What You Don’t Know Will Make a Whole New World: A Memoir

by Dorothy Lazard

From one of California's most celebrated librarians and public historians, a coming-of-age memoir about the thirst for knowledge and hometown pride.

Dorothy Lazard grew up in the Bay Area of the 1960s and '70s, surrounded by an expansive network of family, and hungry for knowledge. Here in her first book, she vividly tells the story of her journey to becoming "queen of my own nerdy domain." Today Lazard is celebrated for her distinguished career as a librarian and public historian, and in these pages she connects her early intellectual pursuits--including a formative encounter with Alex Haley--to the career that made her a community pillar. As she traces her trajectory to adulthood, she also explores her personal experiences connected to the Summer of Love, the murder of Emmett Till, the flourishing of the Black Arts Movement, and the redevelopment of Oakland. As she writes with honesty about the tragedies she faced in her youth--including the loss of both parents--Lazard's memoir remains triumphant, animated by curiosity, careful reflection, and deep enthusiasm for life.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Education

224 pages, Paperback

Published May 16, 2023

About the author

Dorothy Lazard was born in St. Louis and grew up in San Francisco and Oakland. A librarian for forty years, she joined the staff of the Oakland Public Library in 2000. From 2009 until her retirement in 2021, she was the head librarian of OPL’s Oakland History Center, where she encouraged people of all ages and backgrounds to explore local history. She lives in Oakland.

Reviews

[Reyna · Rating 5 out of 5]

A memoir worth reading

Dorothy Lazard’s memoir is a fantastic remembrance. She was steeped in so much family, so much dysfunction, so much trauma - so many things that strongly shaped her young active nerd mind. Things I didn’t grapple with until I was in college.

What a tale that will inspire so many generations. It was wonderful to read about my beloved Bay Area. Bravo to my Castlemont and USC schoolmate! I look forward to more!!

[Eli · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is there to say? I devoured this memoir in which historian and librarian, Dorothy Lazard, recounts her youth written from a young person's perspective. I recently had seen her speak at two different author talks, and finally sat down to read the book. I finished it in less than two days. I might be biased as a librarian and someone who now lives in Oakland, but it resonated with me as a person who also remembers a lot of their childhood and spent a lot of it being curious and getting in trouble like her, yet also as a person who wants to be a writer. Reading this has motivated me to not give up on writing but also to continue learning about the history of my family. Dorothy Lazard has managed to capture the essence, pain, and complexities of childhood.

[Natalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone’s favorite Oakland librarian wrote a memoir!

[Wyndy KnoxCarr · Rating 5 out of 5]

from “Healing Self, Others, the World,” Knox Book Beat, The Berkeley Times, 24 August, 2023

Dorothy Lazard’s What You Don’t Know Will Make a Whole New World: A Memoir, from Heyday Press, Berkeley, tells a “Negro” St. Louis girl’s journey to life in San Francisco and Oakland during the 1960s and 70s where she astutely puzzled her way through many aspects of the laundry list of cultural woes

(racism, childhood and adult trauma, sexism, gender bias, climate disaster, police militarism, domestic abuse, physical and mental illness, poverty, immigrant and native genocides, legal and political corruption)

afflicting humans then and now. She survived.

These challenges in her family and world, however, come to us through the eyes and heart of a defiantly authentic, sharply intelligent and sensitively perceptive little girl becoming a young woman, and her family who did their best to make her “stay out of grown folks’ business.”
But she was CURIOUS, SMART and BRAVE.

She had a stint in an all-white Catholic Orphanage, reuniting with her extended family, discovering the Public Library, the power of the written word and fueling her persistent curiosity as she traversed different Black/white strict/loose neighborhoods and school systems that taught her far more than the Three Rs. Maybe Resilience, Racial/familial Realities and Resourcing Refuges from loneliness, poverty, violence and prejudice. And Risking the courage and self-esteem to keep on seeking them.

Uncle Shirley, MaDear, Mr. Bear, Aunt Ri, Sarah, Mam’Ella are all there in full, human complexity. A theater of mixed curious, inspiring, loyal, earthy as well as sometimes absent, negligent, creepy and awful caregivers; “the wrong crowd,” teachers, friends and mentors open up in love, joy, pain and all-too-human frailties. We live through the assassinations of President Kennedy and Dr. King, the Vietnam War as well as “Soul Train” and Billy Dee Williams on TV with “a girl like me, who wanted nothing more than fresh air and freedom.”

Among the “many layers of peace…hippies…church folk…antiwar protestors…Violence seemed to creep into all corners of life during my fifth-grade year…” “student protests, race riots…Paris…Prague…Olympic victory stands.” “It seemed everybody was warring for control of somebody or something – a country’s resources, a government, a classroom, or a curfew… tangible things like land, and intangible things like honor and decency.” Lazard “tells it like it is,” and tells it like it was.

Well done, well done! She survived. And made HER OWN world, too.

https://www.heydaybooks.com/authors/d...
Heyday site – “A librarian for forty years, she joined the staff of the Oakland Public Library in 2000. From 2009 until her retirement in 2021, she was the head librarian of OPL’s Oakland History Center, where she encouraged people of all ages and backgrounds to explore local history.”

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really, 4.5, but that's not an option.
Lazard's coming of age story is, as it should be, personal: Hauled at 8 1/2 or so from St. Louis to the Bay area (San Francisco, then Oakland) where she's plunged into a larger family she didn't know existed; ripped from her mother's care to that of her grandmother who can't see any profit in the child's drive to read but somehow holds an extended family together. Before long, her mother dies and then her grandmother; she's repeatedly sexually assaulted while living with an aunt. But she's nurtured by school and by the library and - here's where the personal also becomes the public and the political and in some ways the universal - and by the civil rights movement and especially the Black power movement.
Lazard stops, as a coming of age story ought, as she moves out into the world, graduating from high school and heading for USC (and then, per a couple-of-page afterword, back to the Bay area and graduate degrees and a career at the Oakland Public Library.
A couple of gaps remain. One wonders, for instance, what finally happened to her brother. Still, a damn fine story, well told.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great Coming-of Age memoir that begins with the author’s immediate family moving from St. Louis to the San Francsico during the Summer of Love. It is a tumultuous time in society and also with Lazard’s family. Her mother, MaDear, is no longer able to care for her children due to poor health. The imperious Ella Baskin, grandmother Mam’Ella took Lazard, her brother and mother into her home and expected them to comply with her rigid rules. It was a time when Black history was not widely taught in school, and “the only Negro who appeared in our lesson in California history was James Beckwith.”
Told through a child’s eyes, Lazard shows how she grew cognizant of “many layers of peace” and “a steady diet of large and small wars.” Discovering the public library offered her a respite from her volatile home, and the realization that Black girls could be writers.
Like many girls and women of that time period, Lazard experienced misogyny and unwanted sexual advances from a relative, and the realization that "children who sit on the fringes of families are vulnerable to predators."
This tale is eloquent and important in the contemporary canon of Black literature

[Kate Belt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the author’s coming of age story, late 60s to early 70s, Bay area. It’s an insightful look at being Black in that place and in that era. There are deep dives into the movie industry and into the neighborhood cultures of San Francisco & Oakland. It’s a story of family tragedy, community, and resilience. She’s an excellent writer, and I would like to hear more of her life story. Hoping she gives us another memoir about her college and career experiences.

[Terry94705]

A very moving and personal book. I loved reading about the author’s childhood transport to San Francisco and Oakland and her mix of shyness and adventuresomeness. (Must be a shorter word for that.) A very different experience from mine, but I love the tingle you get from a book when you’ve walked the same streets.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read about an interesting woman. Begins in St. Louis when she was about 9 years old and continues in the San Francisco, California area where she, her 13-year old brother and her mother were taken by her maternal grandmother. Runs, mostly, through her school years until she graduated from high school and went on to college.

[Constance Chevalier · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading about growing up in SF but especially about growing up in the 70s in East Oakland. She attended Castlemont HS where my mother was a Counselor. Just three years older than her, it was fun to relive all those events.

[Zack]

I liked this book a lot. Dorothy is a very likable and relatable person. Excellent and fun way to learn some San Francisco / East Bay history though a unique lens.

[Marcia Chapman · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was easy to get caught up into young Dorothy's life. I learned a lot about growing up on the edges.

[Kristin Dwelley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must-read for anyone who identifies as an Oaklander.

[Betsy]

recommended in UC Berkeley Library newsletter

[Jess Ninneman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written memoir about perseverance and the importance of books and education.

[WAYNE DIAMOND · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uplifting book/Memoir of an Oakland Librarian. Teenage years in Oakland growing up with usual teenage angst, no real adult models for guidance, but for the help and support of an older sister Sarah. Both parents died at an early age. She went on to aspire to become a writer. Might be a good book for YA and teenagers to understand adversity and overcoming obstacles.