Who We Were

We’re All Temps Now

California Used To Embody Stable, Middle-Class Living. It Was a Brief Interlude.

April 29, 2012

by Michael Bernick

The photo below was taken at the Lockheed Aircraft Company Christmas Party in Burbank in 1950. The smiling Lockheed workers are receiving awards in honor of their fifth anniversaries at the company, awards that reflect the stability of regular pay benefits and employment. …

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Who We Were: Archives

When Hoover Tear-Gassed My Dad

Hollywood Sent Its Own Bonus Marchers To Washington. The Welcome Wasn't Warm.

On April 23, 2012

by Georgia Lowe

Hollywood 1932. What a town. Fantasyland. Eternal summer.

Great Depression? Not here, at least not as reported by the local press. Hollywood was where Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Douglas Fairbanks, Gary Cooper, Lana Turner, Errol Flynn and Ginger Rogers frolicked at the Coconut Grove. Hollywood was where Busby Berkeley made extravaganza movies with long-legged showgirls sashaying down curving, white staircases with hats the size of chandeliers balanced on their heads. …

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How I Had Sex in 1950

Navigating Birth Control Before the Pill

On April 18, 2012

by Jacqueline Coulette

I was a virgin on my wedding night. This is neither a confession nor a brag, simply a statement of fact. It was expected. The year was 1950. Horror stories of how giving birth “out of wedlock” would ruin one’s life were common. They were told by mothers, grandmothers, and aunts to keep you on the straight and narrow. …

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When My Butt Kicked Me

A Former Dancer Learns to Work Out Again After a Puzzling Injury

On April 9, 2012

by Taylor Marsh

The Norman Rockwell neighborhood where my husband and I live in Washington, D.C. is a new experience for me, although I’ve lived in a lot of places. One of those was New York City, where I was a professional dancer on Broadway.

I sang, played small parts, and served as understudy until stage fright struck me. I became paralyzed at the idea of performing. It was an abrupt change. Until that time, I had danced from the moment I was able to walk. …

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Why Sheriff Joe Has Wyatt Earp in His Posse

You Like Things By the Book? Then Don’t Be Sheriff in the West

On April 8, 2012

by Andrew Isenberg

In November 2010, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, created an armed “immigration posse.” Its members included Hollywood action-movie figures such as Steven Segal and Lou Ferrigno and a Phoenix man, Wyatt Earp, who was reported to be not only the namesake but also the nephew of the iconic Old West gunfighter. Actually, Earp had two nephews, both born in the 1870s, and both long dead. The twenty-first-century Earp is a retired insurance agent. …

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Articles

Feuilleton
Friday, December 3, 2010
How One Family Created Chinese America
Zócalo

The Lucky Ones, by Mae Ngai The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America by Mae Ngai Hyphenated cultures seem to be a natural part of California’s landscape today, but it wasn’t always so. The Lucky Ones by Mae Ngai offers a fresh look at California history by reconstructing the lives of immigrant and second generation pioneers who lived between cultures when it was not such a common phenomenon. Ngai’s narrative brings Chinese Americans into a richer tradition of historical storytelling by humanizing an ambivalent, middle-class immigrant family, situating their lives within the more well-known histories of Chinese laborers and those who suffered from the 1882 Exclusion Act.

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