UC Berkeley Library

“Chao qualified, in no uncertain terms, as a genius.” ✨
— The Believer magazine on Cal professor + linguist Yuen Ren Chao

Chao, born on this day in 1892:

🇨🇳 Is known as China’s founder of modern linguistics

🍄 Translated “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” into Chinese, keeping the playful, whimsical language

🥟 Helped coin the terms “pot sticker” and “stir-fry”

The multitalented linguist died in 1982 at age 89, but his legacy lives on at the UC Berkeley Library.

The Bancroft Library’s materials on Chao include his diaries, manuscripts, and correspondence, and interviews with the beloved polyglot.

Have you heard of Yuen Ren Chao? ⤵️🗣️

📝 Explore Chao’s papers.
🔗 ucberk.li/chao-papers

🗣️ Read Chao’s interviews.
🔗 ucberk.li/chao-ohc

Nine lives, and they’re all spent in Moffitt. 🐈😻🐾🎃🍂

These Halloween costumes gave us paws. A+, no notes.

Happy spooky season to all the cats, ghouls, and, yes, Bears who treat us to their presence every day! 🫶🐻🍬

What’s your costume this year? ⤵️

“¡Sí, se puede!” ✊🍓🌾🕊️
Rest in peace, Dolores Huerta (1930-2026).

Huerta was a trailblazing civil rights activist, feminist, and labor leader.

In the 1960s, she co-founded the United Farm Workers union, which improved working conditions for generations of agricultural laborers.

She is credited with coining the phrase “¡Sí, se puede!” — translated as “Yes, it can be done!” or “Yes, we can!” The refrain started as a rallying cry for the UFW but has since been taken up by activists around the world.

“Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world,” Huerta once said. 🌎

Huerta died today at age 96. Her legacy lives on at the Library, which holds photographs, books, interviews, and other documentation of the activist and her impact.

Do you have any memories of Dolores Huerta? ⤵️
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📸: Photographic Print Files of the Fang Family San Francisco Examiner Photograph Archive, BANC PIC 2006.029--PIC carton P370, folder: Huerta, Dolores, The Bancroft Library

As UC Berkeley students in the 1960s, they fought for free speech. 🗣️✊🚓🕊️
Now, Anita Medal and Lynne Hollander Savio are keeping the memory of the movement alive.

On the third floor of the Carol T. Christ Center for Connected Learning at Moffitt Library, the Free Speech Movement Café is bigger than before, with refreshed photographs, art, and furniture.

The cafe’s renovation was made possible by fellow Cal alum Stephen M. Silberstein, who, along with Medal and Savio, selected photos to grace the reimagined space.

Medal and Savio had known each other as students but grew closer after the 1996 death of Mario Savio, Lynne Hollander Savio’s husband and the movement’s best-known leader.

We chatted with the two friends about their experiences in the movement (and in jail), the ongoing fight for free speech, and their advice for students carrying the torch.

“You have free speech — if you can keep it,” Lynne Hollander Savio said. “It’s a constant battle.”

🔗 Read the Q&A: ucberk.li/fsm-cafe

The Free Speech Movement started this month in 1964. Do you have any memories from that moment in Cal history? ⤵️

“In a time of destruction, create something.” ⚔️🌱
Happy 86th birthday to Cal alum Maxine Hong Kingston! 💐🐻

The child of Chinese immigrants, Kingston was born in Stockton in 1940, the third of eight kids.

Her father, Tom Hong, had left China for better opportunities in the United States but was prevented from legally entering the country under the Chinese Exclusion Act. He tried entering the U.S. from Cuba multiple times before finally succeeding.

A savvy gambler, Hong once won $600 in Manhattan’s Chinatown from a man with the same last name. The man didn’t have the cash, so Hong accepted his visa papers as payment. He used the papers to bring his wife to the U.S.

Kingston attended UC Berkeley, graduating in 1962 with a bachelor’s degree in English.

“The Woman Warrior,” her most famous work, is a genre-blurring feminist magnum opus that blends memoir with Chinese folklore. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction, was named one of the best works of nonfiction of the 1970s by Time magazine, and earned acclaim and readership around the world.

In 1990, Kingston became a creative writing lecturer at UC Berkeley, where she is currently a professor emerita.

She was presented the 2013 National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama.

Kingston’s papers — including personal journals, photos, notes, correspondence with notable authors (such as Joan Didion and Jessica Hagedorn), and more — are held at The Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley.

Do you have any memories of Kingston or her work? ⤵️
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📸: Jocelyn Augustino/National Endowment for the Arts

We don’t mean to be Hokie — but does Virginia Tech have libraries like these? 💙🐻😍🏛️

Here’s our ultimate guide to Homecoming:

🏈 Prep for Cal to gobble the Hokies

🏛️ Tour our stunning libraries

🇲🇽 Visit exhibits on student activism, Mexican printmaking, and more

🍗 Watch feathers fly at Memorial Stadium

🎉 Celebrate!

Don’t be shy — swing by the libraries, and bring your family and friends! (Parents love us.)

🔗 ucberk.li/homecoming-2026

Tell us your game predictions! ⤵️

Do you remember the Free Speech Movement? 🗣️📰🏛️
On this day in 1964, UC Berkeley witnessed a flashpoint in the fight for free speech.

Cal alum Jack Weinberg was distributing civil rights literature on Sproul Plaza. The problem? Political activity on campus was strictly forbidden. University officials and a police officer approached Weinberg, warning him that he was running afoul of the rules.

After refusing to identify himself, Weinberg was placed under arrest and carried to the police car parked on the plaza, which soon became flooded with hundreds of students.

For the next 32 hours, Weinberg sat in the cruiser. One by one, student activists turned the car’s roof into a makeshift soapbox, addressing the crowd from atop the vehicle.

The first person to climb onto the car was a tall man with dark slacks and a checkered sports coat.

“My name is Mario Savio,” he went on to say. “I’m one of the people who have been meeting with the deans here to see if we can have freedom of speech at the University of California.”

The struggle spilled into the months that followed and included the largest mass arrest in state history, during a sit-in at Sproul Hall. But Oct. 1 marked a turning point in the visibility and student support of the cause.

The students’ activism ultimately ended in victory: Berkeley’s Academic Senate voted to lift restrictions on the content of speech on campus. The saga at Berkeley went on to inspire students fighting for change across the country.

The memory of the movement is preserved in the Library’s collections, which include photographs, documents, and oral histories. At Moffitt Library, the Free Speech Movement Café’s walls tell the story of the struggle.

Were you on campus in 1964? Drop your memories below! ⤵️
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📸: Michael Rossman Free Speech Movement Photographs, BANC PIC 2000.067:18, The Bancroft Library

“No one is ever alone with their thoughts.”
— Rowan Ricardo Phillips

The Library’s beloved Lunch Poems series returns Oct. 1 with acclaimed poet Rowan Ricardo Phillips, author of “The Ground,” “Heaven,” “Living Weapon,” and “Silver.”

Join us in Morrison Library for the first reading of the 2026-27 season and a new year of poetry at the heart of campus.

🗓️ Thursday, Oct. 1
🕰️ 12:10 p.m.
📍 Morrison Library (inside Doe Library)

Free and open to the public.

➡️ ucberk.li/lunch-poems

“What gets remembered is determined by who is in the room doing the remembering.” 🕊️
— Betty Reid Soskin (1921-2025), the nation’s oldest park ranger

Soskin — who would have turned 105 today — brought untold Black history to light, and inspired future generations.

In 1942, she tried to join the war effort in the boilermakers’ union, which helped build ships in the port of Richmond. But the union was segregated, and she was relegated to sorting index cards.

Combining her passions for music and justice, Soskin became active in the Civil Rights Movement, writing and performing songs for the cause.

In 2000, she was invited to help plan the launch of the Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond. She was the only person of color in the room, she later said.

She became a ranger in the park in 2007, at age 85, narrating guided bus tours, sharing overlooked stories, and making history accessible for everyone.

Even when off duty, Soskin was often seen wearing her ranger uniform.

“I am making every little girl of color aware of a career choice she may not have known she had,” she said.

In 2022, at age 100, she hung up her hat, retiring as a park ranger.

Soskin passed away last year, but her memory lives on at the UC Berkeley Library. In interviews with the Oral History Center, she reflects on art, life, activism, and education. (Link in comments.)

Thank you, Betty, for being in that room — and for remembering. 🫶

Do you have any memories of Betty Reid Soskin? ⤵️
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📸: Luther Bailey/National Park Service

This island nation is still reckoning with nuclear disaster — and you may not even know it. 🌏💙
A new exhibit tells a story of resilience.

During the Cold War, the United States detonated 67 nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands, rendering atolls uninhabitable and leaving health impacts lasting generations.

In 2023, 30 international artists, writers, scientists, and filmmakers traveled 450 nautical miles across the country with members of its Indigenous communities.

That expedition was not one to witness ruin, but a return: an act of honoring ancestral lands, the struggles of those who came before, and the enduring presence of Marshallese life. 🇲🇭

Want to bear witness?

The exhibit — “Kōmij Mour Ijin / Our Life Is Here” — chronicles the voyage and a legacy still unfolding.

Share this with someone who should know this story. 💙

📍 Brown Gallery, Doe Library
🗓️ Through March 2, 2027
🎟️ Free
🔗 ucberk.li/our-life-is-here
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📸 Clockwise from top: Jami Smith/UC Berkeley Library; film stills from “Kōmij Mour Ijin / Our Life Is Here” by David Buckland, 2025