Arts Feature

In documentary photographer and filmmaker Ken Light’s new book, Soul City: Oakland, U.S.A., 120 black-and-white photographs tell the story of the people of West Oakland. Covering the years from 1974-1976 and viewed through the lens of 2026,...

Frederick Noland is the unofficial oracle of lesser-known stories about Black people in America, and especially in the Bay Area. As an Oakland-based visual storyteller, the New Yorker cartoonist and California College of the Arts adjunct professor...

On Jan. 20, 2026, the White House posted a press release with the dubious headline: “365 WINS IN 365 DAYS: President Trump’s Return Marks New Era of Success, Prosperity.” For some Americans, each one of those “wins”...

Everyone knows a kid who spends her entire weekly allowance on comic books, or a child constantly scolded for “doodling” instead of doing homework. Then, there’s the immigrant family in America in which the parents speak only...

Two things guide the work of comedian Amy Miller: holding to one’s ethics and fighting to protect one’s community—values the Bay Area native learned in part from the punk scene at 924 Gilman. Now she brings her...

More than 65% of the members of the Black Panther Party were women. Women of all ages, many of them young—teenagers, even. They taught at community schools, registering voters, handing out free food and running free medical...

As Oakland’s always-innovative West Edge Opera gears up for the 2026 season in August, two of its choices this year look back in time to spotlight the lives of people who defied society’s rigid sexual categories—and were,...