Join Mr. Hong on a tour of his native Cupertino. (Johny made this video as an example for a hometown video project he had assigned to his students last year in his San Francisco History class!)
In Lesson 1, you heard Mr. Hong mention the work of the Cupertino-raised, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Hua Hsu. Now, go deeper into the South Bay phenomenon of the suburban Chinatown with this article by Hua Hsu for Lucky Peach magazine.
Let's expand our lens now to include another town you may have heard of: Palo Alto. This chapter from Malcolm Harris's "Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World" relays the gripping tale of how the 1880s-era development of Palo Alto and Stanford University began with robber baron Leland Stanford's obsession with profit and horses—and how that attitude still pervades the South Bay culture to this day. (Johny apologizes for cutting off the last line on each page while photocopying the book.)
Conclude the course with a chapter of revisionist history: Despite being declared culturally extinct by Berkeley anthropologist Alfred Kroeber in the twentieth century, Ohlone communities—the indigenous people of the Bay Area—continue to call this land their home. Return native folks to the historical narrative by reading about this pop-up Ohlone restaurant recently opened on the UC Berkeley campus.