Read Your Way Through the San Francisco Bay Area

Read Your Way Around the World is a series exploring the globe through books.

The San Francisco Bay Area is anything but a monoculture. Go to San Francisco, hop across the Bay Bridge into Oakland, then head up into Richmond or down to Hayward, and the landscape around you — the people, the food, the particular cadence of walk and talk — will morph. To read the Bay Area is to traverse the spectrum of a place that has had many lives, simultaneously a landing spot for people seeking sanctuary and a place that has repelled the very people who have shaped it and loved it most.

The Bay Area is known for starting shit. We are the genesis for movements, trends, renaissances, from political uprisings to the artists who resonate from the stereos in our cars. The Bay Area is unafraid to be first. We are the creators of legacies — and also often overlooked.

I could tell you about Jack London’s early 1900s Oakland or John Steinbeck’s Salinas Valley, but that would tell you very little about the Bay Area that lives and breathes today — the people you will stumble into and love like your own, the dips in our roads and the weaving roots of our trees. It’s important to acknowledge the literary canon, but its gaps are deep, particularly when it comes to painting a full picture of one of the most racially and ethnically diverse regions in the country.

I’m here to give you a more complete vision of my home by sharing stories that see us as we see ourselves: stories of rebellion, of breath, of found family. Stories of creation.

What are your favorite books about Oakland?

Arguably the most foundational Oakland book from the past decade is “There There,” by Tommy Orange. Orange writes vignettes from the perspectives of different Native characters across the U.S. who gather for the Big Powwow at the Oakland Coliseum. Somehow, Orange’s sophomore novel, “Wandering Stars,” gives us even more Oakland, expanding through time and neighborhoods in his unforgettable voice. Yes, this is the Oakland we love: vibrant, scrappy and complex. And what a relief it is to finally see it woven in the glorious thread of language.

Young adult novels get a bad rap, maybe because, even when we were teenagers, we wanted more from the stories we were given and assume the same lack from the Y.A. that exists today. But Carolina Ixta’s debut Y.A. novel, “Shut Up, This Is Serious,” proves that it is possible — and vital — to give young people a story that is rooted and complicated, crafted by an author who believes these readers are competent enough to handle an honest depiction of Mexican American girlhood in East Oakland. Ixta tells a compelling and beautifully written coming-of-age story, and even if you’re not a young person, you will find this is one of the most nuanced contemporary novels set in Oakland.

What should I read to learn about the Black Panthers?

You cannot read the Bay Area without understanding the impact of the Black Panthers. In particular, Oakland’s history of resistance has an important place in the archives of the Black Power movement and its continuation in Black Lives Matter and beyond. “Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton,” by Bobby Seale, and “Revolutionary Suicide,” Huey P. Newton’s autobiography, are important, but Elaine Brown’s memoir “A Taste of Power” deserves more attention as the firsthand account of the only chairwoman of the Black Panther Party in the organization’s history and a critical examination of misogyny within the movement.

You can find these books, and more by and about Black activists, at Marcus Books, one of the oldest Black-owned independent bookstores in the United States, which stocks classics as well as work from local authors and independent presses.

Where should I go to read at U.C. Berkeley?

Visit the Morrison Library, a beautiful, electronics-free reading room, and read cult classics by Berkeley alumni — like Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s mesmerizing “Dictee,” which grapples with language in unexpected ways. You can also explore books by writers who taught at the university and left their mark on the literature of the Bay Area, such as “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker, and “Naming Our Destiny: New and Selected Poems,” by June Jordan.

Then, visit Berkeley’s Poetry Walk on Addison Street between Shattuck Avenue and Milvia Street, where you’ll find cast-iron plaques inlaid in the sidewalk with selected poetry by local authors and internationally renowned writers.

What should I read to young people?

When I was a child, one of my favorite picture books was Patricia Polacco’s “In Our Mothers’ House,” about two lesbian moms and their adopted children, which honors queer families in the East Bay. In another remarkable picture book, “Last Stop on Market Street,” by Matt de la Peña, a Black boy travels by bus with his grandmother through the streets of San Francisco, asking questions about class from a child’s perspective. Like many Bay Area kids, I spent much of my childhood on the bus or on BART trains, and this book is a sweet ode to the view from those little windows.

For teenage (and adult) readers, Malinda Lo’s “Last Night at the Telegraph Club” portrays a Chinese American teenager coming of age and discovering her sexuality in 1954 San Francisco’s Chinatown. Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novel “American Born Chinese” explores race, home and identity through the story of a Chinese American boy growing up in a predominantly white San Jose suburb. Yang was born in the East Bay before his family moved to a suburb of San Jose, and his childhood spent across the Bay can be felt in this novel, which was recently adapted as a television show on Disney+.

What if I just want to have a good time?

If you’re looking to have a warm heart and a happy mind, try Rita Williams-Garcia’s “One Crazy Summer,” a novel for young people that tells the story of three sisters going to visit their mother in Oakland in 1968. It’s a refreshing book that reflects the activism and community work of the Black Panthers through a child’s eyes.

For romance fans, Jasmine Guillory should be at the top of your list. Guillory’s “The Wedding Date” spans the range of California, and is full of references to the Bay Area.

Danyel Smith’s “Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop” is a dissection of the history of pop music and Black women’s contributions to it. Smith is a music reporter from Oakland and this book is a testament to her abundant knowledge.

What can I read about other parts of the Bay Area?

Elaine Castillo’s “America Is Not the Heart” is a poignant portrayal of Filipino immigrant communities in Milpitas and the surrounding South Bay in the 1990s. The San Francisco Bay Area has the second largest Filipino population in the United States, and Castillo examines the divisions between different Filipino ethnic groups, the radical legacy of the New People’s Army and how a career might not follow you to a new country.

If you’d like to explore the area north of San Francisco, “Solito,” by Javier Zamora, is one of the most beautiful and devastating memoirs I have ever read. The book follows Zamora’s migration at 9 years old from El Salvador and through Mexico in an attempt to join his parents in San Rafael, California. While the book isn’t set in the Bay, it is the eventual landing point for Zamora. “Solito” captures the experience of having multiple homes and what it means to leave one home and seek belonging in another, an experience that’s common among immigrant communities in the Bay Area (and beyond).

For those looking for fiction that delves into untold histories, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton’s “On the Rooftop” explores the gentrification of San Francisco in the 1950s as it follows three sisters in a singing group in the Fillmore. It will transport you to a San Francisco that is rarely written of — except maybe in Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” which is required reading for everyone, everywhere.

What poets should I read?

The Bay Area has a robust poetic legacy. In the 1950s, drawing from jazz improvisation, the Beat poets created a culture of free-verse poetry. Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti often get the most glory, but it would be remiss to forget Bob Kaufman, a Black poet known for reciting poems on the street. A comprehensive selection of his work, “Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman,” was published by San Francisco’s iconic and longstanding (Ferlinghetti-founded) City Lights Bookstore.

The Bay Area has produced some incredible contemporary poets like Chinaka Hodge (read her collection “Dated Emcees” — it’s brilliant) and Tongo Eisen-Martin, the most recent San Francisco poet laureate. Eisen-Martin’s collection “Heaven Is All Goodbyes” is one of my favorites, wielding words to deconstruct the language of capitalism and displacement. Pick this up if you want to read a poem and sit stunned, returning to it again and again.

A poet is also a performer, and some will take your breath away if you have the honor of witnessing them recite. Among them are Mahogany L. Browne, the author of the long-form book/poem/masterpiece “I Remember Death by Its Proximity to What I Love” and the recent collection “Chrome Valley,” and Darius Simpson, the author of “Never Catch Me.” A special shout-out to the spectacular Danez Smith poem “Tonight, in Oakland,” from their collection “Don’t Call Us Dead,” which brings me down to my bones every time:

Let wherever two people stand be a reunion

of ancient lights.

Let’s waste the moon’s marble glow

shouting our names to the stars until we are

the stars. O, precious God! O, sweet black town!

I am drunk & I thirst.

Leila Mottley’s San Francisco Bay Area Reading List

• “There There” and “Wandering Stars,” Tommy Orange

• “Shut Up, This Is Serious,” Carolina Ixta

• “Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton,” Bobby Seale

• “Revolutionary Suicide,” Huey P. Newton

• “A Taste of Power,” Elaine Brown

• “Dictee,” Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

• “The Color Purple,” Alice Walker

• “Naming Our Destiny: New and Selected Poems,” June Jordan

• “In Our Mothers’ House,” Patricia Polacco

• “Last Stop on Market Street,” Matt de la Peña

• “Last Night at the Telegraph Club,” Malinda Lo

• “American Born Chinese,” Gene Luen Yang

• “One Crazy Summer,” Rita Williams-Garcia

• “The Wedding Date,” Jasmine Guillory

• “Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop,” Danyel Smith

• “America Is Not the Heart,” Elaine Castillo

• “Solito,” Javier Zamora

• “On the Rooftop,” Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

• “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” Maya Angelou

• “Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman,” Bob Kaufman

• “Dated Emcees,” Chinaka Hodge

• “Heaven Is All Goodbyes,” Tongo Eisen-Martin

• “I Remember Death by Its Proximity to What I Love” and “Chrome Valley,” Mahogany L. Browne

• “Never Catch Me,” Darius Simpson

• “Don’t Call Us Dead,” Danez Smith

Leila Mottley’s debut novel, “Nightcrawling,” published when she was 19 years old, was longlisted for the Booker Prize. It was also a New York Times best seller and an Oprah’s Book Club pick. Her poetry collection “woke up no light” will be published in April 2024. She was born and raised — and continues to live — in Oakland.