantras that’s carried him all these years: “Treat every day like opening day,” with the same energy and drive the family felt back in 1970.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As much as Silicon Valley and Chef Chu’s have grown in parallel, Larry explained that he and his dad decided to take a deliberate path away from today’s tech climate of scaling up. They have one location, and no franchises.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you walk into a restaurant where the chef comes out and talks to you, you can feel that this restaurant’s got a little soul to it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because their customers keep coming back, Larry said, “that makes us feel like what we’re doing is worthwhile. We didn’t have to scale. Maybe enough is enough. Maybe you could be happy with what you have.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As our interviews wrapped up, and Will and I were about to leave, he had one more question for Larry: What’s the future of Chef Chu’s?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the question Larry asked himself 20 years ago, and now, he has a very sure answer: “You don’t have to worry about that. When my kids have their kids, there will be a Chef Chu’s here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Richmond's 'Minister of Food' Serves the Bay Area Southern BBQ, California Style",
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"headTitle": "Richmond’s ‘Minister of Food’ Serves the Bay Area Southern BBQ, California Style | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>For her series \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/californiafoodways\">California Foodways\u003c/a>, Lisa Morehouse is reporting a story about food and farming from each of California’s 58 counties.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a corner in Richmond, California, there’s a business that has celebrated the city’s Black history and Southern roots for 30 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The building is bright white with a hand-painted, red sign: “CJ’s BBQ and Fish.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inside, on a recent Monday morning, the small, efficient crew was busy prepping for the week. It was clear they’ve had years on the job, and with each other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mike Reddick, who’s worked at CJ’s for about five years, sharpened knives. Larry Turner trimmed, rinsed and seasoned slabs of ribs, the way he’s done for more than 15 years. Nick Gamble took inventory of the freezers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Watching and managing it all was Gamble’s uncle, Charles Evans — CJ himself — who’s nearly 80.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12065457\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-37-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12065457\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-37-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-37-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-37-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-37-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nick Gamble barbeques ribs at CJ’s BBQ and Fish in Richmond on Nov. 19, 2025, serving barbecue, seafood and Southern-style comfort food. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“They try to keep me out of here, but they can’t,” Evans said, with a twinkle in his eye. “They can’t do what I do. I show them all how to do everything: cook, clean, repair, fix. I mean, that’s the running of the restaurant. It ain’t just one thing. You’ve got to do it all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CJ’s has a brick cooker inside, but Evans prefers to cook outdoors in portable pits, in a lot surrounded by a chain link fence. He pointed to an enormous one he calls “Big Black,” which he uses for busy summer days or off-site catering jobs for clients like Chevron and the University of California. He can feed up to 800 people and safely cook four different meats — ribs, chicken, links and beef — all at the same time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cooking outside and filling the air with a meaty aroma is great marketing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’d be surprised how many people stop when they get that smell,” he said. “They smell it, you give them a taste. Bam, you got ’em.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inside, above the few tables and small counter, a TV plays soap operas all day long. Evans loves his stories, which is fitting of the staff’s dynamic, Reddick noted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re like a soap opera. We’re one big soap opera family. We’re all his children,” he said, laughing.[aside postID=news_12058556 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/20251002_REDWOODEMPIRE_GC-28-KQED.jpg']Shaking his head, Evans said, “Yeah, they’re all mine.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The restaurant could be a soap opera, or maybe a church. While everyone worked, Gamble quietly sang hymns to himself. Evans referred to Reddick as “Rev” — for Reverend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Rev knows he keeps us in order,” Evans said. “He gives us the word. He has to quote the Bible on us a couple times a day.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They joke around a lot here, Evans said, “but I don’t play with God.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All my friends are preachers. I know every minister in town comes through here. But they call me the Minister of Food. They give ’em the word, and I give ’em the bread.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although he shares the word, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve got a lot of young nephews, cousins, friends, people. I preach to them,” Evans said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That includes the guys hanging out on the street corner. Evans pointed out of the window, across the street: “They come out there and drink a little bit and do whatever they do, and then they’re gone. They don’t bother us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They actually look out for CJ’s, he said. The shop doesn’t get tagged, customers aren’t bothered. The one time he was burgled, the guys on the corner identified the perpetrators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Reddick prepped a plate of oxtails for a regular customer, Princess Crockett, Evans told him to add a little more food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12065454\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-22-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12065454\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-22-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-22-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-22-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-22-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mike Reddick takes an order from a customer at CJ’s BBQ and Fish in Richmond on Nov. 19, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“She comes around in her little walker,” Evans said. “I try to take care of my seniors.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I like everything he got in there,” said Crockett, but she likes oxtails the best. Crockett has lived in Richmond since 1945, when, as a 5-year-old, she and her family arrived on a Greyhound bus from St. Louis, Missouri. She lives in senior housing around the corner and comes to CJ’s at least once a week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Okay, Princess, here you go, baby,” Evans said, handing Crockett her order.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back at the pit, Turner checked on the links and put down some ribs. He adjusted the height of the metal grid where the meat cooks so it’s just the right distance from the charcoal, and he watched carefully, making sure the charcoal didn’t flame up and burn the meat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We cook by heat, not by fire,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s tiring work, raising the pit all day, but Turner said it’s worth it for the smiles he sees on the faces of customers enjoying the food. “It gives me a rush. And I love it,” he continued.[aside postID=news_12047368 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/250702-OaklandProduceMarket-13-BL_qed.jpg']Cooking meat with smoke on a fire is something done all over the world, but in the U.S., there are lots of nuances, broad regional differences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“North Carolina, Georgia — they got that vinegary taste. Memphis has a taste of its own. You know, with the sauces and the rubs. Mid-Texas, they have theirs in between,” Evans said. “So, I came up with California -Southern barbecue because we’re from Arkansas.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Evans family hails from Lewisville, population 1,280, between Hope and Texarkana.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My grandpa bought some land in Arkansas. We still have 200 acres,” he said. “He used to grow sugar cane, make sugar cane syrup. And he grew cucumbers,” for making pickles. Evans and his family went back every summer to help with the crops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The family moved to Richmond to work in the shipyards for World War II, Evans explained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the early 1940s, Henry J. Kaiser developed four ship-building facilities in the city, where nearly 750 ships were built. The population of Richmond nearly quadrupled as women, African Americans and out-of-state workers were recruited for the war effort. Evans’s father worked as a welder. His aunt had a job here, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She was a Rosie the Riveter,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Evans was a “wartime baby,” one of 11 kids of Joseph and Flora Evans. His mom just died last year at the age of 105.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12065453\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-21-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12065453\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-21-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-21-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-21-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-21-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Charles “CJ” Evans stands in the doorway at CJ’s BBQ and Fish in Richmond on Nov. 19, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Everybody in Richmond knew her. Everybody talks so highly of her. They had her funeral at the auditorium around here and packed it,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When her kids were growing up, Flora Evans made sure they knew the basics. “She taught us to cook, sew and clean,” he said. Evans learned Southern soul food recipes from her. His dad was the barbecue guy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He used to cook it in the backyard. He had made a pit out of an old washing machine, took the side out, took his torch, cut a hole in it. Let it smoke. He took an old refrigerator, gutted it, and put him some racks in there. They were inventive back then.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Evans never planned on starting a restaurant. He drove for the East Bay’s public bus system.“I was driving a bus for AC Transit, routes 72P, 72M, from here to Oakland, 105 stops going and 105 stops coming back. Then I drove the school bus in the afternoon, picking up school kids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When a back injury ended that career, he turned to the food he’d been taught to make his whole life. He took cooking classes at Contra Costa College and a meat-cutting course in Southern California before opening a (now closed) place in Fairfield and then this spot in Richmond 30 years ago.[aside postID=news_12042713 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250301-ANDERSONVALLEYGRANGE-01-BL-KQED-1020x680.jpg']He said he started off small, with only two or three slabs of ribs a day. Today, he works with up to 400 slabs a week between his two locations in Richmond and Vallejo. He added fish and Southern soul food favorites. And he’s super hands-on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m not just [a] sit-down boss, I’m a working boss,” he said, prepping what he calls the “chop chop” for CJ’s macaroni salad, which he makes 10 gallons of on an average Monday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We call it chop chop — that’s the onion, bell pepper, celery. Chop chop! ‘Cause we’ve gotta chop it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Evans played with the seasonings until he was satisfied with the flavors.\u003cem> “\u003c/em>I know that’s right. I know nothing’s wrong with that,” he said, sampling the batch in front of him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This obsessiveness may be the key to the longevity of this shop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A lot of people actually try to change their recipes or take shortcuts,” Evans said, “but people are funny. They can tell when you change anything. They can tell when I didn’t make something.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reddick nodded his head in agreement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s important to Evans to be consistent, to be a reliable spot in Richmond, a city that’s had a lot of good times and a lot of hard times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Back in the day of the wartime, everybody was bustling out here,” he said. “Shipyards, everything during the war. Everybody had a job. I’ve seen Richmond grow and go downhill and come back uphill.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12065452\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-17-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12065452\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-17-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-17-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-17-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-17-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Evans, Reddick and Nate Miles work in the kitchen at CJ’s BBQ and Fish in Richmond on Nov. 19, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And he said, he’s seen the racial makeup of Richmond change a lot, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once predominantly Black, many of Richmond’s families moved to places like Stockton, Antioch and Sacramento. Now, Richmond — and Evans’ family — is really diverse. Half of his customers are Latino, and his menu is printed in both English and Spanish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But he also wants CJ’s to be a place the Black community with ties to Richmond can return to connect with their roots, even folks who’ve moved away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m the first place in town that they hit. ‘Charles, where’s so-and-so? Where’s Miss So-and-so? Where’s the kids at?’ I try to keep up with everybody. If I don’t know, somebody in here knows.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After all, Evans has a reputation in Richmond as the Minister of Food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All my roots are here. \u003cem>Everybody\u003c/em> in here knows me,” he said. “Where else I’m gonna go and get the recognition?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>For her series \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/californiafoodways\">California Foodways\u003c/a>, Lisa Morehouse is reporting a story about food and farming from each of California’s 58 counties.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a corner in Richmond, California, there’s a business that has celebrated the city’s Black history and Southern roots for 30 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The building is bright white with a hand-painted, red sign: “CJ’s BBQ and Fish.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inside, on a recent Monday morning, the small, efficient crew was busy prepping for the week. It was clear they’ve had years on the job, and with each other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mike Reddick, who’s worked at CJ’s for about five years, sharpened knives. Larry Turner trimmed, rinsed and seasoned slabs of ribs, the way he’s done for more than 15 years. Nick Gamble took inventory of the freezers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Watching and managing it all was Gamble’s uncle, Charles Evans — CJ himself — who’s nearly 80.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12065457\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-37-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12065457\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-37-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-37-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-37-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-37-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nick Gamble barbeques ribs at CJ’s BBQ and Fish in Richmond on Nov. 19, 2025, serving barbecue, seafood and Southern-style comfort food. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“They try to keep me out of here, but they can’t,” Evans said, with a twinkle in his eye. “They can’t do what I do. I show them all how to do everything: cook, clean, repair, fix. I mean, that’s the running of the restaurant. It ain’t just one thing. You’ve got to do it all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CJ’s has a brick cooker inside, but Evans prefers to cook outdoors in portable pits, in a lot surrounded by a chain link fence. He pointed to an enormous one he calls “Big Black,” which he uses for busy summer days or off-site catering jobs for clients like Chevron and the University of California. He can feed up to 800 people and safely cook four different meats — ribs, chicken, links and beef — all at the same time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cooking outside and filling the air with a meaty aroma is great marketing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’d be surprised how many people stop when they get that smell,” he said. “They smell it, you give them a taste. Bam, you got ’em.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inside, above the few tables and small counter, a TV plays soap operas all day long. Evans loves his stories, which is fitting of the staff’s dynamic, Reddick noted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re like a soap opera. We’re one big soap opera family. We’re all his children,” he said, laughing.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Shaking his head, Evans said, “Yeah, they’re all mine.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The restaurant could be a soap opera, or maybe a church. While everyone worked, Gamble quietly sang hymns to himself. Evans referred to Reddick as “Rev” — for Reverend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Rev knows he keeps us in order,” Evans said. “He gives us the word. He has to quote the Bible on us a couple times a day.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They joke around a lot here, Evans said, “but I don’t play with God.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All my friends are preachers. I know every minister in town comes through here. But they call me the Minister of Food. They give ’em the word, and I give ’em the bread.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although he shares the word, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve got a lot of young nephews, cousins, friends, people. I preach to them,” Evans said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That includes the guys hanging out on the street corner. Evans pointed out of the window, across the street: “They come out there and drink a little bit and do whatever they do, and then they’re gone. They don’t bother us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They actually look out for CJ’s, he said. The shop doesn’t get tagged, customers aren’t bothered. The one time he was burgled, the guys on the corner identified the perpetrators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Reddick prepped a plate of oxtails for a regular customer, Princess Crockett, Evans told him to add a little more food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12065454\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-22-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12065454\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-22-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-22-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-22-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-22-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mike Reddick takes an order from a customer at CJ’s BBQ and Fish in Richmond on Nov. 19, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“She comes around in her little walker,” Evans said. “I try to take care of my seniors.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I like everything he got in there,” said Crockett, but she likes oxtails the best. Crockett has lived in Richmond since 1945, when, as a 5-year-old, she and her family arrived on a Greyhound bus from St. Louis, Missouri. She lives in senior housing around the corner and comes to CJ’s at least once a week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Okay, Princess, here you go, baby,” Evans said, handing Crockett her order.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back at the pit, Turner checked on the links and put down some ribs. He adjusted the height of the metal grid where the meat cooks so it’s just the right distance from the charcoal, and he watched carefully, making sure the charcoal didn’t flame up and burn the meat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We cook by heat, not by fire,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s tiring work, raising the pit all day, but Turner said it’s worth it for the smiles he sees on the faces of customers enjoying the food. “It gives me a rush. And I love it,” he continued.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Cooking meat with smoke on a fire is something done all over the world, but in the U.S., there are lots of nuances, broad regional differences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“North Carolina, Georgia — they got that vinegary taste. Memphis has a taste of its own. You know, with the sauces and the rubs. Mid-Texas, they have theirs in between,” Evans said. “So, I came up with California -Southern barbecue because we’re from Arkansas.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Evans family hails from Lewisville, population 1,280, between Hope and Texarkana.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My grandpa bought some land in Arkansas. We still have 200 acres,” he said. “He used to grow sugar cane, make sugar cane syrup. And he grew cucumbers,” for making pickles. Evans and his family went back every summer to help with the crops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The family moved to Richmond to work in the shipyards for World War II, Evans explained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the early 1940s, Henry J. Kaiser developed four ship-building facilities in the city, where nearly 750 ships were built. The population of Richmond nearly quadrupled as women, African Americans and out-of-state workers were recruited for the war effort. Evans’s father worked as a welder. His aunt had a job here, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She was a Rosie the Riveter,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Evans was a “wartime baby,” one of 11 kids of Joseph and Flora Evans. His mom just died last year at the age of 105.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12065453\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-21-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12065453\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-21-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-21-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-21-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-21-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Charles “CJ” Evans stands in the doorway at CJ’s BBQ and Fish in Richmond on Nov. 19, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Everybody in Richmond knew her. Everybody talks so highly of her. They had her funeral at the auditorium around here and packed it,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When her kids were growing up, Flora Evans made sure they knew the basics. “She taught us to cook, sew and clean,” he said. Evans learned Southern soul food recipes from her. His dad was the barbecue guy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He used to cook it in the backyard. He had made a pit out of an old washing machine, took the side out, took his torch, cut a hole in it. Let it smoke. He took an old refrigerator, gutted it, and put him some racks in there. They were inventive back then.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Evans never planned on starting a restaurant. He drove for the East Bay’s public bus system.“I was driving a bus for AC Transit, routes 72P, 72M, from here to Oakland, 105 stops going and 105 stops coming back. Then I drove the school bus in the afternoon, picking up school kids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When a back injury ended that career, he turned to the food he’d been taught to make his whole life. He took cooking classes at Contra Costa College and a meat-cutting course in Southern California before opening a (now closed) place in Fairfield and then this spot in Richmond 30 years ago.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>He said he started off small, with only two or three slabs of ribs a day. Today, he works with up to 400 slabs a week between his two locations in Richmond and Vallejo. He added fish and Southern soul food favorites. And he’s super hands-on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m not just [a] sit-down boss, I’m a working boss,” he said, prepping what he calls the “chop chop” for CJ’s macaroni salad, which he makes 10 gallons of on an average Monday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We call it chop chop — that’s the onion, bell pepper, celery. Chop chop! ‘Cause we’ve gotta chop it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Evans played with the seasonings until he was satisfied with the flavors.\u003cem> “\u003c/em>I know that’s right. I know nothing’s wrong with that,” he said, sampling the batch in front of him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This obsessiveness may be the key to the longevity of this shop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A lot of people actually try to change their recipes or take shortcuts,” Evans said, “but people are funny. They can tell when you change anything. They can tell when I didn’t make something.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reddick nodded his head in agreement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s important to Evans to be consistent, to be a reliable spot in Richmond, a city that’s had a lot of good times and a lot of hard times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Back in the day of the wartime, everybody was bustling out here,” he said. “Shipyards, everything during the war. Everybody had a job. I’ve seen Richmond grow and go downhill and come back uphill.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12065452\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-17-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12065452\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-17-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-17-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-17-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251119-CJSBBQANDFISH-17-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Evans, Reddick and Nate Miles work in the kitchen at CJ’s BBQ and Fish in Richmond on Nov. 19, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And he said, he’s seen the racial makeup of Richmond change a lot, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once predominantly Black, many of Richmond’s families moved to places like Stockton, Antioch and Sacramento. Now, Richmond — and Evans’ family — is really diverse. Half of his customers are Latino, and his menu is printed in both English and Spanish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But he also wants CJ’s to be a place the Black community with ties to Richmond can return to connect with their roots, even folks who’ve moved away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m the first place in town that they hit. ‘Charles, where’s so-and-so? Where’s Miss So-and-so? Where’s the kids at?’ I try to keep up with everybody. If I don’t know, somebody in here knows.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After all, Evans has a reputation in Richmond as the Minister of Food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All my roots are here. \u003cem>Everybody\u003c/em> in here knows me,” he said. “Where else I’m gonna go and get the recognition?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "The Railroad's Surprising Impact on Food and Civil Rights in California",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>For her series \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/californiafoodways\">California Foodways\u003c/a>, Lisa Morehouse is reporting a story about food and farming from each of California’s 58 counties.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lot of kids growing up in California learn about the transcontinental railroad in the fourth grade, and the mostly Chinese laborers who laid the track eastward from Sacramento: leveling, drilling, and tunneling through the Sierra Nevada to meet the tracks that were being built east to west. The so-called “Big Four” railroad tycoons behind this western construction — the Central Pacific Railroad — are also well-known. But some of this history can get overlooked, like how the railroad — and its connection to food — shaped much of California’s story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of the route of Amtrak’s California Zephyr line parallels that of the first transcontinental railroad. One of the most beautiful train routes in the United States, Zephyr’s California path alone is stunning. Leaving Emeryville, near Oakland, it hugs the Bay before passing under the Carquinez Bridge and heading into the Delta, with its islands and snaking waterways. After stopping in Sacramento it climbs through California’s foothills, then into the Sierra Nevada.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some people ride the California Zephyr just to get from point A to point B. Others, like passenger Jamie Thomas, fly to the Zephyr’s starting point in Chicago just to ride it home to the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I always took trains with my dad,” Thomas said. “My fondest memories are sitting with him, chatting or getting dinner together. It was a very good place to connect with people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Connecting with strangers, even. The dining car — where Thomas was seated next to fellow Bay Area resident Shreya Jalan — practices “community seating.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The number of stories we get to hear and exchange, I think it’s really beautiful,” said Jalan, who didn’t know Thomas before the trip.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On shorter routes, a lot of trains have cafe cars, with drinks, snacks and pre-packaged food. But many of the longer Amtrak routes have dining cars like this one, with a full kitchen taking up the whole lower level of this train car. White table cloths and flower vases offset the plastic plates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12018787\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM-Roster-Cochiti-Dining_2024-03-27_A7R5393_HighRes.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12018787\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM-Roster-Cochiti-Dining_2024-03-27_A7R5393_HighRes.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM-Roster-Cochiti-Dining_2024-03-27_A7R5393_HighRes.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM-Roster-Cochiti-Dining_2024-03-27_A7R5393_HighRes-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM-Roster-Cochiti-Dining_2024-03-27_A7R5393_HighRes-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM-Roster-Cochiti-Dining_2024-03-27_A7R5393_HighRes-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM-Roster-Cochiti-Dining_2024-03-27_A7R5393_HighRes-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM-Roster-Cochiti-Dining_2024-03-27_A7R5393_HighRes-1920x1281.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Place settings in a dining car on display at the California State Railroad Museum. \u003ccite>(Kelly B. Huston/California State Railroad Museum)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Trains would go on to make the Golden State a farming powerhouse. Track-side restaurants and dining cars were precursors to chain restaurants and luxury travel dining. But innovation went hand in hand with exploitation of land and workers, whose resistance against discrimination led to breakthroughs in labor and civil rights. As author and archivist Benjamin Jenkins put it, “The railroad really revolutionizes just about every part of California’s politics, society and economy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Laying the tracks\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>By the time the Central Pacific was completed in 1869, trains with dining cars were already running out of Chicago. It would take California a while to catch up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the Big Four had big plans. They bought another railroad line, a tiny one called the Southern Pacific, and expanded it dramatically from the Bay Area, down to Los Angeles over hundreds of miles all the way out to Louisiana.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the early days of the Southern Pacific, the Big Four had a near-monopoly in California. Riding the train was prohibitively expensive, but when a competing company — the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway — later reached Los Angeles, it caused a rate war. Tickets from Chicago to LA dropped from $125 to $1. Los Angeles went from cowtown to boom town.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back then, the train offered few amenities, and people packed their own food to avoid terrible roadhouse meals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Most of the people would make fried chicken and get on the train. They’d trade some of that fried chicken for pillows and stuff,” said Lawrence Dale, who worked for BNSF Railroad for more than forty-two years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Standing at an exhibit at the Western American Railroad Museum in Barstow, Dale explained that, the further the trains went, the less practical it was for passengers to bring all of their own food on a trip. And when there’s a business vacuum, someone will try to fill it. Enter Fred Harvey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12018770\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18350.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12018770\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18350.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1232\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18350.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18350-800x493.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18350-1020x628.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18350-160x99.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18350-1536x946.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18350-1920x1183.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fred Harvey manager Victor Patrosso with a group of 20 Harvey Girls in evening uniform, standing by El Tovar Hotel in 1926. \u003ccite>(National Park Service)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The museum takes up a section of what was once Barstow’s Harvey House, a restaurant designed for train passengers, right off the railroad tracks. It’s beautiful — for a building that’s more than 110 years old — with columns, decorative brick arches, and shaded walkways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In partnership with the Santa Fe railroad, Fred Harvey built Harvey Houses every 100 miles. They served fancy cheeses, oysters, fruit, sirloin, and generous slices of pie. Another big attraction: waitresses known as “Harvey Girls.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harvey Girls were young, single, and almost always white.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All I can tell you about Harvey Girls is they were young women out of the Midwest,” said Dale. “They were brought in here by Fred Harvey, and weren’t allowed to date. They weren’t allowed to do nothing except serve the people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12018769\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18207.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12018769\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18207.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1190\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18207.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18207-800x476.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18207-1020x607.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18207-160x95.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18207-1536x914.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18207-1920x1142.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The ‘Fred Harvey Bunch,’ or 13 Fred Harvey employees by Bright Angel Hotel in 1915. \u003ccite>(T.L. Brown/National Park Service)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Of course, plenty of Harvey Girls did marry, and relocate to farms and ranches across the West. While they were Harvey Girls, they worked long hours, lived in dorms under the watchful eyes of house mothers, and were expected to meet strict standards of decorum and image, down to their uniform.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>White gloves, white full cover apron with a black garment underneath. Bow in the back of the hair,” Dale said, pointing to a display. “They were all supposed to be dressed alike.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For passengers, eating at a Harvey House was an elevated dining experience, but it was more efficient than leisurely. Trains called in passengers’ orders ahead by telegraph.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Say a west-bound train pulled into Needles, Calif. The conductor would come through the cars, taking orders, and contact the next Harvey House down the line in Barstow, letting staff know how many people planned to eat, and what time they’d arrive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12019268\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/11001768.TIF_duo-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12019268\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/11001768.TIF_duo-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"842\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/11001768.TIF_duo-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/11001768.TIF_duo-800x263.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/11001768.TIF_duo-1020x335.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/11001768.TIF_duo-160x53.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/11001768.TIF_duo-1536x505.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/11001768.TIF_duo-2048x673.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/11001768.TIF_duo-1920x631.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(right): Interior view of the Harvey House Hotel between 1909-1910 in Barstow, Calif. The decor includes ceiling lamps, a clock, a potted palm, deco stencils and wooden chairs. (left): View of the Harvey House Hotel from the railroad tracks. The building, also called Casa del Desierto, was designed by Francis Wilson, and includes arcades, balconies, and corbeled brick. \u003ccite>(G. M. Hamilton/Denver Public Library Special Collections)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Passengers disembarked, sat in the well-appointed dining room, and had a limited time to eat, before the train left the station.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harvey Houses were a precursor to fast food and chain restaurants, and they helped change the intent of train travel from something that was just utilitarian, to an experience, according to Ty Smith, director of the California State Railroad Museum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Dining was at the heart of the transition from conveyance to experience,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sacramento — a city rich in railroad history — is the perfect home for this museum, where kids wearing conductor’s hats and blowing train whistles mingle with adult rail buffs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re two blocks from mile marker zero, where the Central Pacific Railroad started building from west to east,” Smith said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even earlier, during the Gold Rush, trains transported picks and shovels and other goods from the city into the foothills to the miners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Foodways are embedded throughout the museum, too. Smith points out a display that holds artifacts of a Chinese workers camp: a ginger jar, a tea cup, a rice bowl, a glazed stoneware jar that stored vinegars and sauces.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even though Chinese workers made up 90% of the labor force for the Central Pacific Railroad, they were in segregated camps, according to Smith.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Chinese railroad workers didn’t get the same pay or food allowances that their Irish and other counterparts did,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even this small display illustrates the racism baked into the building of the railroads: the chasm between people who owned the railroads and the people who worked on them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The museum also has a sleeper car on a rocker, to simulate the feeling of being on a train. It’s set up to show how the car would look in both day and evening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“During the day, the upper berths would be folded up. The lower berths serve as comfy seats,” said Smith.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At night, porters would unfold the upper berths and convert the seats to create beds. Smith pointed to a little button passengers could push to call a porter, if they wanted anything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next to the sleeper car is a 1937 Cochiti dining car, which ran on Santa Fe’s Super Chief train between Chicago and Los Angeles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That gives us a chance to talk about what it was like to dine on a train during the golden era of rail travel,” Smith said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the narrow galley kitchen, it’s hard to imagine all the people needed to work here, to prepare three gourmet meals a day for 50 people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12018775\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1626px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1328.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12018775\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1328.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1626\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1328.jpg 1626w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1328-800x984.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1328-1020x1255.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1328-160x197.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1328-1249x1536.jpg 1249w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1626px) 100vw, 1626px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Railroad chef in narrow kitchen cutting turkey, undated. \u003ccite>(African American Museum and Library at Oakland)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The chef, people doing prep, \u003cem>mise-en-place\u003c/em>,” Smith enumerated. “You’d have to find a cadence to work within the space. A lot of gleaming stainless steel-like surfaces: knives and graters and colanders and big soup pots.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of this was perfectly organized for a tiny space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Called to the dining room by chimes, passengers would sit among abundant flower arrangements and intricate Art Deco metalwork. They ate at tables with tablecloths and off of china with patterns that reflected the route: poppies in California, and animal images inspired by Native American art in the Southwest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Docent Allen Blum shared a menu for the Super Chief, including “ripe California colossal olives, grapefruit, orange and raisin fruit, swordfish steak, and poached salmon.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Menus, like this California-influenced one, often reflected cuisines and ingredients along the route.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Blum said the Super Chief carried politicians and stars from Walt Disney and Jack Benny to Marilyn Monroe, in later years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This was definitely considered first class,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Passengers on dining cars came to expect attentive service — one waiter per two tables. Smith explained that the businessman best known for railroad dining cars was George Pullman. He built and owned luxury train cars to appeal to passengers who wanted to travel in style, and he leased his cars to the railroads.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>George Pullman was a master at branding, Smith added “Pullman is creating the romance of train travel. To ride on a Pullman car means something, and this feeds his ability to lease these cars to the railroads.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But George Pullman built this image and his business on the backs of the Black service workers he hired.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a luxurious experience, but a completely racialized experience,” said Susan Anderson, history curator at the California African American Museum. “From the appointment of the sleeping area to the dining car to the cuisine and the meals, the way that you were waited on, all of that was just premium. And all of it, on the Pullman cars, was provided by Black labor.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Engines of resistance\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>White men held positions like engineer and conductor. The servant-type jobs were the ones that were reserved for Black people on the trains: porter, steward, cook, maid and waiter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“George Pullman and the Pullman Company were explicit about this,” Anderson said. “They wanted white people to be waited on by Black people, because in our history, racism conflated being a slave or being a servant with being Black.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12018772\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1314.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12018772\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1314.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1620\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1314.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1314-800x648.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1314-1020x826.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1314-160x130.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1314-1536x1244.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1314-1920x1555.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Group photograph of the ‘Owl’ Dining Car Crew (back row, left-right): Bert Hackett, unidentified, unidentified, Henry Earl (front row, left-right): Joe C. Brown, Arthur Johnson, unidentified, steward, Charles Williams, in 1927. \u003ccite>(African American Museum and Library at Oakland)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Porters — who did everything from turning down beds, carrying luggage, and serving food — were usually not addressed by their own names. They were called “George,” after George Pullman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Susan Anderson said the subjugation of Black workers on trains was a direct reflection of the way the U.S. economy was organized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So, that’s U.S. history. But Black history is that they took these positions and they made the most out of them, and they used them to the advantage of their own people and their own families.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many African Americans saw railroad jobs as opportunities to broaden their horizons, bring money back home or leave Southern states altogether and move their families elsewhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People who worked for the railroad got a lot of respect in the community,” said Anderson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her own family has a connection to railroad history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One of my great-grandfathers — my mother’s father’s father — was a chef on the railroad,” she explained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His name was Edward Wilcox, and his family was originally from Louisiana.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They came to West Oakland in the late 19th century. They actually established a church in West Oakland. It’s still there: Bethlehem Lutheran Church. And that enclave was partly like a labor reserve for the Southern Pacific Railroad,” said Anderson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By 1926, the Pullman Company was the largest single employer of African American workers in the country, with over 10,000 porters and 200 maids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anderson explained, a lot of intellectuals ended up working as porters or waiters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12018774\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1322.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12018774\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1322.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1138\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1322.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1322-800x455.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1322-1020x580.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1322-160x91.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1322-1536x874.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1322-1920x1092.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Four Pullman porters stand on a sidewalk. On the reverse is written ‘CL Jones, Richardson, J. Simms.’ \u003ccite>(African American Museum and Library at Oakland)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“There were college men who had no other employment opportunities in a racist economy,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These railroad men left a big legacy in American civic and cultural life. In his autobiography, Malcolm X wrote about selling sandwiches on trains. Renowned photographer Gordon Parks waited tables in dining cars. Thurgood Marshall, Willie Brown, Tom Bradley and Dionne Warwick all had fathers who were porters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Railroad workers networked with each other across the country, sharing copies of Black-owned newspapers and other literature, including \u003cem>The Messenger\u003c/em>, founded by influential civil rights activist and labor organizer A. Phillip Randolph.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And they began the effort to organize so that they could demand better wages, better working conditions for themselves, better hours,” Anderson said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an oral history archived at the African American Museum & Library at Oakland, former Oakland-based Pullman porter Cottrell Laurence (C.L.) Dellums explained: “There was no limit on the number of hours. The company unilaterally set up the operation of the runs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12018773\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1320.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12018773 size-medium\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1320-800x1192.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"1192\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1320-800x1192.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1320-1020x1520.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1320-160x238.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1320-1031x1536.jpg 1031w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1320.jpg 1342w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A portrait of Oakland’s civil rights and labor activist hero C.L. Dellums. \u003ccite>(African American Museum and Library at Oakland)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Dellums, whose nephew Ron Dellums was the late California congressman and former Oakland mayor, started working for the Pullman company in 1924. He said the salary at the time was $60 a month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And they provided what we said was just enough rest between trips for the porter to be able to make one more trip,” C.L. Dellums said, in the audio recording. Workloads for the porters varied from 300 to over 400 hours a month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Anybody could take the porter’s job. Not only any kind of Pullman official — from the lowest to the highest — could take his job. Anybody traveling as a passenger, even though it might be the first trip they’ve ever been on a train, they could write him up and get him fired.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kept out of the American Railway Union, African Americans founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters & Maids in 1925, and C.L. Dellums began signing up workers for the union, despite the risks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I never heard of a war that there weren’t battles. And never, never heard of a battle without casualties … But I will be heard from. And so I did. And sure enough, of course, they did discharge me,” Dellums said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He eventually became one of the union’s vice presidents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It took years, but the Brotherhood became the first Black union to be recognized by the American Federation of Labor. In 1937, they got a contract with Pullman, the first in history between a Black union and a large U.S. Company. They established an eight-hour work day, regulated work schedules, and increased pay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Brotherhood influenced much more than service work on railroads. They helped push through the desegregation of the defense industry during World War II. And they were on the ground for many efforts during the Civil Rights Movement — including the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the March on Washington.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We tend to pay a lot of attention to these big historic moments, but they only were possible after decades of networking and organizing by the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The people behind the simple act of railroad dining changed California, and the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>How railroads changed what and how we eat\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Along the California Zephyr’s route through the outskirts of Sacramento, intricate irrigation systems and crops in perfect rows reveal the railroad’s impact on agriculture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Archivist Benjamin Jenkins has written about the railroad’s impact on what we eat in his book, \u003cem>Octopus’s Garden: How Railroads and Citrus Transformed Southern California\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The first entire railroad car full of oranges left Los Angeles for the Midwest in 1877,” Jenkins told KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those oranges traveled by a refrigerator car, packed with ice. “It had to be re-iced 10 times, going across the desert and the Badlands to make sure that the fruit didn’t spoil,” he explained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It took California’s produce industry about a decade after that to take off. “But once it starts, it really never looks back,” Jenkins said, “So the explosion of new people, new crops as a result of the railroad bringing them in, and then shipping the goods out, is just utterly transformative for California.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Railroads built “spur lines” off the main lines to access huge parts of the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Wherever the railroad goes, land values start to increase,” Jenkins said. “And so they are able to sell land at a premium.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jenkins explained that in many states, the government had given the railroads loans, and gifted them enormous tracts of land. The idea was that after the tracks were built, the railroads could sell off much of that land at a profit to farmers, who’d build packing houses right on the railroad tracks. There were fewer of these kinds of land grants in California, but the railroad companies still got rights of way — sometimes over Native People’s reservations — and became huge landowners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Communities tried to entice railroads to come their way. Entire “citrus cities” began forming in the late 1800s along the railroads, especially in Southern California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12019265\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM_40274_p-2_duo.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12019265\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM_40274_p-2_duo.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"789\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM_40274_p-2_duo.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM_40274_p-2_duo-800x316.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM_40274_p-2_duo-1020x402.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM_40274_p-2_duo-160x63.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM_40274_p-2_duo-1536x606.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM_40274_p-2_duo-1920x757.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(right): Two men loading boxes of chopped spinach into PFE mechanical reefer. (left): The Preco mechanical car icer was designed to keep produce fresh on cross-country journeys. \u003ccite>(Preco/California State Railroad Museum)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Railroads shipped out more than just produce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Full color advertising starts to appear in the late 19th and early 20th centuries selling a packaged California lifestyle.” The Southern Pacific Railroad launched \u003cem>Sunset Magazine\u003c/em> as a part of this campaign to draw people out west.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wooden packing crates got loaded onto trains, sporting labels with illustrations of almost comically-perfect produce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All of these images show a perpetually sunny Golden State, the fruits of paradise being grown underneath these purple snow-capped mountains,” said Jenkins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The railroad even circulated California postcards, advertising the state as what Jenkins called a “new Eden,” an image that would endure — well beyond the heyday of train travel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was produced as part of California Foodways with support from the Food and Environment Reporting Network, and California Humanities, a nonprofit partner of National Endowment for the Humanities. Big thanks also go to the African American Museum and Library at Oakland, the library and archives at the California State Railroad Museum, and Rachel Reinhard.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "California's railroad tracks run throughout the state's history — impacting what and how we eat and even shaping the fight for racial justice.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>For her series \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/californiafoodways\">California Foodways\u003c/a>, Lisa Morehouse is reporting a story about food and farming from each of California’s 58 counties.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lot of kids growing up in California learn about the transcontinental railroad in the fourth grade, and the mostly Chinese laborers who laid the track eastward from Sacramento: leveling, drilling, and tunneling through the Sierra Nevada to meet the tracks that were being built east to west. The so-called “Big Four” railroad tycoons behind this western construction — the Central Pacific Railroad — are also well-known. But some of this history can get overlooked, like how the railroad — and its connection to food — shaped much of California’s story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of the route of Amtrak’s California Zephyr line parallels that of the first transcontinental railroad. One of the most beautiful train routes in the United States, Zephyr’s California path alone is stunning. Leaving Emeryville, near Oakland, it hugs the Bay before passing under the Carquinez Bridge and heading into the Delta, with its islands and snaking waterways. After stopping in Sacramento it climbs through California’s foothills, then into the Sierra Nevada.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some people ride the California Zephyr just to get from point A to point B. Others, like passenger Jamie Thomas, fly to the Zephyr’s starting point in Chicago just to ride it home to the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I always took trains with my dad,” Thomas said. “My fondest memories are sitting with him, chatting or getting dinner together. It was a very good place to connect with people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Connecting with strangers, even. The dining car — where Thomas was seated next to fellow Bay Area resident Shreya Jalan — practices “community seating.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The number of stories we get to hear and exchange, I think it’s really beautiful,” said Jalan, who didn’t know Thomas before the trip.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On shorter routes, a lot of trains have cafe cars, with drinks, snacks and pre-packaged food. But many of the longer Amtrak routes have dining cars like this one, with a full kitchen taking up the whole lower level of this train car. White table cloths and flower vases offset the plastic plates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12018787\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM-Roster-Cochiti-Dining_2024-03-27_A7R5393_HighRes.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12018787\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM-Roster-Cochiti-Dining_2024-03-27_A7R5393_HighRes.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM-Roster-Cochiti-Dining_2024-03-27_A7R5393_HighRes.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM-Roster-Cochiti-Dining_2024-03-27_A7R5393_HighRes-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM-Roster-Cochiti-Dining_2024-03-27_A7R5393_HighRes-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM-Roster-Cochiti-Dining_2024-03-27_A7R5393_HighRes-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM-Roster-Cochiti-Dining_2024-03-27_A7R5393_HighRes-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM-Roster-Cochiti-Dining_2024-03-27_A7R5393_HighRes-1920x1281.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Place settings in a dining car on display at the California State Railroad Museum. \u003ccite>(Kelly B. Huston/California State Railroad Museum)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Trains would go on to make the Golden State a farming powerhouse. Track-side restaurants and dining cars were precursors to chain restaurants and luxury travel dining. But innovation went hand in hand with exploitation of land and workers, whose resistance against discrimination led to breakthroughs in labor and civil rights. As author and archivist Benjamin Jenkins put it, “The railroad really revolutionizes just about every part of California’s politics, society and economy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Laying the tracks\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>By the time the Central Pacific was completed in 1869, trains with dining cars were already running out of Chicago. It would take California a while to catch up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the Big Four had big plans. They bought another railroad line, a tiny one called the Southern Pacific, and expanded it dramatically from the Bay Area, down to Los Angeles over hundreds of miles all the way out to Louisiana.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the early days of the Southern Pacific, the Big Four had a near-monopoly in California. Riding the train was prohibitively expensive, but when a competing company — the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway — later reached Los Angeles, it caused a rate war. Tickets from Chicago to LA dropped from $125 to $1. Los Angeles went from cowtown to boom town.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back then, the train offered few amenities, and people packed their own food to avoid terrible roadhouse meals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Most of the people would make fried chicken and get on the train. They’d trade some of that fried chicken for pillows and stuff,” said Lawrence Dale, who worked for BNSF Railroad for more than forty-two years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Standing at an exhibit at the Western American Railroad Museum in Barstow, Dale explained that, the further the trains went, the less practical it was for passengers to bring all of their own food on a trip. And when there’s a business vacuum, someone will try to fill it. Enter Fred Harvey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12018770\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18350.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12018770\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18350.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1232\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18350.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18350-800x493.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18350-1020x628.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18350-160x99.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18350-1536x946.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18350-1920x1183.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fred Harvey manager Victor Patrosso with a group of 20 Harvey Girls in evening uniform, standing by El Tovar Hotel in 1926. \u003ccite>(National Park Service)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The museum takes up a section of what was once Barstow’s Harvey House, a restaurant designed for train passengers, right off the railroad tracks. It’s beautiful — for a building that’s more than 110 years old — with columns, decorative brick arches, and shaded walkways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In partnership with the Santa Fe railroad, Fred Harvey built Harvey Houses every 100 miles. They served fancy cheeses, oysters, fruit, sirloin, and generous slices of pie. Another big attraction: waitresses known as “Harvey Girls.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harvey Girls were young, single, and almost always white.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All I can tell you about Harvey Girls is they were young women out of the Midwest,” said Dale. “They were brought in here by Fred Harvey, and weren’t allowed to date. They weren’t allowed to do nothing except serve the people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12018769\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18207.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12018769\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18207.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1190\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18207.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18207-800x476.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18207-1020x607.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18207-160x95.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18207-1536x914.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/18207-1920x1142.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The ‘Fred Harvey Bunch,’ or 13 Fred Harvey employees by Bright Angel Hotel in 1915. \u003ccite>(T.L. Brown/National Park Service)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Of course, plenty of Harvey Girls did marry, and relocate to farms and ranches across the West. While they were Harvey Girls, they worked long hours, lived in dorms under the watchful eyes of house mothers, and were expected to meet strict standards of decorum and image, down to their uniform.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>White gloves, white full cover apron with a black garment underneath. Bow in the back of the hair,” Dale said, pointing to a display. “They were all supposed to be dressed alike.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For passengers, eating at a Harvey House was an elevated dining experience, but it was more efficient than leisurely. Trains called in passengers’ orders ahead by telegraph.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Say a west-bound train pulled into Needles, Calif. The conductor would come through the cars, taking orders, and contact the next Harvey House down the line in Barstow, letting staff know how many people planned to eat, and what time they’d arrive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12019268\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/11001768.TIF_duo-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12019268\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/11001768.TIF_duo-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"842\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/11001768.TIF_duo-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/11001768.TIF_duo-800x263.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/11001768.TIF_duo-1020x335.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/11001768.TIF_duo-160x53.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/11001768.TIF_duo-1536x505.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/11001768.TIF_duo-2048x673.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/11001768.TIF_duo-1920x631.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(right): Interior view of the Harvey House Hotel between 1909-1910 in Barstow, Calif. The decor includes ceiling lamps, a clock, a potted palm, deco stencils and wooden chairs. (left): View of the Harvey House Hotel from the railroad tracks. The building, also called Casa del Desierto, was designed by Francis Wilson, and includes arcades, balconies, and corbeled brick. \u003ccite>(G. M. Hamilton/Denver Public Library Special Collections)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Passengers disembarked, sat in the well-appointed dining room, and had a limited time to eat, before the train left the station.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harvey Houses were a precursor to fast food and chain restaurants, and they helped change the intent of train travel from something that was just utilitarian, to an experience, according to Ty Smith, director of the California State Railroad Museum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Dining was at the heart of the transition from conveyance to experience,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sacramento — a city rich in railroad history — is the perfect home for this museum, where kids wearing conductor’s hats and blowing train whistles mingle with adult rail buffs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re two blocks from mile marker zero, where the Central Pacific Railroad started building from west to east,” Smith said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even earlier, during the Gold Rush, trains transported picks and shovels and other goods from the city into the foothills to the miners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Foodways are embedded throughout the museum, too. Smith points out a display that holds artifacts of a Chinese workers camp: a ginger jar, a tea cup, a rice bowl, a glazed stoneware jar that stored vinegars and sauces.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even though Chinese workers made up 90% of the labor force for the Central Pacific Railroad, they were in segregated camps, according to Smith.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Chinese railroad workers didn’t get the same pay or food allowances that their Irish and other counterparts did,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even this small display illustrates the racism baked into the building of the railroads: the chasm between people who owned the railroads and the people who worked on them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The museum also has a sleeper car on a rocker, to simulate the feeling of being on a train. It’s set up to show how the car would look in both day and evening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“During the day, the upper berths would be folded up. The lower berths serve as comfy seats,” said Smith.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At night, porters would unfold the upper berths and convert the seats to create beds. Smith pointed to a little button passengers could push to call a porter, if they wanted anything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next to the sleeper car is a 1937 Cochiti dining car, which ran on Santa Fe’s Super Chief train between Chicago and Los Angeles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That gives us a chance to talk about what it was like to dine on a train during the golden era of rail travel,” Smith said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the narrow galley kitchen, it’s hard to imagine all the people needed to work here, to prepare three gourmet meals a day for 50 people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12018775\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1626px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1328.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12018775\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1328.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1626\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1328.jpg 1626w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1328-800x984.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1328-1020x1255.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1328-160x197.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1328-1249x1536.jpg 1249w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1626px) 100vw, 1626px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Railroad chef in narrow kitchen cutting turkey, undated. \u003ccite>(African American Museum and Library at Oakland)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The chef, people doing prep, \u003cem>mise-en-place\u003c/em>,” Smith enumerated. “You’d have to find a cadence to work within the space. A lot of gleaming stainless steel-like surfaces: knives and graters and colanders and big soup pots.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of this was perfectly organized for a tiny space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Called to the dining room by chimes, passengers would sit among abundant flower arrangements and intricate Art Deco metalwork. They ate at tables with tablecloths and off of china with patterns that reflected the route: poppies in California, and animal images inspired by Native American art in the Southwest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Docent Allen Blum shared a menu for the Super Chief, including “ripe California colossal olives, grapefruit, orange and raisin fruit, swordfish steak, and poached salmon.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Menus, like this California-influenced one, often reflected cuisines and ingredients along the route.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Blum said the Super Chief carried politicians and stars from Walt Disney and Jack Benny to Marilyn Monroe, in later years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This was definitely considered first class,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Passengers on dining cars came to expect attentive service — one waiter per two tables. Smith explained that the businessman best known for railroad dining cars was George Pullman. He built and owned luxury train cars to appeal to passengers who wanted to travel in style, and he leased his cars to the railroads.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>George Pullman was a master at branding, Smith added “Pullman is creating the romance of train travel. To ride on a Pullman car means something, and this feeds his ability to lease these cars to the railroads.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But George Pullman built this image and his business on the backs of the Black service workers he hired.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a luxurious experience, but a completely racialized experience,” said Susan Anderson, history curator at the California African American Museum. “From the appointment of the sleeping area to the dining car to the cuisine and the meals, the way that you were waited on, all of that was just premium. And all of it, on the Pullman cars, was provided by Black labor.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Engines of resistance\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>White men held positions like engineer and conductor. The servant-type jobs were the ones that were reserved for Black people on the trains: porter, steward, cook, maid and waiter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“George Pullman and the Pullman Company were explicit about this,” Anderson said. “They wanted white people to be waited on by Black people, because in our history, racism conflated being a slave or being a servant with being Black.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12018772\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1314.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12018772\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1314.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1620\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1314.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1314-800x648.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1314-1020x826.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1314-160x130.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1314-1536x1244.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1314-1920x1555.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Group photograph of the ‘Owl’ Dining Car Crew (back row, left-right): Bert Hackett, unidentified, unidentified, Henry Earl (front row, left-right): Joe C. Brown, Arthur Johnson, unidentified, steward, Charles Williams, in 1927. \u003ccite>(African American Museum and Library at Oakland)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Porters — who did everything from turning down beds, carrying luggage, and serving food — were usually not addressed by their own names. They were called “George,” after George Pullman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Susan Anderson said the subjugation of Black workers on trains was a direct reflection of the way the U.S. economy was organized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So, that’s U.S. history. But Black history is that they took these positions and they made the most out of them, and they used them to the advantage of their own people and their own families.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many African Americans saw railroad jobs as opportunities to broaden their horizons, bring money back home or leave Southern states altogether and move their families elsewhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People who worked for the railroad got a lot of respect in the community,” said Anderson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her own family has a connection to railroad history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One of my great-grandfathers — my mother’s father’s father — was a chef on the railroad,” she explained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His name was Edward Wilcox, and his family was originally from Louisiana.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They came to West Oakland in the late 19th century. They actually established a church in West Oakland. It’s still there: Bethlehem Lutheran Church. And that enclave was partly like a labor reserve for the Southern Pacific Railroad,” said Anderson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By 1926, the Pullman Company was the largest single employer of African American workers in the country, with over 10,000 porters and 200 maids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anderson explained, a lot of intellectuals ended up working as porters or waiters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12018774\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1322.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12018774\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1322.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1138\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1322.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1322-800x455.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1322-1020x580.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1322-160x91.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1322-1536x874.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1322-1920x1092.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Four Pullman porters stand on a sidewalk. On the reverse is written ‘CL Jones, Richardson, J. Simms.’ \u003ccite>(African American Museum and Library at Oakland)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“There were college men who had no other employment opportunities in a racist economy,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These railroad men left a big legacy in American civic and cultural life. In his autobiography, Malcolm X wrote about selling sandwiches on trains. Renowned photographer Gordon Parks waited tables in dining cars. Thurgood Marshall, Willie Brown, Tom Bradley and Dionne Warwick all had fathers who were porters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Railroad workers networked with each other across the country, sharing copies of Black-owned newspapers and other literature, including \u003cem>The Messenger\u003c/em>, founded by influential civil rights activist and labor organizer A. Phillip Randolph.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And they began the effort to organize so that they could demand better wages, better working conditions for themselves, better hours,” Anderson said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an oral history archived at the African American Museum & Library at Oakland, former Oakland-based Pullman porter Cottrell Laurence (C.L.) Dellums explained: “There was no limit on the number of hours. The company unilaterally set up the operation of the runs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12018773\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1320.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12018773 size-medium\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1320-800x1192.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"1192\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1320-800x1192.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1320-1020x1520.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1320-160x238.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1320-1031x1536.jpg 1031w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/MS189_1320.jpg 1342w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A portrait of Oakland’s civil rights and labor activist hero C.L. Dellums. \u003ccite>(African American Museum and Library at Oakland)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Dellums, whose nephew Ron Dellums was the late California congressman and former Oakland mayor, started working for the Pullman company in 1924. He said the salary at the time was $60 a month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And they provided what we said was just enough rest between trips for the porter to be able to make one more trip,” C.L. Dellums said, in the audio recording. Workloads for the porters varied from 300 to over 400 hours a month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Anybody could take the porter’s job. Not only any kind of Pullman official — from the lowest to the highest — could take his job. Anybody traveling as a passenger, even though it might be the first trip they’ve ever been on a train, they could write him up and get him fired.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kept out of the American Railway Union, African Americans founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters & Maids in 1925, and C.L. Dellums began signing up workers for the union, despite the risks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I never heard of a war that there weren’t battles. And never, never heard of a battle without casualties … But I will be heard from. And so I did. And sure enough, of course, they did discharge me,” Dellums said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He eventually became one of the union’s vice presidents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It took years, but the Brotherhood became the first Black union to be recognized by the American Federation of Labor. In 1937, they got a contract with Pullman, the first in history between a Black union and a large U.S. Company. They established an eight-hour work day, regulated work schedules, and increased pay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Brotherhood influenced much more than service work on railroads. They helped push through the desegregation of the defense industry during World War II. And they were on the ground for many efforts during the Civil Rights Movement — including the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the March on Washington.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We tend to pay a lot of attention to these big historic moments, but they only were possible after decades of networking and organizing by the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The people behind the simple act of railroad dining changed California, and the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>How railroads changed what and how we eat\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Along the California Zephyr’s route through the outskirts of Sacramento, intricate irrigation systems and crops in perfect rows reveal the railroad’s impact on agriculture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Archivist Benjamin Jenkins has written about the railroad’s impact on what we eat in his book, \u003cem>Octopus’s Garden: How Railroads and Citrus Transformed Southern California\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The first entire railroad car full of oranges left Los Angeles for the Midwest in 1877,” Jenkins told KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those oranges traveled by a refrigerator car, packed with ice. “It had to be re-iced 10 times, going across the desert and the Badlands to make sure that the fruit didn’t spoil,” he explained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It took California’s produce industry about a decade after that to take off. “But once it starts, it really never looks back,” Jenkins said, “So the explosion of new people, new crops as a result of the railroad bringing them in, and then shipping the goods out, is just utterly transformative for California.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Railroads built “spur lines” off the main lines to access huge parts of the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Wherever the railroad goes, land values start to increase,” Jenkins said. “And so they are able to sell land at a premium.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jenkins explained that in many states, the government had given the railroads loans, and gifted them enormous tracts of land. The idea was that after the tracks were built, the railroads could sell off much of that land at a profit to farmers, who’d build packing houses right on the railroad tracks. There were fewer of these kinds of land grants in California, but the railroad companies still got rights of way — sometimes over Native People’s reservations — and became huge landowners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Communities tried to entice railroads to come their way. Entire “citrus cities” began forming in the late 1800s along the railroads, especially in Southern California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12019265\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM_40274_p-2_duo.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12019265\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM_40274_p-2_duo.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"789\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM_40274_p-2_duo.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM_40274_p-2_duo-800x316.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM_40274_p-2_duo-1020x402.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM_40274_p-2_duo-160x63.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM_40274_p-2_duo-1536x606.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/CSRM_40274_p-2_duo-1920x757.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(right): Two men loading boxes of chopped spinach into PFE mechanical reefer. (left): The Preco mechanical car icer was designed to keep produce fresh on cross-country journeys. \u003ccite>(Preco/California State Railroad Museum)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Railroads shipped out more than just produce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Full color advertising starts to appear in the late 19th and early 20th centuries selling a packaged California lifestyle.” The Southern Pacific Railroad launched \u003cem>Sunset Magazine\u003c/em> as a part of this campaign to draw people out west.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wooden packing crates got loaded onto trains, sporting labels with illustrations of almost comically-perfect produce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All of these images show a perpetually sunny Golden State, the fruits of paradise being grown underneath these purple snow-capped mountains,” said Jenkins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The railroad even circulated California postcards, advertising the state as what Jenkins called a “new Eden,” an image that would endure — well beyond the heyday of train travel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was produced as part of California Foodways with support from the Food and Environment Reporting Network, and California Humanities, a nonprofit partner of National Endowment for the Humanities. Big thanks also go to the African American Museum and Library at Oakland, the library and archives at the California State Railroad Museum, and Rachel Reinhard.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "wired-for-connection-what-science-tells-us-about-why-we-should-be-hopeful-even-in-hard-times",
"title": "‘Wired for Connection’: The Science of Kindness, and Why Hope Outweighs Cynicism",
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"headTitle": "‘Wired for Connection’: The Science of Kindness, and Why Hope Outweighs Cynicism | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>So many people are jumping in to help \u003ca href=\"https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/kcrw-features/topanga-palisades-fire\">neighbors\u003c/a>, friends, even \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13970214/supply-drives-mutual-aid-los-angeles-eaton-palisades-wildfires\">strangers\u003c/a> affected by the L.A. fires. Volunteering, donating, hosting people who’ve evacuated, \u003ca href=\"https://laist.com/news/food/la-restaurants-offering-free-meals-for-evacuees-and-first-responders\">providing meals\u003c/a> and organizing drives to collect toiletries and clothes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Turns out, science shows we humans are actually wired for this kind of kindness, connection and empathy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s what \u003ca href=\"https://www.jamil-zaki.com/\">Dr. Jamil Zaki\u003c/a> has discovered in the \u003ca href=\"https://www.ssnl.stanford.edu/\">Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab\u003c/a>. He’s a professor of psychology and the author of \u003ca href=\"https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jamil-zaki/hope-for-cynics/9781538743065/?lens=grand-central-publishing\">\u003cem>Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. He shared some data-driven reasons why we shouldn’t be cynical, even in really hard times. Zaki spoke about his research with The California Report Magazine’s host, Sasha Khokha.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Below are excerpts from their conversation, edited for brevity and clarity. For the full interview on The California Report Magazine, listen to the audio at the top of this story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003cem>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nSasha Khokha: What does the incredible outpouring of support for fire survivors show us about human kindness and human goodness?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jamil Zaki:\u003c/strong> The last week in California has just been unthinkably tragic and difficult. And I don’t think it takes away anything from the suffering that many people are experiencing to also shine a light on the beauty that people are producing. It turns out that this is a perennial feature of disasters. Although they’re horrible in so many ways, they can also bring out people’s best. There is a lot of evidence throughout history and from the scientific literature that when people face disaster or trauma, oftentimes they respond not by falling apart but by coming together and by helping one another, stepping across lines of difference that sometimes divide them and trying to be there to support each other during the hardest times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When people are at their most needy, when we’re all going through something together, there’s an urgent sense of togetherness. There’s an urgent sense that we all need to be there for each other. And so I think that’s what elevates these wonderful human tendencies during our darkest times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why can’t people show up for each other like this all the time, not just during disasters?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We already are. Most people I’ve surveyed believed that the pandemic caused a decrease in human kindness. But the evidence goes the other way, that actually, in 2020, compared to the years before, people volunteered more, they donated more to charity, and they helped strangers more. But that elevated level of kindness didn’t stop after lockdown ended. Global kindness has remained higher than it did the decade or the years before the pandemic occurred.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is a sense that our world is more chaotic than it was several years ago. But in that adversity that we’re all facing collectively, I think there has been an elevated sense of social responsibility. I know that we don’t hear about this on the news all the time, but maybe we should hear about it more because it’s been there the whole time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTLkSD1Jw5E\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What does the science tell us about human goodness?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The science is pretty clear that there is a lot of goodness in human beings. In some ways we are wired for connection with each other, to help each other, to be there for one another. That’s frankly what makes our species who we are.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People tend to act kindly when they’re not thinking about it. So if you ask people to make decisions very quickly, they tend to make kinder decisions than if they spend a long time deliberating. Look at stories from the \u003ca href=\"https://www.carnegiehero.org/\">Carnegie Heroes Project\u003c/a>, people who have risked their lives to save strangers. If you look at interviews with them, which have been coded by scientists, they often say, “I didn’t think about it. I just ran into the burning building. I wasn’t trying to calculate whether this would be good for my reputation or whether, you know, I would become a hero. I just did it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another level of analysis comes from our biology. In my lab, we found that when people donate to charity or give money to somebody in need, the same parts of their brain are active as when they eat chocolate, for instance, or experience something else pleasurable. There is a lot about us that seems to lead us naturally towards acts of kindness, helping and togetherness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the most powerful things about our species is that our response to suffering is to come together because that’s what we’re good at. If you think about us as animals, we’re not that impressive. Just medium-sized mammals. We can’t run that fast or swim that well. We certainly can’t fly. Our super skill is togetherness. That’s what has allowed us to hunt wooly mammoths and build suspension bridges and write arias. All of this comes from our ability to work together. And we do that most during difficult times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People are struggling all around us all the time, and we are facing collective struggle all the time. So one thing to cultivate is what Viktor Frankl calls “tragic optimism.” Not shying away from, but looking directly into the pain that we are all going through at different times. Using that acknowledgment of our suffering as a way to keep us connected, to keep us showing up for one another the way that we do during awful disasters like this one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12022767\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12022767\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-1-scaled.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1709\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-1-scaled.jpeg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-1-800x534.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-1-1020x681.jpeg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-1-160x107.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-1-1536x1025.jpeg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-1-2048x1367.jpeg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-1-1920x1282.jpeg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stanford neuroscientist Dr. Jamil Zaki says he’s a ‘recovering cynic’ himself, even though he’s spent decades studying optimism and hope. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Jamil Zaki)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>We have this trope that it’s naive — or even privileged — to be optimistic or to be hopeful. That it’s cooler to be a cynic.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you ask people who would be smarter, a cynic or a non-cynic, about 70% of people think that cynics would outperform non-cynics on cognitive tests, for instance. But the opposite is true. People who trust others more, who have more faith in people, tend to actually do better on those tests than cynical people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We also find in research that cynicism is not radical at all. Cynics actually are less likely to vote, less likely to take part in social movements, and in fact, they’re more likely to embrace authoritarian leaders. Because if you don’t trust the people around you; if you think that people are generally awful, what do you need? You need somebody to protect you from your fellow citizens. So authoritarianism actually benefits from a cynical population. Totalitarians and propagandists have been using cynicism to pit people against each other for decades if not centuries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you want things to stay the same, one of the best things that you can do is encourage people to believe that nothing can get better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Of course, a lot of people are feeling cynical about the divisions in this country. But your research shows we may not be as politically divided as we might think.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Absolutely. But first, let’s stipulate we\u003cem> are\u003c/em> more divided than we were in the past. And something that’s really troubling about American division now is that it’s become personal. We’ve disagreed for decades about everything you can imagine. But now, people imagine that somebody they disagree with is stupid and evil, mean-spirited and violent. We hate the people we disagree with much more than we did before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But what we imagine about the “other side” is wrong in basically every way that scientists can measure. For instance, Democrats think that a quarter of Republicans make more than $250,000 a year. The real number is 2%. We think that the average person we disagree with is much more extreme than they really are. Is twice as hateful, twice as anti-democratic and four times as violent as they really are. We also underestimate the amount of common ground that we have, even on specific issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m not saying that America is a harmonious nation or that we could easily snap into some type of kumbaya situation on a national level. But I do think that there’s much more that we share than we realize.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Your lab actually did a very cool project where you had about 100 Americans talk with each other across divides over Zoom.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We brought these folks together to talk about gun control, abortion and climate change. We prepared them and made sure that they really disagreed on all three issues specifically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We asked them before the conversations, “How do you think this is going to go?” And on a 1 to 100 scale, where 1 is absolutely the worst conversation you could have and 100 is a delightful conversation. In general, people [predicted] somewhere between neutral and awful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-12022790\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-book-cover-160x242.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"160\" height=\"242\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-book-cover-160x242.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-book-cover-800x1208.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-book-cover-1020x1540.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-book-cover-1017x1536.jpg 1017w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-book-cover-1356x2048.jpg 1356w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-book-cover-scaled.jpg 1696w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 160px) 100vw, 160px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the conversations, we asked them [to rate the conversation] again. The most common response we got was a 100 out of 100. They were shocked at how positive these conversations were, and how reasonable the person they disagreed with was. That’s not to say that they agreed. I want to be really clear that empathy and connection is not the same as condoning what other people feel or agreeing with them. But these people found that they could at least respect each other’s humanity and have productive dialogue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Afterwards, they didn’t just feel better about the person that they talked with. They felt less prejudiced against outsiders in general. So Democrats felt better about Republicans. Republicans felt better about Democrats. And those effects lasted three months after the conversation. So we rarely have chances for dialogue like this, but when they occur, they are much better than we expect them to be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In general, people don’t trust their fellow citizens, but they do trust the people who they see: their neighbors, their grocer, their bus driver. Generally speaking, the closer you get to humanity, the better you feel about it. And that, to me, is a really powerful data point.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You admit that you actually are kind of a recovering cynic yourself! \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the last 20 years, I’ve studied empathy, kindness and connection. So people often assume that I must just go around blissed out by human goodness all the time. I really wanted to clarify right away in writing this book that that’s not where I’m coming from. I’m not some person who’s aspirational in terms of my inner life, and I’m going to teach you to be like me. I’m right there with you if you’re feeling cynicism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What can people do on an everyday basis to fight cynicism? Tell us about your three-step plan.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Step one is to fact check our cynical feelings. Oftentimes, I’ll meet somebody and I’ll just kind of not trust them for no reason. It’s a pretty bold claim to say they’re a bad person, though you know nothing about them. What \u003cem>evidence\u003c/em> do you have to draw this conclusion? Are you sure that this is a defensible position? Oftentimes, for me, at least, the answer is absolutely not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Step two is to collect more data. I call this taking leaps of faith on people. Give people chances to show you who they are, just taking little chances on people and also paying attention to what they give back. One version of this is striking up conversations with strangers. The data are pretty clear. If you actually try to talk with strangers, people are way friendlier than we think they’ll be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Step three is to monitor what we’re sharing. If we’ve had eight positive interactions during a day and then one person was sort of a jerk to us, who are we going to talk about later on? For me, it’s that jerk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[A couple years ago] I was driving my kids to school and somebody cut me off in traffic. I started saying all sorts of things about them. And my daughter said, “Dad, you don’t talk about all the people who \u003cem>didn’t \u003c/em>cut you off.” Ever since then, [my family has] been trying something called positive gossip. We all gather one example of human goodness from that day and share it in the evening. When you know that you’re going to share something, you start to look for it more. Positive gossip has sort of popped up an antenna where I now look for more instances of people being friendly or kind. And it turns out that once you’re looking for that, they’re not at all hard to find.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>So many people are jumping in to help \u003ca href=\"https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/kcrw-features/topanga-palisades-fire\">neighbors\u003c/a>, friends, even \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13970214/supply-drives-mutual-aid-los-angeles-eaton-palisades-wildfires\">strangers\u003c/a> affected by the L.A. fires. Volunteering, donating, hosting people who’ve evacuated, \u003ca href=\"https://laist.com/news/food/la-restaurants-offering-free-meals-for-evacuees-and-first-responders\">providing meals\u003c/a> and organizing drives to collect toiletries and clothes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Turns out, science shows we humans are actually wired for this kind of kindness, connection and empathy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s what \u003ca href=\"https://www.jamil-zaki.com/\">Dr. Jamil Zaki\u003c/a> has discovered in the \u003ca href=\"https://www.ssnl.stanford.edu/\">Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab\u003c/a>. He’s a professor of psychology and the author of \u003ca href=\"https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jamil-zaki/hope-for-cynics/9781538743065/?lens=grand-central-publishing\">\u003cem>Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. He shared some data-driven reasons why we shouldn’t be cynical, even in really hard times. Zaki spoke about his research with The California Report Magazine’s host, Sasha Khokha.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Below are excerpts from their conversation, edited for brevity and clarity. For the full interview on The California Report Magazine, listen to the audio at the top of this story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nSasha Khokha: What does the incredible outpouring of support for fire survivors show us about human kindness and human goodness?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jamil Zaki:\u003c/strong> The last week in California has just been unthinkably tragic and difficult. And I don’t think it takes away anything from the suffering that many people are experiencing to also shine a light on the beauty that people are producing. It turns out that this is a perennial feature of disasters. Although they’re horrible in so many ways, they can also bring out people’s best. There is a lot of evidence throughout history and from the scientific literature that when people face disaster or trauma, oftentimes they respond not by falling apart but by coming together and by helping one another, stepping across lines of difference that sometimes divide them and trying to be there to support each other during the hardest times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When people are at their most needy, when we’re all going through something together, there’s an urgent sense of togetherness. There’s an urgent sense that we all need to be there for each other. And so I think that’s what elevates these wonderful human tendencies during our darkest times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why can’t people show up for each other like this all the time, not just during disasters?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We already are. Most people I’ve surveyed believed that the pandemic caused a decrease in human kindness. But the evidence goes the other way, that actually, in 2020, compared to the years before, people volunteered more, they donated more to charity, and they helped strangers more. But that elevated level of kindness didn’t stop after lockdown ended. Global kindness has remained higher than it did the decade or the years before the pandemic occurred.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is a sense that our world is more chaotic than it was several years ago. But in that adversity that we’re all facing collectively, I think there has been an elevated sense of social responsibility. I know that we don’t hear about this on the news all the time, but maybe we should hear about it more because it’s been there the whole time.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/gTLkSD1Jw5E'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/gTLkSD1Jw5E'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What does the science tell us about human goodness?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The science is pretty clear that there is a lot of goodness in human beings. In some ways we are wired for connection with each other, to help each other, to be there for one another. That’s frankly what makes our species who we are.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People tend to act kindly when they’re not thinking about it. So if you ask people to make decisions very quickly, they tend to make kinder decisions than if they spend a long time deliberating. Look at stories from the \u003ca href=\"https://www.carnegiehero.org/\">Carnegie Heroes Project\u003c/a>, people who have risked their lives to save strangers. If you look at interviews with them, which have been coded by scientists, they often say, “I didn’t think about it. I just ran into the burning building. I wasn’t trying to calculate whether this would be good for my reputation or whether, you know, I would become a hero. I just did it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another level of analysis comes from our biology. In my lab, we found that when people donate to charity or give money to somebody in need, the same parts of their brain are active as when they eat chocolate, for instance, or experience something else pleasurable. There is a lot about us that seems to lead us naturally towards acts of kindness, helping and togetherness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the most powerful things about our species is that our response to suffering is to come together because that’s what we’re good at. If you think about us as animals, we’re not that impressive. Just medium-sized mammals. We can’t run that fast or swim that well. We certainly can’t fly. Our super skill is togetherness. That’s what has allowed us to hunt wooly mammoths and build suspension bridges and write arias. All of this comes from our ability to work together. And we do that most during difficult times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People are struggling all around us all the time, and we are facing collective struggle all the time. So one thing to cultivate is what Viktor Frankl calls “tragic optimism.” Not shying away from, but looking directly into the pain that we are all going through at different times. Using that acknowledgment of our suffering as a way to keep us connected, to keep us showing up for one another the way that we do during awful disasters like this one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12022767\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12022767\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-1-scaled.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1709\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-1-scaled.jpeg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-1-800x534.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-1-1020x681.jpeg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-1-160x107.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-1-1536x1025.jpeg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-1-2048x1367.jpeg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-1-1920x1282.jpeg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stanford neuroscientist Dr. Jamil Zaki says he’s a ‘recovering cynic’ himself, even though he’s spent decades studying optimism and hope. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Jamil Zaki)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>We have this trope that it’s naive — or even privileged — to be optimistic or to be hopeful. That it’s cooler to be a cynic.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you ask people who would be smarter, a cynic or a non-cynic, about 70% of people think that cynics would outperform non-cynics on cognitive tests, for instance. But the opposite is true. People who trust others more, who have more faith in people, tend to actually do better on those tests than cynical people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We also find in research that cynicism is not radical at all. Cynics actually are less likely to vote, less likely to take part in social movements, and in fact, they’re more likely to embrace authoritarian leaders. Because if you don’t trust the people around you; if you think that people are generally awful, what do you need? You need somebody to protect you from your fellow citizens. So authoritarianism actually benefits from a cynical population. Totalitarians and propagandists have been using cynicism to pit people against each other for decades if not centuries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you want things to stay the same, one of the best things that you can do is encourage people to believe that nothing can get better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Of course, a lot of people are feeling cynical about the divisions in this country. But your research shows we may not be as politically divided as we might think.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Absolutely. But first, let’s stipulate we\u003cem> are\u003c/em> more divided than we were in the past. And something that’s really troubling about American division now is that it’s become personal. We’ve disagreed for decades about everything you can imagine. But now, people imagine that somebody they disagree with is stupid and evil, mean-spirited and violent. We hate the people we disagree with much more than we did before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But what we imagine about the “other side” is wrong in basically every way that scientists can measure. For instance, Democrats think that a quarter of Republicans make more than $250,000 a year. The real number is 2%. We think that the average person we disagree with is much more extreme than they really are. Is twice as hateful, twice as anti-democratic and four times as violent as they really are. We also underestimate the amount of common ground that we have, even on specific issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m not saying that America is a harmonious nation or that we could easily snap into some type of kumbaya situation on a national level. But I do think that there’s much more that we share than we realize.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Your lab actually did a very cool project where you had about 100 Americans talk with each other across divides over Zoom.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We brought these folks together to talk about gun control, abortion and climate change. We prepared them and made sure that they really disagreed on all three issues specifically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We asked them before the conversations, “How do you think this is going to go?” And on a 1 to 100 scale, where 1 is absolutely the worst conversation you could have and 100 is a delightful conversation. In general, people [predicted] somewhere between neutral and awful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-12022790\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-book-cover-160x242.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"160\" height=\"242\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-book-cover-160x242.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-book-cover-800x1208.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-book-cover-1020x1540.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-book-cover-1017x1536.jpg 1017w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-book-cover-1356x2048.jpg 1356w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Jamil-Zaki-book-cover-scaled.jpg 1696w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 160px) 100vw, 160px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the conversations, we asked them [to rate the conversation] again. The most common response we got was a 100 out of 100. They were shocked at how positive these conversations were, and how reasonable the person they disagreed with was. That’s not to say that they agreed. I want to be really clear that empathy and connection is not the same as condoning what other people feel or agreeing with them. But these people found that they could at least respect each other’s humanity and have productive dialogue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Afterwards, they didn’t just feel better about the person that they talked with. They felt less prejudiced against outsiders in general. So Democrats felt better about Republicans. Republicans felt better about Democrats. And those effects lasted three months after the conversation. So we rarely have chances for dialogue like this, but when they occur, they are much better than we expect them to be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In general, people don’t trust their fellow citizens, but they do trust the people who they see: their neighbors, their grocer, their bus driver. Generally speaking, the closer you get to humanity, the better you feel about it. And that, to me, is a really powerful data point.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You admit that you actually are kind of a recovering cynic yourself! \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the last 20 years, I’ve studied empathy, kindness and connection. So people often assume that I must just go around blissed out by human goodness all the time. I really wanted to clarify right away in writing this book that that’s not where I’m coming from. I’m not some person who’s aspirational in terms of my inner life, and I’m going to teach you to be like me. I’m right there with you if you’re feeling cynicism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What can people do on an everyday basis to fight cynicism? Tell us about your three-step plan.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Step one is to fact check our cynical feelings. Oftentimes, I’ll meet somebody and I’ll just kind of not trust them for no reason. It’s a pretty bold claim to say they’re a bad person, though you know nothing about them. What \u003cem>evidence\u003c/em> do you have to draw this conclusion? Are you sure that this is a defensible position? Oftentimes, for me, at least, the answer is absolutely not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Step two is to collect more data. I call this taking leaps of faith on people. Give people chances to show you who they are, just taking little chances on people and also paying attention to what they give back. One version of this is striking up conversations with strangers. The data are pretty clear. If you actually try to talk with strangers, people are way friendlier than we think they’ll be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Step three is to monitor what we’re sharing. If we’ve had eight positive interactions during a day and then one person was sort of a jerk to us, who are we going to talk about later on? For me, it’s that jerk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[A couple years ago] I was driving my kids to school and somebody cut me off in traffic. I started saying all sorts of things about them. And my daughter said, “Dad, you don’t talk about all the people who \u003cem>didn’t \u003c/em>cut you off.” Ever since then, [my family has] been trying something called positive gossip. We all gather one example of human goodness from that day and share it in the evening. When you know that you’re going to share something, you start to look for it more. Positive gossip has sort of popped up an antenna where I now look for more instances of people being friendly or kind. And it turns out that once you’re looking for that, they’re not at all hard to find.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is part of The California Report Magazine’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/resilience\">series about resilient Californians\u003c/a>, and what lessons they may have for the rest of us.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Luis Rodriguez grew up in South San Gabriel in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/los-angeles-county\">Los Angeles County\u003c/a> during the 1960s, in a largely Mexican immigrant neighborhood that he said embodies resilience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He joined a gang at 11, was using heroin by 12, and was kicked out of his home by 15. But amidst the violence, addiction and housing insecurity, Rodriguez found a lifeline in books, and eventually became a celebrated writer, activist and L.A.’s poet laureate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The American Library Association \u003ca href=\"https://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/decade2009\">listed\u003c/a> his 1993 memoir \u003cem>Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A.\u003c/em> as one of the top banned books in the country. The book detailed how police brutality helped fuel gang culture, addressed drug use, explored sexual themes and traced the revolutionary ideals of the Chicano movement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The memoir reflected Rodriguez’s drive to cultivate creative, empowering spaces — a vision he carried into his later work. In 2003, he founded \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiachucha.org/\">Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural\u003c/a> in Sylmar to create a space for arts, literacy and creative engagement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He joined \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/californiareportmagazine\">The California Report Magazine\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/sasha-khokha\">host Sasha Khokha\u003c/a> for a conversation about how reading and writing helped him survive, breaking cycles of trauma and why, in the wake of violent raids and enforcement \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12049326/as-ice-operations-expand-how-are-immigrant-allies-responding\">targeting L.A.’s immigrant communities\u003c/a>, creativity is key to resilience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12049570\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12049570\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/GettyImages-567417339-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/GettyImages-567417339-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/GettyImages-567417339-2000x1333.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/GettyImages-567417339-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/GettyImages-567417339-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/GettyImages-567417339-2048x1365.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Poet, author, activist Luis Rodriguez reads a poem from his book ‘Poems Across the Pavement,’ at ‘Alivio,’ an open mic night in the garage of Eric Contreras. \u003ccite>(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Below are excerpts from their conversation, edited for brevity and clarity. For the full interview, listen to the audio linked at the top of this story.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On growing up voiceless:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When I first went to school, I couldn’t speak English … I uttered some Spanish words in the classroom and the teacher slapped me across the face in front of the class. That impacts a six-year-old kid tremendously.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I had nowhere to go with it. I didn’t talk to anybody about it.[aside postID=news_12039743 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/Kid-Poems-Resilience_2--1020x659.jpg']It kept me voiceless for many, many years. I was a very shy — I would have to say a broken-down — kid. So self-contained, a very sensitive young man.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When we moved to South San Gabriel … it was one of the poorest neighborhoods in all of L.A. County. Dirt roads, no street lamps, little shacks surrounded by well-off white neighborhoods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We were at war not just with poverty, but with a community that was watching us. The sheriff’s deputies — like an army — were used against us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So that slap continued by other means: beaten by cops, harassed by teachers. And some of us joined a gang — I joined a gang at 11.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On living and dying for the neighborhood:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>I didn’t think I was gonna make it. I never thought about what I was going to be. When you joined the barrio, the gang — we didn’t call it a gang — some of us dedicated everything for it. And that meant that we were going to live and die and if we had to, we were gonna kill for the neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We were so tied into this web …. la vida loca [“the crazy life”]. It’s a web that holds you. But you’re not a fly in that web. You’re actually the spider. You’re putting yourself deeper and deeper in it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our sense was we were prepared to die if we had to. We were gonna die in a blaze of glory that, to us, was for the neighborhood, for the barrio.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On being kicked out and finding books:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>I was 15 years old when my parents threw me out. I was already on drugs by 12, getting arrested, stealing, never coming home. I don’t blame them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My mom would say, “Eres veneno,” you’re poison — “and I don’t want you to poison the rest of the family.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12049591\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12049591\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/GettyImages-72160164.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1280\" height=\"858\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/GettyImages-72160164.jpg 1280w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/GettyImages-72160164-160x107.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Two young Chicano men ride on the hood of a car and raise their fist during a National Chicano Moratorium Committee march in opposition to the war in Vietnam, Los Angeles, Feb. 28, 1970. \u003ccite>(David Fenton/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But they didn’t know that I would love books … that I’d spend hours in the library. It opened up my imagination. It brought out that sensitive kid again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once you’re tough, I don’t think you lose that toughness. But you can get multidimensional. Emotional balance, emotional threads — that normally get denied. And I was getting back to some of that with those books.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On the library as salvation:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When I was homeless in the streets of L.A., my favorite refuge was the library. That was really a saving grace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I started reading the books I couldn’t even get in schools. From Ray Bradbury and Raymond Chandler to \u003cem>Charlotte’s Web\u003c/em> and Black Power books — Eldridge Cleaver, George Jackson, James Baldwin, Malcolm X — I ate all those books up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was a librarian — her name was Helene. She saw this rundown kid, saw that I was reading. She introduced me to a lot of books I wouldn’t have read. Librarians were open to a homeless Cholo and realized there’s a dream that could be made there in a world of nightmare.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On how he was arrested during the Chicano Moratorium, a series of protests against the Vietnam War:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>They were gonna charge me for murder of three people during the so-called “East L.A. riots.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sheriff’s deputy said, “You guys started this, and three people died, you’re gonna be charged for this.”[aside postID=news_12040453 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250509-JOHN-POWELL-MD-02-KQED-3-1020x680.jpg']In fact, all three people were killed by sheriff’s deputies or police, LAPD. The idea was, we were the impetus for them to attack the 30,000 people that had gathered against the Vietnam War in East L.A., the largest anti-war protest in a community of color at the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I saw terrible things. Deputies maced us in the bus while we were shackled. I saw one guy’s arm get broken. And I began to realize the power of the Chicano movement and how important it was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maybe I didn’t want to be fighting other barrios. Maybe I wanted to be a revolutionary, conscious soldier for change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I was there for several days and nights. They’re not supposed to do more than 72 hours without being arraigned. [Then] they said, “Well, no charges, he’s out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I came in there as a gangster, and it politicized me.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On discovering his voice in a jail cell:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Somebody had a piece of paper and a pencil. Everybody was drawing or playing cards. I started to write.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just writing my thoughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12049592\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12049592\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/GettyImages-1290177311-scaled-e1753385339580.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1299\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kimberly Zuniga, left, of Panorama City, has author Luis J. Rodriguez, right, sign a book of his that she purchased at Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural in Sylmar, on Saturday, Nov. 28, 2020. \u003ccite>(Mark Rightmire/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>I had read enough books … maybe I had a little bit of language. Some of the writings I did there ended up in two poems in my books. That was the first idea I had — maybe I could be a writer, not just a reader.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On fatherhood and generational healing:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Whatever I went through, I never wanted my kids to go through it. But I couldn’t keep my son away from the gang.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We were living in Chicago at the time, in Humboldt Park. Rough, gang-ridden. He joined in. I tried to pull him out — and I realized, that’s me at 15 years old running away. And he was reliving my life. So I decided to dedicate myself to helping him, just not leave him, unlike my parents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I told him, “Mijo, we’re gonna go on this roller coaster through hell, you and me. I’m going with you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I stood by him through all his imprisonment. When I got clean — it’s been 32 years now — he did too. He got out of prison 14 or 15 years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On collective change, shared struggle and resilience:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The only way to break through the madness that we’re going through right now is for us to see the commonality we have and begin to think about how we can empower ourselves to begin to run things to have governance with our agency, our own ideas and our own interests.[aside postID=news_12039754 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/11/20241029_CAREGIVINGPOETS_GC-11-KQED-1020x680.jpg']I think resiliency has to be centered around creativity more than anything, and it keeps you intact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To me, resiliency is keeping intact in the midst of chaos, in the midst of fire, in the midst of a lot of pain, a lot of trauma, that you’re still intact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And what keeps you intact as a human being is that you have an imagination and that it’s abundant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s inexhaustible, this beautiful well that we carry. And then if we can keep that intact, anything’s possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On opening Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural in Sylmar:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>We have a bookstore, but we also have a performance space. We also have workshop centers where we teach art, dance, theater, writing, painting, all kinds of things. And we also have an art gallery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is in a community of half a million people, which is about the size of Oakland — one of the largest Mexican and Central American communities in the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12044826\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/06/GettyImages-2219434485-scaled-e1753393070287.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12044826\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/06/GettyImages-2219434485-scaled-e1753393070287.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A police officer holds a less lethal rifle as protesters confront California National Guard soldiers and police outside of a federal building as protests continue in Los Angeles following 3 days of clashes with police after a series of immigration raids on June 9, 2025. \u003ccite>(David McNew/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>There [were] no bookstores, no movie houses, no cultural cafes, no art galleries. We created a space. We’re the only ones doing it. It’s like any of these barrio neighborhoods. You can get liquor stores everywhere. You can buy guns anywhere. You can buy drugs anywhere, but you can’t buy a book.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On what is happening with ICE raids in LA:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>There have been many peaceful, disciplined and creative protests in Los Angeles and surrounding areas, often with music, dance, poetry and more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Communities have used apps to track ICE presence in the communities to warn undocumented people to stay away, but to also provide protestors locations they can go to. We’ve had defense teams, and even teams to go door-to-door to find out who needs food, since many people are not even going shopping. People have stepped up to work food carts for those who can no longer work the streets.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On misconceptions he hopes to dispel about his community:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Mexicans and Central Americans have roots in this land as deep as anyone who has ever been here. We are not immigrants. We have the DNA of Mexica (Aztec), Maya, Inca, but also Purepecha, Raramuri, Yoeme, Zapoteco, Mixteco, Otomi, Pipil, Lenca and many more, all related to the Shoshone, Paiute, Lakota, Ojibwa, Cherokee, Cheyenne and more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While we may also have Spanish/Iberian and African [ancestry] after more than 500 years of conquest, colonization [and] slavery, we are not “foreigners” or “strangers.” We all belong, borders or no borders. We need to reexamine and realign to the real origins and histories of Mexicans/Central Americans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is part of The California Report Magazine’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/resilience\">series about resilient Californians\u003c/a>, and what lessons they may have for the rest of us.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Luis Rodriguez grew up in South San Gabriel in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/los-angeles-county\">Los Angeles County\u003c/a> during the 1960s, in a largely Mexican immigrant neighborhood that he said embodies resilience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He joined a gang at 11, was using heroin by 12, and was kicked out of his home by 15. But amidst the violence, addiction and housing insecurity, Rodriguez found a lifeline in books, and eventually became a celebrated writer, activist and L.A.’s poet laureate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The American Library Association \u003ca href=\"https://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/decade2009\">listed\u003c/a> his 1993 memoir \u003cem>Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A.\u003c/em> as one of the top banned books in the country. The book detailed how police brutality helped fuel gang culture, addressed drug use, explored sexual themes and traced the revolutionary ideals of the Chicano movement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The memoir reflected Rodriguez’s drive to cultivate creative, empowering spaces — a vision he carried into his later work. In 2003, he founded \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiachucha.org/\">Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural\u003c/a> in Sylmar to create a space for arts, literacy and creative engagement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He joined \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/californiareportmagazine\">The California Report Magazine\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/sasha-khokha\">host Sasha Khokha\u003c/a> for a conversation about how reading and writing helped him survive, breaking cycles of trauma and why, in the wake of violent raids and enforcement \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12049326/as-ice-operations-expand-how-are-immigrant-allies-responding\">targeting L.A.’s immigrant communities\u003c/a>, creativity is key to resilience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12049570\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12049570\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/GettyImages-567417339-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/GettyImages-567417339-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/GettyImages-567417339-2000x1333.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/GettyImages-567417339-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/GettyImages-567417339-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/GettyImages-567417339-2048x1365.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Poet, author, activist Luis Rodriguez reads a poem from his book ‘Poems Across the Pavement,’ at ‘Alivio,’ an open mic night in the garage of Eric Contreras. \u003ccite>(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Below are excerpts from their conversation, edited for brevity and clarity. For the full interview, listen to the audio linked at the top of this story.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On growing up voiceless:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When I first went to school, I couldn’t speak English … I uttered some Spanish words in the classroom and the teacher slapped me across the face in front of the class. That impacts a six-year-old kid tremendously.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I had nowhere to go with it. I didn’t talk to anybody about it.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>It kept me voiceless for many, many years. I was a very shy — I would have to say a broken-down — kid. So self-contained, a very sensitive young man.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When we moved to South San Gabriel … it was one of the poorest neighborhoods in all of L.A. County. Dirt roads, no street lamps, little shacks surrounded by well-off white neighborhoods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We were at war not just with poverty, but with a community that was watching us. The sheriff’s deputies — like an army — were used against us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So that slap continued by other means: beaten by cops, harassed by teachers. And some of us joined a gang — I joined a gang at 11.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On living and dying for the neighborhood:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>I didn’t think I was gonna make it. I never thought about what I was going to be. When you joined the barrio, the gang — we didn’t call it a gang — some of us dedicated everything for it. And that meant that we were going to live and die and if we had to, we were gonna kill for the neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We were so tied into this web …. la vida loca [“the crazy life”]. It’s a web that holds you. But you’re not a fly in that web. You’re actually the spider. You’re putting yourself deeper and deeper in it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our sense was we were prepared to die if we had to. We were gonna die in a blaze of glory that, to us, was for the neighborhood, for the barrio.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On being kicked out and finding books:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>I was 15 years old when my parents threw me out. I was already on drugs by 12, getting arrested, stealing, never coming home. I don’t blame them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My mom would say, “Eres veneno,” you’re poison — “and I don’t want you to poison the rest of the family.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12049591\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12049591\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/GettyImages-72160164.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1280\" height=\"858\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/GettyImages-72160164.jpg 1280w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/GettyImages-72160164-160x107.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Two young Chicano men ride on the hood of a car and raise their fist during a National Chicano Moratorium Committee march in opposition to the war in Vietnam, Los Angeles, Feb. 28, 1970. \u003ccite>(David Fenton/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But they didn’t know that I would love books … that I’d spend hours in the library. It opened up my imagination. It brought out that sensitive kid again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once you’re tough, I don’t think you lose that toughness. But you can get multidimensional. Emotional balance, emotional threads — that normally get denied. And I was getting back to some of that with those books.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On the library as salvation:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When I was homeless in the streets of L.A., my favorite refuge was the library. That was really a saving grace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I started reading the books I couldn’t even get in schools. From Ray Bradbury and Raymond Chandler to \u003cem>Charlotte’s Web\u003c/em> and Black Power books — Eldridge Cleaver, George Jackson, James Baldwin, Malcolm X — I ate all those books up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was a librarian — her name was Helene. She saw this rundown kid, saw that I was reading. She introduced me to a lot of books I wouldn’t have read. Librarians were open to a homeless Cholo and realized there’s a dream that could be made there in a world of nightmare.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On how he was arrested during the Chicano Moratorium, a series of protests against the Vietnam War:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>They were gonna charge me for murder of three people during the so-called “East L.A. riots.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sheriff’s deputy said, “You guys started this, and three people died, you’re gonna be charged for this.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>In fact, all three people were killed by sheriff’s deputies or police, LAPD. The idea was, we were the impetus for them to attack the 30,000 people that had gathered against the Vietnam War in East L.A., the largest anti-war protest in a community of color at the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I saw terrible things. Deputies maced us in the bus while we were shackled. I saw one guy’s arm get broken. And I began to realize the power of the Chicano movement and how important it was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maybe I didn’t want to be fighting other barrios. Maybe I wanted to be a revolutionary, conscious soldier for change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I was there for several days and nights. They’re not supposed to do more than 72 hours without being arraigned. [Then] they said, “Well, no charges, he’s out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I came in there as a gangster, and it politicized me.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On discovering his voice in a jail cell:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Somebody had a piece of paper and a pencil. Everybody was drawing or playing cards. I started to write.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just writing my thoughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12049592\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12049592\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/GettyImages-1290177311-scaled-e1753385339580.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1299\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kimberly Zuniga, left, of Panorama City, has author Luis J. Rodriguez, right, sign a book of his that she purchased at Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural in Sylmar, on Saturday, Nov. 28, 2020. \u003ccite>(Mark Rightmire/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>I had read enough books … maybe I had a little bit of language. Some of the writings I did there ended up in two poems in my books. That was the first idea I had — maybe I could be a writer, not just a reader.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On fatherhood and generational healing:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Whatever I went through, I never wanted my kids to go through it. But I couldn’t keep my son away from the gang.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We were living in Chicago at the time, in Humboldt Park. Rough, gang-ridden. He joined in. I tried to pull him out — and I realized, that’s me at 15 years old running away. And he was reliving my life. So I decided to dedicate myself to helping him, just not leave him, unlike my parents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I told him, “Mijo, we’re gonna go on this roller coaster through hell, you and me. I’m going with you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I stood by him through all his imprisonment. When I got clean — it’s been 32 years now — he did too. He got out of prison 14 or 15 years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On collective change, shared struggle and resilience:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The only way to break through the madness that we’re going through right now is for us to see the commonality we have and begin to think about how we can empower ourselves to begin to run things to have governance with our agency, our own ideas and our own interests.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>I think resiliency has to be centered around creativity more than anything, and it keeps you intact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To me, resiliency is keeping intact in the midst of chaos, in the midst of fire, in the midst of a lot of pain, a lot of trauma, that you’re still intact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And what keeps you intact as a human being is that you have an imagination and that it’s abundant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s inexhaustible, this beautiful well that we carry. And then if we can keep that intact, anything’s possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On opening Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural in Sylmar:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>We have a bookstore, but we also have a performance space. We also have workshop centers where we teach art, dance, theater, writing, painting, all kinds of things. And we also have an art gallery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is in a community of half a million people, which is about the size of Oakland — one of the largest Mexican and Central American communities in the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12044826\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/06/GettyImages-2219434485-scaled-e1753393070287.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12044826\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/06/GettyImages-2219434485-scaled-e1753393070287.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A police officer holds a less lethal rifle as protesters confront California National Guard soldiers and police outside of a federal building as protests continue in Los Angeles following 3 days of clashes with police after a series of immigration raids on June 9, 2025. \u003ccite>(David McNew/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>There [were] no bookstores, no movie houses, no cultural cafes, no art galleries. We created a space. We’re the only ones doing it. It’s like any of these barrio neighborhoods. You can get liquor stores everywhere. You can buy guns anywhere. You can buy drugs anywhere, but you can’t buy a book.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On what is happening with ICE raids in LA:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>There have been many peaceful, disciplined and creative protests in Los Angeles and surrounding areas, often with music, dance, poetry and more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Communities have used apps to track ICE presence in the communities to warn undocumented people to stay away, but to also provide protestors locations they can go to. We’ve had defense teams, and even teams to go door-to-door to find out who needs food, since many people are not even going shopping. People have stepped up to work food carts for those who can no longer work the streets.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On misconceptions he hopes to dispel about his community:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Mexicans and Central Americans have roots in this land as deep as anyone who has ever been here. We are not immigrants. We have the DNA of Mexica (Aztec), Maya, Inca, but also Purepecha, Raramuri, Yoeme, Zapoteco, Mixteco, Otomi, Pipil, Lenca and many more, all related to the Shoshone, Paiute, Lakota, Ojibwa, Cherokee, Cheyenne and more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While we may also have Spanish/Iberian and African [ancestry] after more than 500 years of conquest, colonization [and] slavery, we are not “foreigners” or “strangers.” We all belong, borders or no borders. We need to reexamine and realign to the real origins and histories of Mexicans/Central Americans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "‘You’re Not Alone’: An LA County Youth Commissioner and Child Sexual Abuse Survivor Fights for Change",
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"content": "\u003cp>Twenty-five-year-old Brittianna Robinson experienced sexual abuse and trafficking as a child. She found herself in and out of group homes and the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101908853/juvenile-incarceration-declined-by-77-did-public-policy-do-something-right\">juvenile justice system\u003c/a> in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/los-angeles-county\">Los Angeles \u003c/a>throughout her teens. She credits her faith in God and support from mentors and her church for helping her find a path forward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, Brittianna uses her lived experience to help other commercially sexually exploited children (CSEC) as an advocate on the \u003ca href=\"https://youthcommission.lacounty.gov/\">Los Angeles County Youth Commission\u003c/a>. She recently wrote an \u003ca href=\"https://medium.com/ncyl-news/the-power-of-lived-experience-my-journey-from-child-trafficking-survivor-to-fighting-for-change-6f84805c58e0\">essay\u003c/a> about her experience for the National Center for Youth Law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Robinson spoke with \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/californiareportmagazine\">The California Report Magazine\u003c/a> host Sasha Khokha as part of a series on Californians and resilience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Below are excerpts from their conversation, edited for brevity and clarity. For the full interview, listen to the audio linked at the top of this story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On becoming an advocate for others in the juvenile justice system and commercially sexually exploited children:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Like so many other young people, I was sexually assaulted by a family member at a young age, so it was easier to fall victim to exploitation. And unfortunately, this is not uncommon. Through my advocacy, speaking with youth in juvenile halls, I hear so many stories that are so similar to mine. And I think that’s what helps me continue to do this work because I found the strength, the self-love and the forgiveness for myself.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On the importance of having a mentor:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>My family dynamics are pretty rocky. Having a support system from outsiders and my church family has helped propel me forward. One person is Jessica Midkiff [a trafficking survivor and advocate].\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_12030626 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/20250312_Alicia-Portnoy_JB_00003-1020x680.jpg']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I go to a group home. Now she’s coming to speak to that group home. And I just told her, ‘You know, your story reminds me so much of myself. I wanna be like you when I get older.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And she looked at me and she said, ‘No, Brittianna, you’re going to be better than me.’ And ever since then, she and I have been like big sister, little sister. She’s been the main person that gave me the role model as to what an advocate and what someone who uses their pain to help others looks like.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On the message she wants to share with other survivors and those in the juvenile justice system:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>You’re not alone. Exactly what you feel [right now], I felt it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No matter how ugly it may look right now, whatever your situation is, it will get better. You have to keep swimming, just like Dory in “Finding Nemo,” you must keep swimming because the moment you stop swimming, you could potentially drown.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On her new passion — cooking — and where she finds culinary inspiration:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>My nana would prepare the best dinners. Unfortunately, she passed when I was 10. When I started going into group homes and juvenile halls, that passion for cooking followed. I recall being in group homes, and I’m like, ‘Who made the mac and cheese? Can I make it next time?’\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12033998\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/230401-Brittianna-Robinson-01-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-12033998\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/230401-Brittianna-Robinson-01-KQED-800x1067.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"1067\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/230401-Brittianna-Robinson-01-KQED-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/230401-Brittianna-Robinson-01-KQED-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/230401-Brittianna-Robinson-01-KQED-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/230401-Brittianna-Robinson-01-KQED-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/230401-Brittianna-Robinson-01-KQED.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Brittianna Robinson and Jessica T. in the kitchen of a girls group home. The pair perpared a meal for residents on Christmas Eve 2024. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Brittianna Robinson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The staff, the youth — everyone liked it. Every group home I was in, everybody liked my food. And then, a little after COVID, I got laid off from my job, similar to so many others. And I started selling plates from my transitional living apartment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was very much unprofessional, but I learned from that, and it gave me the motivation to pursue a higher education. I enrolled myself into culinary arts and restaurant management at Los Angeles Trade Tech College. That was by far the best decision I think I’ve ever kind of made. This is my first time going to a regular school setting. because from 13-17, I was incarcerated. My school setting wasn’t like everyone else’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But by absorbing the knowledge from these amazing chefs that have cooked all over the world, it just heightened my dream for what my culinary gifts can actually turn into.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I do have an LLC, Nana’s Secret, which provides catering and food services to Los Angeles County. Primarily, what I would like to do with Nana’s Secret is cooking classes for systematically impacted youth. This is my way of tying in my advocacy with my culinary endeavors, and I’m just so excited to be able to bring both of my worlds into one.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On finding resilience and strength:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>You have to find the joy in the goodness and the little things, or else the bad things will just completely wear and tear you down. There’s a lot of girls that I know that are not here anymore. That’s really just a harsh reality. And it’s hard to understand that I’m representing a population that a lot of girls just don’t make it through. But I was blessed enough to make it through.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s all a mind thing. Our mind is so powerful. I just want to encourage everyone to step out of your comfort zone because there’s no growth there. It wasn’t until I [decided] I wanted better for myself that better things started coming to me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I want that for everyone else. There’s going to be ups, there’s going to be downs, but if you do not lay down, you will see the fruit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Twenty-five-year-old Brittianna Robinson experienced sexual abuse and trafficking as a child. She found herself in and out of group homes and the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101908853/juvenile-incarceration-declined-by-77-did-public-policy-do-something-right\">juvenile justice system\u003c/a> in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/los-angeles-county\">Los Angeles \u003c/a>throughout her teens. She credits her faith in God and support from mentors and her church for helping her find a path forward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, Brittianna uses her lived experience to help other commercially sexually exploited children (CSEC) as an advocate on the \u003ca href=\"https://youthcommission.lacounty.gov/\">Los Angeles County Youth Commission\u003c/a>. She recently wrote an \u003ca href=\"https://medium.com/ncyl-news/the-power-of-lived-experience-my-journey-from-child-trafficking-survivor-to-fighting-for-change-6f84805c58e0\">essay\u003c/a> about her experience for the National Center for Youth Law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Robinson spoke with \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/californiareportmagazine\">The California Report Magazine\u003c/a> host Sasha Khokha as part of a series on Californians and resilience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Below are excerpts from their conversation, edited for brevity and clarity. For the full interview, listen to the audio linked at the top of this story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On becoming an advocate for others in the juvenile justice system and commercially sexually exploited children:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Like so many other young people, I was sexually assaulted by a family member at a young age, so it was easier to fall victim to exploitation. And unfortunately, this is not uncommon. Through my advocacy, speaking with youth in juvenile halls, I hear so many stories that are so similar to mine. And I think that’s what helps me continue to do this work because I found the strength, the self-love and the forgiveness for myself.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On the importance of having a mentor:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>My family dynamics are pretty rocky. Having a support system from outsiders and my church family has helped propel me forward. One person is Jessica Midkiff [a trafficking survivor and advocate].\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I go to a group home. Now she’s coming to speak to that group home. And I just told her, ‘You know, your story reminds me so much of myself. I wanna be like you when I get older.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And she looked at me and she said, ‘No, Brittianna, you’re going to be better than me.’ And ever since then, she and I have been like big sister, little sister. She’s been the main person that gave me the role model as to what an advocate and what someone who uses their pain to help others looks like.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On the message she wants to share with other survivors and those in the juvenile justice system:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>You’re not alone. Exactly what you feel [right now], I felt it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No matter how ugly it may look right now, whatever your situation is, it will get better. You have to keep swimming, just like Dory in “Finding Nemo,” you must keep swimming because the moment you stop swimming, you could potentially drown.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On her new passion — cooking — and where she finds culinary inspiration:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>My nana would prepare the best dinners. Unfortunately, she passed when I was 10. When I started going into group homes and juvenile halls, that passion for cooking followed. I recall being in group homes, and I’m like, ‘Who made the mac and cheese? Can I make it next time?’\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12033998\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/230401-Brittianna-Robinson-01-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-12033998\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/230401-Brittianna-Robinson-01-KQED-800x1067.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"1067\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/230401-Brittianna-Robinson-01-KQED-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/230401-Brittianna-Robinson-01-KQED-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/230401-Brittianna-Robinson-01-KQED-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/230401-Brittianna-Robinson-01-KQED-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/230401-Brittianna-Robinson-01-KQED.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Brittianna Robinson and Jessica T. in the kitchen of a girls group home. The pair perpared a meal for residents on Christmas Eve 2024. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Brittianna Robinson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The staff, the youth — everyone liked it. Every group home I was in, everybody liked my food. And then, a little after COVID, I got laid off from my job, similar to so many others. And I started selling plates from my transitional living apartment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was very much unprofessional, but I learned from that, and it gave me the motivation to pursue a higher education. I enrolled myself into culinary arts and restaurant management at Los Angeles Trade Tech College. That was by far the best decision I think I’ve ever kind of made. This is my first time going to a regular school setting. because from 13-17, I was incarcerated. My school setting wasn’t like everyone else’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But by absorbing the knowledge from these amazing chefs that have cooked all over the world, it just heightened my dream for what my culinary gifts can actually turn into.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I do have an LLC, Nana’s Secret, which provides catering and food services to Los Angeles County. Primarily, what I would like to do with Nana’s Secret is cooking classes for systematically impacted youth. This is my way of tying in my advocacy with my culinary endeavors, and I’m just so excited to be able to bring both of my worlds into one.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>On finding resilience and strength:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>You have to find the joy in the goodness and the little things, or else the bad things will just completely wear and tear you down. There’s a lot of girls that I know that are not here anymore. That’s really just a harsh reality. And it’s hard to understand that I’m representing a population that a lot of girls just don’t make it through. But I was blessed enough to make it through.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s all a mind thing. Our mind is so powerful. I just want to encourage everyone to step out of your comfort zone because there’s no growth there. It wasn’t until I [decided] I wanted better for myself that better things started coming to me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I want that for everyone else. There’s going to be ups, there’s going to be downs, but if you do not lay down, you will see the fruit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
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"possible": {
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"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"pri-the-world": {
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"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
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},
"radiolab": {
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"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
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},
"reveal": {
"id": "reveal",
"title": "Reveal",
"info": "Created by The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, Reveal is public radios first one-hour weekly radio show and podcast dedicated to investigative reporting. Credible, fact based and without a partisan agenda, Reveal combines the power and artistry of driveway moment storytelling with data-rich reporting on critically important issues. The result is stories that inform and inspire, arming our listeners with information to right injustices, hold the powerful accountable and improve lives.Reveal is hosted by Al Letson and showcases the award-winning work of CIR and newsrooms large and small across the nation. In a radio and podcast market crowded with choices, Reveal focuses on important and often surprising stories that illuminate the world for our listeners.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/",
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},
"rightnowish": {
"id": "rightnowish",
"title": "Rightnowish",
"tagline": "Art is where you find it",
"info": "Rightnowish digs into life in the Bay Area right now… ish. Journalist Pendarvis Harshaw takes us to galleries painted on the sides of liquor stores in West Oakland. We'll dance in warehouses in the Bayview, make smoothies with kids in South Berkeley, and listen to classical music in a 1984 Cutlass Supreme in Richmond. Every week, Pen talks to movers and shakers about how the Bay Area shapes what they create, and how they shape the place we call home.",
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