A weekly interview series of San Francisco Bay Area authors, first published at SF Weekly from October 4, 2012 to January 28, 2016 and then for a few more years at Litseen.com.
Where do you go to find sanctuary?
Bookstores. Museums. Parks. Recital halls. Wilderness areas, including Pt. Reyes, Big Basin, and Mount Diablo. Labyrinths—particularly the two at Grace Cathedral, here in San Francisco. My own backyard, where gardening offers a chance to let my mind wander. And, ultimately, back within myself to see what needs attention and nurturing.
Do you have a favorite ancestor? What is his/her/their story?
My great-great-grandmother, Maria Cortez, who was from indigenous Chilean and colonial Spanish blood, born in the 1820s somewhere near Valparaiso, Chile, which at that time was an international port of colonial trade, like New Orleans, to where she immigrated in the 1850s. I’ve yet to find her trail into North America and Louisiana from South America. She could’ve buggied through Mexican Texas or sailed up the Mississippi Delta. She settled in Saint Bernard Parish, just to the east of New Orleans, in a community of Filipino fishermen out in the sticks. She married one or possibly two Filipino men and mothered five children, one of whom was my great-grandmother, Lucy Victoriana. My dad always described his Nan Lucy as an “Indian” with long, thick, black hair who would chase her husband down the street with a battle ax whenever they got into fights.
