Local historian Dorothy Lazard to visit Vallejo’s Alibi Bookshop Saturday

VALLEJO — Public historian Dorothy Lazard will bring her extensive knowledge of local history to Vallejo this Saturday for an event at Alibi Bookshop downtown.

Lazard’s new memoir “What You Don't Know Will Make a Whole New World, has been causing a buzz. She’s been interviewed by KQED and Oaklandside, her book has been reviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle, and made Ms. Magazine’s recommended reading list for May.

“I'm thrilled that now she is the author the Bay Area is coming out to see,” Alibi owner Karen Finlay said. The two collaborated when Lazard was travel librarian at the Oakland Public Library and Finlay worked for Lonely Planet.

“I've been hearing about her book for a long time,” Finlay said. “It's a huge honor to have her come here. When I opened the store we joked that we would have an event for her when her book came out, and here we are!”

In the book, Lazard writes about growing up in Oakland during the tumultuous late 1960’s and early 70’s, her reluctant move from St. Louis, the loss of her parents and how she adapted to new environments.

“I wanted the book to be about my time here in California and how it marked me and how it changed me,” Lazard said. “I also wanted to say something about childhood vulnerabilities, and dependence and interdependence.”

Lazard said she thinks her book also resonates with people from outside the Bay Area. “I just came back from New York and talked to some people who really liked the book because they can identify with that story of a child being moved around and around and not having any agency,” Lazard said. “I wanted to say something about estrangement while also telling a story about me becoming a Californian.”

Lazard spent the last 12 of her 21 years at the Oakland Public Library managing the Oakland History Center. She said she didn’t initially feel prepared to manage what was then called the Oakland history room, because she didn’t know much about how the city was formed.

“But the professional acumen toward history, my interest in history was there,” Lazard said. “I had grown up in the city, so I realized after a short amount of time that actually I had witnessed a lot of its history, myself.”

Lazard said she has worked with all kinds of people: novelists, real estate developers, and people researching family genealogy. “It was always intriguing to me because you never knew what the next question was going to be. Yeah, it was a fun job,” Lazard said.

KQED Forum host Alexis Madrigal introduced Lazard when he interviewed her in January 2022, shortly after her retirement, saying “If I've learned anything in the years that I've been a journalist in the Bay Area, is that on questions of Oakland history, there was one and only one source of truth, and that source is Dorothy Lazard.”

Lazard made the museum's archives more publicly accessible through a grant and a partnership with Calsphere to digitize many of the history center’s documents.

“Once you put things online, people all over the world find out about your collection. We had people coming from Japan and Germany, Australia, and all kinds of places, to tell an Oakland story, to find out about the Black Panthers or redevelopment or anything else that sparked their interest,” Lazard said.

But Lazard wants to debunk the idea that physical libraries are passé because everything is now on the internet. “A mind boggling amount of information is on the internet, but not everything. Working in the Oakland history room taught me that, because very little of our valuable material was online, anywhere,” Lazard said. “We had the only copies of many things that are essential to understanding the story of Oakland, and they weren't online.”

Lazard said that though she loved her work at the museum, she’s enjoying her retirement and the opportunity to get her half-finished manuscripts out of her computer. “I didn't want to work until I was nearly dead, and I've seen some coworkers do that,” Lazard said.

She said the next book she plans to publish is about the American Public Library system, with an emphasis on the Oakland Public Library, and its importance as a social and cultural institution.

“We're in a phase of book banning and restriction, and it's potentially a dangerous time for us if we don't pay attention to what's happening. But I also want to celebrate the people who keep our libraries running, because public libraries are not at the top of any municipal food chain,” Lazard said. “We've seen here in California the closure of not only one library branch, but whole library systems.”

A third book she’s working on is a history of African Americans in Oakland. Lazard said that while that history wouldn’t be complete without the civil rights era of the 60’s and 70’s, the 19th century is equally fascinating. “There's like 100 years of earlier history that I am also planning to tell,” Lazard said. “African Americans have been here since the very start of Oakland as a city.”

Finlay said that Saturday’s event promises to be insightful and educational.

“Dorothy is one of the most interesting people I know — a world traveler, a history expert, a community leader, and terrific storyteller and writer,” Finlay said. “I think so many people in Vallejo will love hearing Dorothy's fascinating stories, and will be enriched by spending an afternoon with her.”

Lazard will be at Alibi Bookshop, 624 Marin St., Vallejo, this Saturday at 3 p.m.