Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The first suggestion would be to establish a Jack London Room at the main branch of the
Oakland Public Library, not dedicated merely to Mr. London, but to East Bay writers in general.
The library already has an Oakland History Room that includes some of Jack Londons writings,
but that tends to get hidden in a venue that is dedicated to all of Oaklands history. I would
suggest setting up a second room that both contracts and expands on that idea-opening up to a
collection for the entire East Bay, while limiting the focus to writers only.
In that way, we could both a collection of Jack Londons writings, but the writings of other wellknown authors with East Bay ties as well (people like Frank Norris, Amy Tan, Ishmael Reed,
Terry McMillan, Michael Chabon, Jessica Mitford, and Joaquin Miller come immediately to
mind).
In addition, I would include in an Oakland Library Jack London Room written work by various
writers which highlights and concentrates on the effects of racism and ways to combat it, perhaps
in the spirit of the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. Londons racism,
then, could be seen in context, and not just left out there unacknowledged.
Another suggestion, since we are talking about museums, would be a revival of the old Jack
London Museum itself. There once was such a museum, operated by a private group out of the
old Jack London Village. The private group went under and the museum closed sometime before
the City of Oakland razed the Village, and despite promises that the museum would be relocated
and reopened, that appears to have never happened. So to this day, except for that sad, lonely
statue staring out on the estuary next to Scotts and the surrounding square that has little, if
anything, to do with Jack London, Oakland has no destination magnet for its most famous
citizen.
An Oakland Jack London Museum probably cant hope to compete with the museum in the Jack
London State Park up in Glen Ellen, located in the last house that he and his wife occupied. But I
think that can be made into a positive rather than a problem.
First, in much the same way as I would suggest expanding a proposed Jack London Room at the
Oakland Public Library to include anti-racist studies, I would suggest expanding a proposed new
Jack London Museum to include not only Jack London artifacts from his days in Oakland and
the East Bay, but replications of the East Bay communities as they were around the turn of the
last century, when Mr. London lived here, concentrating in part on those communities that Mr.
Londons writings looked down upon. There were thriving African-American and ChineseAmerican communities in the East Bay at the turn of the 20th century. Placing replications of
those communities next to, say, one of Mr. Londons oyster pirate sloops or the saloon where he
hung out would help us understand more of Mr. London, and the times in which he lived. (The
Oakland Museum showed how that type of juxtaposition might be done in its recent Vietnam
War exhibit, giving equal weight and perspective to both sides of the conflict.)
A third suggestion would be an Oakland-based Jack London Writers Conference, complete with
a writing contest that solicited entries both from those who are working right now towards a
professional career, as well as area high school students. Race and racism, once more, could be a
suggested theme that would help in both the understanding of Mr. Londons work, as well as
ameliorating the harm some of his work helped to perpetuate. The East Bay is awash in both
professional writers who could serve as facilitators and colleges that might be induced to sign on
as co-sponsors (the Peralta Community College District, Cal State East Bay, and UC Berkeley,
for example). Holding such a conference would both encourage Oaklands own sense of itself as
a literary centerwhich it certainly could be, if it wanted toas well as change the citys
negative image among folks not familiar with the city.
Such Oakland problems as the long-known but little-discussed racist side of Jack London are not
insurmountable. What it takes for Oaklands revival is less money thrown at developers, and
more imagination. Since Oakland has not so much of the former, and more than enough of the
latter, this shouldnt end up being nearly as much trouble as we seem to be making it.