Sara (Sarasue) French

New York, NY  (Inwood)

[email protected]

Posted 5/7/18

My life has been independent and largely solitary. I’ve pursued my own interests and followed no particular plan. So, for example, I left college after my freshman year.

Immediately after starting that leave I did a bit of campaign work, helping elect Floyd Fithian to Congress, the first Democrat to represent our district since 1935. (It was 1974, after all, the height of Watergate.) Then I moved to California and worked for two Alinsky-esque community organizations.

I’m glad I took a break before pursuing higher education. Going straight through an Ivy League university, after having been raised in a university town, might have further blinkered my world view. But the Bay Area opened my eyes. Such a mix of people, challenging everything!

After five years working for community groups in California, I returned to Harvard to finish my degree. Several years of working as a temp in Boston’s many academic institutions, hospitals, insurance companies, advertising agencies, architectural firms, consultancies, start-ups and law firms followed. This allowed me to finance a year-long backpacking trip around the world. I traveled solo, naturally.

When I landed at Logan Airport in 1986, the Immigration agent looked at my well-stamped passport and said, “Welcome home!” It was a different time, and I remember it fondly.

While traveling, I’d applied to what was then the Radcliffe Publishing Course. Immediately on my return I was immersed in that and, after finishing, packed up my cute Somerville apartment, which I’d sublet for the duration of my travels, and moved to New York City, where I’d landed a job at a trade magazine.

By 1990 I was off again, accompanying a fellow journalist to Japan, where he’d grown up a biracial child in post-war Tokyo. We settled there—he at Reuters and I at Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the Japanese equivalent of Dow Jones. I worked in “Kokusai Ni-Bu” (the “Second International Department,” where international news was covered in English; the First International Department covered similar turf in Japanese).

Although my partner was trilingual (English, Japanese, Mandarin), I was blighted by monolingualism. So after a couple of years we moved to Hong Kong, then a British colony full of English speakers.

The city’s long-planned return to Chinese rule loomed just four years away, in 1997. Oddly enough, a Chinese-language-newspaper baron in Hong Kong chose that time to launch a new English-language paper. The British were taking an uncharacteristic interest in equipping the colony with democratic institutions. And the people themselves were ambivalent about Beijing’s impending governance. In short, it was a great time to be a journalist in Hong Kong.

In fact, I’d say those first 10 years in Asia were probably the best years of my life.

Over time, however, my romantic relationship became less romantic, and my partner became my former partner. In 2008 I returned to New York, where the newspaper industry was in shambles. Advertising had disappeared. Media organizations were struggling. I had trouble finding work.

From New York I’ve kept a close eye on Hong Kong. Ever since the Handover, Beijing has used united-front tactics to increase its power and put off political reforms promised as far back as 1984. Finally, in October 2014, the pressure in Hong Kong boiled over, and I watched from afar as pro-democracy demonstrators occupied many of the city’s main thoroughfares, rendering them impassable for 79 days. That’s a long time. Put another way, it’s more than 11 weeks, more than two and a half months. It was an exhilarating but divisive period.

And it still is. Every day, I think of the Hong Kong people, trying to forge a democratic future for themselves.

As I have these thoughts, I am in New York, trying to forge a fulfilling and sustainable future for myself. This is not easy in an industry without a workable business model or for a loner like me (that is, “a journalist from the other side of the planet” … picture, if you can, the John Sayles film “The Brother from Another Planet” 😉).

All of which is to say that I’ve spent a decade stringing together multiple part-time jobs that weren’t covering the bills. But things are looking up! Eight months ago I landed a full-time job (not in journalism but with excellent health insurance). And although retirement seems nearly impossible, having the time and money to attend our 50th reunion does not. So I’ll see you then.

In the meantime, have fun in June.

I wish you all well