Sepia-Toned Archives

Sepia-Toned Archives is a beautifully articulated memoir that chronicles nearly one hundred years of life in the San Francisco Bay Area, from a bare-bones childhood in the Montclair hills of Oakland during the Great Depression, to masked senior living during the COVID pandemic. As a child, author Bob Wilkinson delighted in the excitement of the San Francisco World's Fair in 1939, which previewed television and celebrated the completion of the Golden Gate and San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridges. Drafted into the Army just after World War II, Wilkinson observed racial tensions and atrocities preceding the 1948 desegregation of the military. A Caucasian man who married a Chinese woman from Hawaii shortly after interracial marriage was legalized in California, Wilkinson recounts with amusement his initiation into multicultural family delicacies, his lifelong love of cooking, and his backpacking adventures with his kids. As a social worker, he bore the responsibility of placing a ten-year-old orphan of the Jonestown Massacre in 1978. Later in life, Wilkinson prioritized anti-war activism, travel adventures, and life as a wood sculptor. Punctuated with poetry and humorous musings on aging, Sepia-Toned Archives is sure to both entertain and enlighten.