Ma Day City Of Love Analysis

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About four years ago, I ran into Gary Kamiya at a San Francisco Public Library sale of volumes deemed too dog-eared, outdated or infrequently checked out to continue occupying shelf space. My family and I walked off with a couple of armfuls of books. Kamiya exited with a wagon­load, a Radio Flyer stacked perilously high with novels, poetry collections, books on art and architecture and regional history and botany and God knows what else. I remember feeling a mix of bemusement and literary inadequacy — and noting his irregular gait. What had happened, I wondered, or had he always limped? But I didn’t ask, and we instead exchanged the brief pleasantries of people in the same industry. After we parted, I spotted him going back for (at least) one more load. COOL GRAY CITY OF LOVE 49 Views of San Francisco By Gary Kamiya Illustrated. 384 pp.…show more content…
He does true justice to the horrors the Spanish mission system inflicted on American Indians, and his chapter on the AIDS crisis is a sadness to keep. The largely forgotten role of influential women in the city’s early history is well told, though I wish one of the 49 views had been of Gold Rush-era Chinese and Anglo prostitutes made to serve dozens of men a day, or of today’s trafficked women, who are too often swept under the rug of the city’s sex positiveness. But then, in the best possible way, Kamiya’s book left me wanting more, both from him — perhaps a deeper dive into one particular era or neighborhood à la Luc Sante’s masterpiece “Low Life” — and from myself. My copy of “Cool Gray City of Love” is full of marginalia like “visit,” “!!!!,” “must see,” “read!” For while Kamiya’s symphony of San Francisco is a grand pleasure in its own right, it is also a vital challenge to not rest content with the knowledge anyone else provides of a city you
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