It didn't matter that our plane sat stalled on the warm tarmac at Orlando's airport. Frankly I didn't notice when we finally took off. Because I swiftly entered the world of "a Latino neighborhood in San Jose, California," then a "more affluent but quietly hostile white-bread Silicon Valley suburbs being transformed out of all recognition by boom times" led by Caille Millner, author of The Golden Road. So engrossing is this young woman's story that when I forced myself to put down her book and visit the plane's restroom, my seatmate picked up the book to see what it was about.
"For most of us,' writes 27-year-old journalist Millner in her sober, disheartening memoir about upward mobility in northern California, 'Harvard was our first, and possibly last opportunity to be part of a substantial black community."
Millner's been a heart-felt social commentator for some while.
Way back in 1996, she writes presciently about the movie (The American President), "I realized something-- It is about Election 96--yet only a surreal spin on it, the way America wishes its government would behave."
She's written dozens of articles and she wrote her first book at age 16. She co-authored The Promise: How One Woman Made Good on her Extraordinary Pact to Send a Classroom of First Graders to College. She's on the editorial board of my "local" paper, the San Franciscco Chronicle. Today Caille's signing books at Stacey's just five minutes from there.
Her conscience shines through the topics she chooses and I look forward to meeting her one day.
