Thornapple Press, 190 pages, $25<\/p>\n
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In her new book, \u201cLove Rebels: How I Learned to Burn it Down Without Burning Out,\u201d due Oct. 17, Kitty Stryker urges readers to strike a balance between their activism and their personal lives \u2014 something she knows about quite well.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a toddler, Kitty Stryker went to NOW rallies and violence against women protests with her activist parents. In her 41 years she has attended so many demonstrations, she stopped counting.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stryker describes her new book as part call to action and part memoir. The memoir part at times reads like a cautionary tale based on her own multiple burnouts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt can get really overwhelming,\u201d she said. \u201cThere are so many things that require action and attention. So it\u2019s hard to pick and choose what you\u2019re going to focus on.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of her worst burnouts was after the Berkeley protests of 2017<\/a>, which drew right-wing groups like the Proud Boys to Berkeley and pitted them against UC Berkeley students and leftist groups, resulting in street clashes, injuries and numerous arrests. For weeks she volunteered as a street medic.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt was traumatic, but I felt like if I\u2019m not doing this, who\u2019s going to do it?\u201d Stryker said. She said she pushed her body too hard, getting knee and ankle injuries from pounding the pavement and being hit by non-lethal rounds from police.\u00a0<\/p>\n The book offers practical tips on what to do before, during and after a protest and how to organize and create leadership and accountability in an activist group. She admitted that street-level activism isn\u2019t for everybody and provides alternatives, like letter writing, showing up at government meetings and canvassing neighbors.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat it gets down to is interpersonal relationships,\u201d Stryker said, \u201cand figuring out ways that everybody can feel like they can contribute.\u201d<\/p>\n Stryker will talk about her book at 8 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 20, at The Long Haul<\/a> in South Berkeley. A former sex worker, her previous three books have focused on consent within queer relationships.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWater Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America\u201d<\/a> by Jeff Chang<\/p>\n Harper Perennial, 560 pages, $29<\/p>\n During a surge of anti-Asian violence in the pandemic, murals of Bruce Lee, the film star and martial arts fighter who died at the age of 32, began appearing in San Francisco\u2019s Chinatown, then Oakland\u2019s, then New York\u2019s and elsewhere across the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Berkeley author Jeff Chang, who writes about the intersection of pop culture and race, took note. He had been working on a biography of Lee.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe were all feeling very vulnerable and were looking for hope,\u201d said Chang. \u201cHe became this symbol of pride and strength and solidarity and unity.\u201d<\/p>\n That cultural moment influenced his storytelling. \u201cI realize now that Bruce\u2019s story has been framed as an American story in the past, but it\u2019s a uniquely Asian American story,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Chang\u2019s new book, \u201cWater Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America,\u201d examines Lee\u2019s life through that lens, which has come more into focus through hindsight and the Asian American activism that the pandemic revitalized.\u00a0<\/p>\n Chang will be in conversation with KQED\u2019s Alexis Madrigal at 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 28 at Local Economy<\/a> in Oakland. At 7 p.m. on Nov. 5, Chang will be at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center.<\/a><\/p>\n Though American born, Lee grew up in 1950s Hong Kong, when a kung fu craze gripped the city. Because he had been getting into too many fights, his parents suggested he head to the U.S. Stateside, he spent time in San Francisco, Oakland and Seattle, living in racially segregated communities with African Americans, Latinos, Japanese Americans and poor whites.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s learning what it means to be a racialized American in America,\u201d Chang said. \u201cThis is what turns him from a spoiled kid to someone who represents the underdog.\u201d<\/p>\n Unable to break into films in the U.S., he returned to Hong Kong in 1971 and became a box-office star who played the role of the underdog. He continued that role in his first big Hollywood film, \u201cEnter the Dragon,\u201d but also had to push back against an attempt to turn his character into a villain, an Asian stereotype, Chang said. Instead, Lee insisted that scenes glorifying Asian philosophies and martial arts be incorporated into the film.<\/p>\n \u201cHe really put it on the line,\u201d Chang said. \u201cHe didn\u2019t want to put out anything that made him or folks who look like him bad.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWater Mirror Echo\u201d is Chang\u2019s fourth book. His last, Can\u2019t Stop, Won\u2019t Stop, is considered a seminal work on the history of hip-hop and won an American Book Award in 2005. The subject matter parallels Lee\u2019s story.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m attracted to these stories of outsiders,\u201d Chang said, \u201cusually kids who create these things and then go out and change the world.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEngendering Blackness: Slavery and the Ontology of Sexual Violence\u201d<\/a> by Patrice D. Douglass<\/p>\n Stanford University Press, 352 pages, $32<\/p>\n Berkeley native Patrice D. Douglass is celebrating the publication of her first, \u201cEngendering Blackness: Slavery and the Ontology of Sexual Violence.\u201d The book explores the relationship between sexual violence and modern racial slavery and its effect on Blackness in the current day.<\/p>\n Douglass received a Ph.D. from UC Irvine in culture and theory. She is now an assistant professor of gender and women\u2019s studies at UC Berkeley and lives in El Cerrito. Her work centers on Black feminist theory and philosophy.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the book, Douglass highlights two art works associated with Berkeley that represent a long history of Black political struggle. The first is Betye Saar\u2019s Liberation of Aunt Jemima<\/a> from 1972, which she submitted to an open call for Black art from the Rainbow Sign,<\/a> a legendary Black community center in Berkeley.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAunt Jemima in general has been a center of controversy around racist iconography and its relationship to political struggle,\u201d Douglass said, \u201ca figure that is void of a personal narrative.\u201d<\/p>\n The second work, \u201cCrossings,\u201d<\/a> is by the Berkeley artist Mildred Howard and was part of her solo exhibition at the Berkeley Arts Center in 1997. The conceptual work depicts rows of eggs on the floor that make a square and is reflected in a gilded mirror on the wall, evoking the middle passage and slavery.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBoth works illustrate the rich cultural history in Berkeley, where people were reproducing imagery of life and struggle and activism,\u201d Douglass said. \u201cAdditionally they help us to visualize the scope of slavery and to take that visual marker and translate it into a more complex theory and set of questions.\u201d<\/p>\n Douglass plans to write a book on her hometown\u2019s Black history, which often gets less attention than Oakland\u2019s. She intends on devoting a chapter to reconciling the ways these neighboring cities are seen as \u201cseparate and distinct racial geographies.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBorders are murky and vexed,\u201d she said, \u201csuch that Oakland and Berkeley\u2019s Black histories have important connections and overlaps, as well as their own roles in shaping the Black political history of the Bay Area.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cButterflies of the Bay Area (and Slightly Beyond)\u201d<\/a> by Liam O\u2019Brien<\/p>\n Heyday, 368 pages, $50<\/p>\n When butterfly hunting in Berkeley, Liam O\u2019Brien suggests that residents look not to the flowers, but the trees, in particular the Quercus agrifolia, or coast live oak. There, in the canopy, you can spot the region\u2019s most common butterfly, the California Sister, a black species dotted with white and orange, that lays its eggs in the oak.\u00a0<\/p>\n The California Sister can also be found in all her full-color glory in O\u2019Brien\u2019s new book, \u201cButterflies of the Bay Area (and Slightly Beyond),\u201d which chronicles 135 varieties and contains more than 700-hand-drawn illustrations that represent the breadth and beauty of the region\u2019s butterfly biodiversity.\u00a0<\/p>\n Each entry contains info on habitats, host plants, life phases and where to find each species. O\u2019Brien also recommends the best butterfly walks in the Greater Bay Area. In Berkeley, he suggests Volmer Peak, the UC Berkeley and Tilden botanical gardens and Claremont and Wildcat canyons.\u00a0<\/p>\n A self-taught lepidopterist and illustrator, O\u2019Brien came to the field after acting on Broadway in \u201cLes Miserables.\u201d In 1996, when performing the lead role of Prior Walter in the West Coast premiere of \u201cAngels in America,\u201d a Western Tiger Swallowtail flew into his San Francisco backyard.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI was so fascinated by how close I could get to it,\u201d he said. \u201cBy the end of the week, I bought a butterfly field guide and joined the Lepidopterist Society soon after that.\u201d<\/p>\n Since then he has led efforts to restore the Variable Checkerspots to the Presidio, monitored the endangered Mission Blue butterfly in the Marin Headlands, run the San Francisco butterfly count for the last 25 years and participated in the Berkeley counts for at least 20 years. Bay Nature magazine named him a Local Hero in 2014.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fiction\u201cScabmuggers\u201d<\/a> by Yvonne Martinez<\/p>\n She Writes Press, 105 pages, $18<\/p>\n Yvonne Martinez\u2019 memoir, \u201cSomeday Mija, You\u2019ll Learn the Difference Between a Whore and a Working Woman<\/a>,\u201d was titled after what her grandmother said after she and her fellow sex workers busted up a tavern after the owners tried to cut into the women\u2019s tavern sex trade.\u00a0<\/p>\n As a child, Martinez had no idea what Grandma Mary was talking about, but \u201cI would later learn what that meant in my work as a labor negotiator and organizer,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Her latest book, \u201cScabmuggers,\u201d named after the turn-of-the century women who patrolled picket lines and deterred scabs, pays homage to the activism of tough working women like her grandmother.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cScabmuggers\u201d is a novel based on a true story \u2014 heavily based on Martinez\u2019 real-life experience as a fellow in the Harvard Trade Union Program in 1994.The program brings together labor leaders from around the world to study and share their grassroots knowledge.\u00a0<\/p>\n With high hopes for an amazing educational experience, the protagonist, Simone, instead discovers that the problems within the labor movement itself \u2014 sexism, racism and homophobia \u2014 will divide the group into two warring factions, mostly along gender lines. A high-brow educational experience by day descends into boozy, out-of-control debauchery by night.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ana, a white female, is stalked. A Japanese man is encouraged to dress and act like a geisha. Mindy makes the rounds kissing a group of men before being carried off by one of them. As for Simone, one of the few men she trusts ends up groping her.\u00a0<\/p>\n Simone and her cohort inform the program leader as to what\u2019s going on, but she decides not to get involved. The only way out, Simone and company discover, is through their own moxie \u2014 and well-oiled negotiating skills.<\/p>\n Kirkus Reviews calls the book \u201can engrossing fictional examination of challenges women face in reform movements in the world and at large.\u201d<\/p>\n Martinez has sent a copy of the book to the Harvard Trade Union Program, but has not yet heard back.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/online-WaterMirrorEcho_HC_US-bookshop-crop-1.png\")
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