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The landscape stood out, but I also had an uneasy sense of déjà vu, as if the image had already been imprinted in my memory. I knew that the valley was the setting for John Ford’s 1939 western Stagecoach, the film that gave John Wayne his breakout role.
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I heard the percussion first, the dong-chiang, dong-dong-chiang of the drums and cymbals that accompanied the lion dance. The rhythms reverberated in the body and drowned out the traffic around the Far East Center in west Denver.
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Like Alcatraz, Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay is often shrouded in fog. From 1910 to 1940, the island housed the immigration station and detention center for the West Coast.
...moreThree years ago, I bought Rebecca Solnit’s essay collection, Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics, on a lark. At that time I was beginning to write, trying to find my voice. Three years before that, I had moved from the Midwest to Colorado with the boy I would much later marry. I took […]
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