Evelyn C. White

Dec 27

Writer—September through December ’19

Based In Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Q: You had a previous relationship with Peleh’s co-founder, Jane Gottesman. How did you meet?

A: When I arrived at Prince Street, I came full circle in terms of a relationship between two young women who had met back in the mid-1980s.

I was a staff reporter at the Chronicle in those days. Back then, there were distinctive demarcations between reporters and copy clerks, and never the two shall meet.

I had written a story about teen pregnancy, and how programs for teen parents often failed because only one person engaged in the parenthood situation was a teenager. One day a woman, a copy clerk, showed up at my desk and said, “I liked what you wrote. Can I follow you around?” This had never happened before. She wasn’t intimidated by the construct of separation between reporters and copy clerks, nor was she intimidated by issues of race. I learned that she was in the sports department, which was in a different part of the news building. I liked her energy and independence, and her initiative. That was Jane.

Q: So you stayed in touch after that?

A: Over the years Jane and I corresponded periodically. And before I came to the residency, she had even hosted a reception for me. Then one day I got a call about possibly coming to Prince Street. Three weeks before I was supposed to go, however, I injured my leg, and I was in a cast until shortly before I arrived. Jane said she wanted to pick me up at the airport, and she did on what I remember being a hot and humid night.

Q: Connecting with an earlier creative moment in your life, and a person who was part of that, seemed to be an important part of the residency.

A: I’m not one of those writers who have been on someone’s clock since about 1995. I don’t need to clear time to write. I’ve been carving out that kind of time from my life since I left the Chronicle to write my biography of Alice Walker. What the residency allowed me, however, was a return to an earlier time that had been formative in terms of my journalism, including getting to see the growth of this young woman, Jane, who had been my friend and colleague at the newspaper. It was wonderful to get to know her anew, to meet her family and see her interact with them. The experience was uplifting and inspiring.

Q: Many residents, even those who might have lived in the Bay Area previously, talk about seeing the area anew when they stay at Prince Street.

A: I had previously lived not far from Prince Street, on Alcatraz Avenue in Rockridge. So the neighborhood was very familiar. One of the things I realized walking around the neighborhood is that I had never really seen the redwood trees. If I did see them before, I took no notice. I was extremely taken by the foliage and landscape, so much so that one day, walking back to Prince Street, I almost walked right into someone else’s house.

Q: Tell us more about the writing you did when you were here.

A: In terms of my writing, I had been working on a non-fiction book about a pioneering lesbian writer, Jane Rule, who left the states in the 1950s and settled in Vancouver. She wrote a landmark lesbian novel called Desert of the Heart, which was made into a film, Desert Hearts, in 1985. I was able to interview one of the investors in that film, and it turned out to be a pivotal interview.

I also had a chance to visit with Alice Walker several times. This was another full-circle moment. I had spent a decade writing her life story, and had already returned once before when my biography of her was published. But this time I was really able to celebrate our journey together as subject and biographer.

For decades, Evelyn C. White has written incisively about health, literature, family, and community, with an emphasis on the experience of African-American women. While a reporter with the San Francisco Chronicle, White wrote Chain, Chain, Change: For Black Women in Abusive Relationships, and edited the anthology The Black Women's Health Book: Speaking for Ourselves, with contributions from Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker. She may be best known as the author of the highly regarded biography Alice Walker: A Life, the first biography about the landmark American author. White also wrote the foreword to Black like Us: A Century of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual African American Fiction.