Crosscurrents

Today, an East Bay author channels the monsters of injustice into a new horror novel. Then, one bookstore owner is helping people connect and envision brighter futures.

In the novel, “The Curse of Hester Gardens” a Black mother lives in a Michigan housing project with her teen sons. She’s raising them alone while her husband serves time in prison. 

Hester Gardens is haunted and cursed.. But not just by ghosts. Injustices like systemic oppression, poverty, and gun violence have also become monsters in the residents' lives. 

Tamika Thompson is the author of  “The Curse of Hester Gardens.” She is from Detroit and now lives in the East Bay. She talked with KALW’s Jeneé Darden, host of the Sights and Sounds show. In this excerpt from their conversations, she reflects on how her personal experience witnessing gun violence growing up in Detroit inspired her book.

Black horror can be informed by past trauma and that sometimes gives us glimpses of the future. In Octavia Butler’s classic 1993 book “Parable of the Sower,” natural disasters are on the rise, people are vanishing, and America just became “Great Again.” 

Today, some people are looking to genres like Black horror and Afro-Futurism as a guide for the times. In this story from 2025, Reporter Kristal Raheem went to meet Isis Asare owner of Sistah Sci-Fi bookstore, who’s helping people navigate our present day reality with speculative fiction. 

Note: Sistah SciFi has a LOT going on, including another event honoring Octavia Butler’s legacy at the San Francisco Library's main branch this Sunday at 2pm. 

The Bay Area Video Coalition has had a big impact on local media for half a century. Now it looks to the future. Then, the story of a Liberian immigrant’s first encounters with American life. From Liberia, to a pioneering Oakland dance company.

If you’ve made media art in the Bay Area sometime in the last fifty years… you probably know the Bay Area Video Coalition: BAVC. Around 2,500 students and media makers of various ages take classes at BAVC every year. And BAVC artists have received Oscar nominations, and won Emmys!

One of their students was KALW’s Jeneé Darden, who is now the host of the Sights and Sounds show. To mark their 50th anniversary, she recently spoke to BAVC executive director, Paula Smith Arrigoni, and Caron Creighton, an instructor at BAVC. In this excerpt from their conversation they talk about how quickly the media landscape is changing, and what media training and education look like today, looking to the future.

June is National Immigrant Heritage Month. And that brings us to another legacy Bay Area arts institution was founded by immigrants from west Africa: Diamano Coura West African Dance Company in Oakland. Founded by award winning artistic directors,  Zakarya and Naomi Diouf,  
They've been performing and teaching dance from Western and Central Africa since 1975. 

Over the decades, Diamano Coura dancers have hailed from countries like Senegal, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo… Next we’ll share one of our favorite stories, from my first years at KALW - about one of their dancers who immigrated from Liberia.

Karsumo Massaquoi loved, and lived, to dance. But, he almost didn’t survive to do either. 

Immigrant artists have a big impact on their adopted countries, but many also leave a legacy in their countries of origin. Daisy Zamora has been a foundational force of poetry here in San Francisco… but before she left her home of Nicaragua she was an active combatant in the movement to topple the Somoza dictatorship in the early 70’s.

Today she is a professor of Latina/Latino Studies at San Francisco State. Here, Bay Poets host Josiah Luis Alderete reads her poem ’Another Time,’ that was published in 1992.

Today, we explore a series that captures San Francisco at the height of the AIDS epidemic. It's a conversation with the host of “When We All Get To Heaven.” Then, we visit the Bay Area’s first women’s sports bar- Rikki’s. Plus, a poem about found family. 

Pride Month is a time to celebrate accomplishments of LGBTQ+ individuals, and commemorate the ongoing fight for the whole community to gain equality and justice. It’s also a time to remember and honor those we’ve lost. That includes the millions of people that have died of AIDS-related illness.

That’s the aim of the Peabody award winning documentary project, ‘When We All Get To Heaven.’ With archival tape it tells the story of one of the first gay-positive churches, the Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco during the height of the AIDS crisis in the 80s and 90s. 

The 10 episode series brings to life a community facing personal, social, and political trials, including the deaths of hundreds of its members. It premiered in October 2025. And KALWs Crosscurrents host Hana Baba spoke with the host and co-creator of the series Lynne Gerber. 

In June 2025, San Francisco welcomed its first women's sports bar: Rikki’s! In honor of Rikki’s first anniversary, here’s the story of how it came to be, from the host of Bounce, KALW’s Erin Lim.