UC Santa Cruz

“Fog City Roast: The Worlding Power of the Coffeehouse and its Influence on San Francisco Bay Area Literature and Culture” re-evaluates twentieth-century Bay Area literature and culture in light of the enduring agency that Coffea arabica exercises through its social nexus, the coffeehouse. This versatile, influential space has been brewing literature and resistance in the San Francisco Bay Area since the mid-twentieth century, yet critical narratives of the Bay Area’s postmodern culture continue to overlook the driving force that fuels much of this intellectual output – the coffee shrub. I evaluate the transformative energy with which Coffea infuses coffeehouses and their dwellers. I then trace this world-making, coffeehouse culture through the Beat generation, the “San Francisco Sound,” and the Free Speech, Gay Liberation, Black Arts, and Chicano Power movements. I argue that wresting the narratives of Bob Kaufman, Joan Baez, Jerry Garcia, Janis Joplin, Ntozake Shange, Harvey Milk, Gloria Anzaldúa and other writers, artists, activists, and theorists from their conventional genres and reuniting them as “coffee studies” delivers a robust body of narratives with a bold message and indicates a collaborative way forward in an increasingly fragmented society.