Literature of California Projects

The University of California, Davis is the institutional home of the Literature of California Project a series of publications and programs  supported by multiple campus sectors: the UCD Department of English, College of Letters & Sciences (Division of the Humanities, Arts & Cultural Studies), Office of Research, the Teaching Resources Center,  the Humanities Institute, and the Cal Aggie Alumni Association.  The Literature of California, Volume I (Native American Beginnings to 1945) (TLC I) was also supported by private, corporate and foundation contributions.  Volume II (1945-the present) is projected for publication by the University of California Press in 2005.

 

WEEK OF NOVEMBER 10-14, 2003: “JOHN McPHEE”

John McPhee, one of the foremost writers of contemporary American nonfiction, will visit the University of California , Davis , November 10-14, 2003 in a series of four public appearances. McPhee comes under the auspices of the annual Snyder/Soderquist Distinguished Visiting Writers Series. Established in honor of Gary Snyder, UC Davis emeritus poet and Pulitzer Prize-winner, by former UC Regent and businessman Charles J. Soderquist, the program presents major contemporary writers on nature, science and the humanities.

Educated at Princeton University (1953), he has maintained a relationship with Princeton since 1975, when he returned to teach “The Literature of Fact,” a workshop in literary nonfiction that has continued over twenty-seven years, spawning several generations of successful writers. After a brief stint as a television screenwriter for "Robert Montgomery Presents" in the 1950s, McPhee joined Time magazine as an associate editor from 1957 to 1964. He became a staff writer for The New Yorker in 1964, and “A Sense of Where You Are,” a profile of NBA Basketball All-Star (and later U.S. Senator) Bill Bradley, evolved to the first of twenty-eight books to date. His most recent is The Founding Fish (2002).

His work weds science and the art of narrative prose, and his writing career has been prolific and diverse. He ranges widely, through professional athletes (Bradley and tennis star Arthur Ashe), the orange industry ( Oranges ) , experimental aircraft ( The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed ), the Merchant Marine ( Looking For a Ship ), the atomic bomb ( The Curve of Binding Energy) , Alaska ( Coming Into the Country ), and the natural history of the shad ( The Founding Fish ). The writing demonstrates an economic style and artful craft, both acknowledged by the awarding of a Pulitzer Prize for Annals of the Former World in 1999.

Of particular interest in his visit to UC Davis is the author's “reunion” with emeritus geologist Eldridge Moores. For Assembling California (1993), UC Davis plate tectonicist Moores guided McPhee on a 15-year series of tours across the Sierra Nevada and the Great Central Valley to the wine country of the Coast Ranges , the rock of San Francisco , and the San Andreas family of faults. Moores emerges as a central figure in Assembling California (later collected in Annals of the Former World ) and a Wednesday November 12 12:00 session will be devoted to a retrospective dialogue between McPhee and Moores.

A Wednesday 4:00 program will feature three noted nature writers--Pulitzer Prize winners McPhee and Gary Snyder and Former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass--in a panel discussion on “Writing Nature in the 21 st Century.”

John McPhee will make four appearances, free and open to the public: on Monday, November 10 ( 4:00 University Club/reception follows), Wednesday, November 12 ( 12:00 126 Voorhies Hall & 4:00 Buehler Alumni Center/reception follows) and Thursday, November 13 ( 4:00 UNIVERSITY CLUB /reception follows)

 

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2003 “Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston”

 Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, author of the new novel The Legend of Fire Horse Woman , will be a visiting writer at the University of California , Davis , on Wednesday, December 3, 2003 .

She will discuss “Manzanar: Fifty Years After” at 12:00 in 126 Voorhies Hall, to the Pacific Regional Humanities Center Noontime Seminar series. She will read later from The Legend of Fire Horse Woman at a 4:00 booksigning, in 126 Voorhies.

Houston is the co-author of Farewell to Manzanar (with novelist husband James D. Houston), a classic memoir of her internment in the Manzanar Relocation Camp at age seven in 1942, a result of Presidential Executive Order 9066. 110,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry were interned in such camps, and the number included parents Ko and Riku Wakatsuki and Jeanne and her six siblings. 10,000 Japanese-Americans were held at the Manzanar desert site from February 1942 until August 1945, shortly after the a-bombing of Japan .

Farewell to Manzanar (1973) was the first extensive published account of the American tragedy, and it remains in print after 60 editions, having sold 1.5 million copies. The Houstons also co-wrote the subsequent film of the same title, and it won an Emmy Award nomination and the prestigious Humanitas Prize. A recent initiative by the California State Library and Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante distributed 10,000 copies of the film free to California public schools.

The Legend of Fire Horse Woman (2003) is the first published novel by an author who lived through Manzanar. It focuses on the struggles and triumphs of three generations of women interned in the camp. Proud grandmother Sayo came to California in 1902, born under the portentous sign of the fire horse, “too beautiful, powerful and cunning to be a traditional Japanese humble wife.” Forty years later, she finds herself imprisoned with her daughter Hana and granddaughter Teri, a fiercely independent 13-year-old. The author interweaves their generational sage with that of several key traditional Owens Valley Paiute, all of whom live in the shadow of Mt. Whitney , which looms near at 14,500 feet. The novel focuses on their triumphs in a dark time, and it closes with the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki , which terrible acts ironically free Sayo, Hana and Teri to return to American society.

Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston is also author of Beyond Manzanar and Don't Cry, It's Only Thunder . The UCD Pacific Regional Humanities Center (PRHC) and the Department of English sponsor her appearance. Both events are free and open to the public.