“The ability to connect with people as you walk down the street is getting more and more eroded, [and] I think there’s a real human need for that," says writer and activist Shizue Seigel. "Society as a whole would be better off with all of our stories and with all of our participation."
This conviction led Seigel to establish a series of writing workshops, called Write Now!, in Japantown and the Fillmore in 2015. The workshops aim to help Japanese-American and African-American people of all ages express their creativity and discuss the issues they face in a changing San Francisco.
This Sunday, the efforts of Seigel and her writers will culminate in Standing Strong!, a free event at the San Francisco Main Library. To be held from 1-3pm, the event will showcase the just-released 140-page anthology of the same name, which features the writing, poetry, and visual art of Write Now! workshop participants.
“All of our history and her-story is being erased, [but] I’m not going to implode and turn the other way,” says poet, activist and third-generation San Franciscan Queennandi X. Her essay, titled "The Mo' - Then and Now,“ reflects on her history in the Fillmore.
"Even with the changes and how harsh things are—especially against poor people and people of color—the memories of the place, that’s what helps put a smile on my face," she says.
Memories—of their family, their community and of the city of San Francisco—are what inspired many of the Write Now! participants to join the writing group in the first place. There is a “shared understanding of generations of discrimination, incarceration and what it takes to keep a community going,” Seigel acknowledges.
In her piece “Memories of the Mo'," Juanda Stewart recalls union strikes over the refusal to hire African-American workers, which she witnessed as a child in the mid-to-late 1940s.
The Write Now! workshops also helped Roji Oyama to open the floodgates of his memory. Though he had done little writing before, he is now working on several projects that incorporate his family and community history. His piece “Letter to the Family…” which imagines a Japanese-American soldier’s letter to his family from the Italian front in World War II, was inspired by the stories of his uncle, who served as a medic with the 442/100th Regimental Combat Team.
“We as a group inspire to engage more people to come out of their shells,” says Oyama. “My goal is to keep the generations connected. Our stories are all very different, but connected.”
While some use Write Now! as an opportunity to reflect on the past, others look to the future. One essay, by 12-year-old Xiomara Larkin, juxtaposes the lives of a middle-class girl and one from the projects. “One girl has everything people dream about. Another has nothing. Which one is happy?” she writes.
Sandra Bass, an assistant dean at UC Berkeley, focused her work on the racial suspicion borne disproportionately by African-American women in the city. Her essay, titled “25 Years Later and Rodney King Is Still on Repeat," highlights a recent study that found that black women, who are just six percent of San Francisco’s female population, comprise over 45 percent of the women arrested. "Our arrest rate is 13 times higher than that of women of other races," writes Bass.
In terms of community survival, "the future is grim,” says Queennandi X. “It’ll be a really tiny percentage of us here. The vibe and the spirit is gone already; that’s been bought off, sold off.”
“Countless microaggressions every day come out of people’s ignorance of their reality,” says Seigel. But she hopes that Standing Strong! will help to give people a sense of the city’s stories—its past and living present.
The Standing Strong! anthology will be available for sale for $17.95 (+ tax) at this Sunday’s event at the Main Library. It can also be purchased online or by emailing [email protected].
