Views From Under the Dragon

An illustrated book explores cultural communities and their intersections in the California Bay Area.

By Pavani Yalamanchili, December 3, 2007, Issues, Weblogs, Daily, Children, History

Photojournalist Lonny Shavelson and co-author Fred Setterberg took notes and and photos over three years of exploring the Bay Area from San Francisco to Fremont and its community events, neighborhoods and religious centers. The result is [1] Under the Dragon: California’s New Culture, an illustrated look at the complicated and changing ethnic experience in the Bay Area with a focus on individuals and stories—seven stories with accompanying images, and 80 photographs with detailed captions.

[2] Andrew Lam writes in Dragon’s [3] foreword

Many of the photos and stories in this book are of what I call California moments, events in which something astonishing and marvelous in the experiment of cohabitation in California is revealed.

Examples abound: an African devotee of Krishna praying to the sky; a Filipina playing the role of the Hindu goddess Lakshmi; Jesse Graham, the white preacher at the African American Mount Zion Baptist Church in West Berkeley, whose preaching moves spirits; and my favorite story, the Iranian psychotherapist who finds roots in America by attending to Cambodian refugees—a novel in the making.

More:
a cool [4] interactive map of the photographs
[5] more photographs from the book
[6] SF Chronicle review

© Copyright 2007 Nirali Magazine

Article printed from Nirali Magazine: http://niralimagazine.com

URL to article: http://niralimagazine.com/2007/12/views-from-under-the-dragon/

URLs in this post:
[1] Under the Dragon: California’s New Culture: http://www.underthedragon.com/
[2] Andrew Lam: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4486830
[3] foreword: http://www.underthedragon.com/Foreword.htm
[4] interactive map of the photographs: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=100475677
084264242425.000436ab4b5a1dac871eb&ll=37.601801,-122.152698&spn=0.901951,1.17691&z=10&om=1
[5] more photographs: http://www.photowords.com/CulturalLandscapes/start.htm
[6] SF Chronicle review: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/15/DDJMT1QL4.DTL

Click here to print.