Tripmaster Monkey in the Hollow City of SF

Rebecca Solnit’s Hollow City deals with the gentrification of the old bohemian San Francisco. Between the displacement of people’s homes and jobs by the upper class, and the incoming age of technology and corporations, San Francisco lost its uniqueness, being replaced by a more typical and unoriginal capitalist, and upper class run society. In doing this, all the hard working and lower class artists and individuals were forced out of their homes and neighborhoods, for their inability to afford the increased prices of living. Hollow City projects the end of life for bohemians and it’s miserable consequences for American culture, showing the great city of San Francisco disappearing and turning into “another sector of corporate monoculture” (Ferlinghetti), when San Francisco used to be so celebrated by it’s multiculturalism and diversity.
Tripmaster Monkey, by Maxine Hong Kingston, tells a story of a young Asian-American boy, just out of college, trying to survive as an artist in the city of San Francisco. As an aspiring poet and playwright, Whitman Ah Sing is living the life of the bohemian artist that is being displaced in Hollow City. He is also dealing with the cultural dilemma of being a bi-racial male in America. Lucky for him, he is living in one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world, but it is slowly being taken over by corporations and upper class citizens trying to glamorize and spruce up their city to enhance tourism and the image of San Francisco itself. Whitman is among the cultural and economic change that is occurring, and the novel shows the struggles of working hard in a developing city to become what he wants and dreams, despite the hardships.
Both of these books deals with the gentrification of the city, and the idea that San Francisco went from being a multicultural and distinctive city with free love and art everywhere, to a more corporate city run by the rich people that inhabit it. This whole process was, and still is, making it extremely difficult for lower class working artists and musicians to make it on the streets, a place they were forced to be, since they are no longer able to afford the living expenses of the newly exclusive and corporate city.