California has long lured dreamers. People looking to reinvent themselves. To find a better future for their children. To have a home with a palm tree in the front yard.
But we know that dream is also increasingly out of reach for many people. And some are beginning to question whether the California dream is worth it, or whether it’s even still alive.
To that end, KQED’s The California Report Magazine in November hosted “Dreaming the Golden State,” a night of live storytelling about California dreams found … and lost. The event, at San Francisco’s Brava Theater, featured some of KQED’s own radio reporters, transferring their stories from the airwaves to the stage, along with five listeners who shared their own California dreams.
Here is part one of highlights from the event.
How My Parents Found a Place to Love in LA
To kickoff the evening, TCR Magazine host Sasha Khokha shared her family’s California dream by reciting a letter she wrote to her parents. A rebellious Irish Catholic girl and a skinny Indian engineer, the two met and fell in love at a time when interracial marriage was still illegal in some parts of the country.
Letter to My California Dreamer: Searching for New Beginnings on ‘Gold Mountain’
In our ‘Letter to My California Dreamer‘ series, we asked listeners to send us compositions written to the first people in their families who arrived in California. One of the first submissions we received was from Tiffany Eng of Oakland. On stage, she recited the letter she wrote to her great-great-great-grandparents, who settled in Oakland’s Chinatown in 1906. Six generations later, Eng said, her family’s roots in Oakland have grown deep.
