Culture

A Writer of Books Housed in Libraries
By Aleta GeorgeDorothy Lazard’s first library—the one that cracked open her world and made her love libraries—was the Western Addition Branch in San Francisco.

Converting to Feminism
By Emily WilsonA few years ago, when Heesoo Kwon was visiting South Korea during a summer break from her MFA program at Berkeley, she found old home videos of her family.

He Was British, Not Irish! And Other Things You Didn’t Know About Saint Patrick
By Margie CullenAccording to Dan Melia, there are a lot of myths about Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland.

Sunset Noir
By Emily WilsonPlaywright Christopher Chen is a homegrown talent. Hailing from the Sunset District of San Francisco, a neighborhood his family has lived in for generations, he went on to study music composition at UC Berkeley, where he got his start in writing and directing after joining the Asian American arts group Theatre Rice.

Hidden Letters: The Co-optation of a Once Secret Language
By Margie CullenWhen filmmaker Violet Du Feng, M.J. ’04, returned to China after earning her master’s degree at Berkeley, she was struck by a kind of gender inequality she hadn’t noticed before.

Saving a Language from Extinction
By Madeline Taub90-year-old Berkeley alumna Rebecca Contopoulou speaks Greek, Italian, French, English, Spanish, and another language that sounds a lot like Spanish but is actually Ladino, a Sephardic language that traces its origins to Medieval Spain.

Berkeley’s Women Artist Trailblazers
By Laura SmithBerkeley claims one of the first graphic novels, famous communist sculptors, and more

The Beautiful Life, Tragic Death, and Fascinating Career of Joan Brown
By Laura SmithLet's start at the end.

11 Things You’ll Never Believe Came Out of Berkeley!
By Pat JosephYeah, okay, you’ll probably believe some of it. Still, we think it’s a fun list.

The Winter Issue’s Editor’s Note
By Pat Joseph“The University is not engaged in making ideas safe for students. It is engaged in making students safe for ideas.”

How Berkeley is Improving Equity and Inclusion
By Lizeth De La LuzFive Questions with Dania Matos, Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion

From the Archive: The Rock ‘N’ Roll Industry
From the June/July 1967 issue of California Monthly, "The Generation Gap." A panel discussion featuring Bob Bonis, Tom Donahue, Ralph J. Gleason (moderator), Bill Graham, and Phil Spector, industrialists in the economy of the young.