It is with a heavy heart that we share with you the news that Professor Kathleen Feinblum passed away on September 26, 2020. 
Kathleen was an accomplished writer and an English professor at Skyline College for 25 years. She is deeply loved, appreciated, and will be missed by her colleagues in Language Arts and the entire campus community.

The full obituary can be viewed at https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sfgate/obituary.aspx?n=kathleen-feinblum&pid=196896380.

Our deepest condolences go out to Kathleen’s family and friends and all her colleagues at Skyline College.

 

Several weeks ago, I ordered your book, Samba Dreamers, from Amazon (it was through a third party—a used bookstore, I promise!).  

I wanted to read something of yours. I’ve heard you read your poetry aloud, but I wanted to read your novel. I don’t know if you know but my whole life I’ve been obsessed with Hollywood. Especially classic Hollywood, movie stars, black and white films, technicolor musicals. Maybe it's because I was a creative gay kid, or maybe living in the shadow of LA. I was once crowned the youngest Champion of the Silver Screen Edition of Trivial Pursuit (in my little suburb of San Diego our local theater group had a fund-raiser Trivial Pursuit Championship). 

Most of my writing, at least the serious writing, has been about film, about Hollywood, and especially about the people on the fringes and margins of Hollywood. The people who dream about getting there but never do, or it’s not what they expected when they do get there. The people behind the scenes.

My long in progress novel is about a John Wayne film being shot in the Utah desert in the 1950s. So not technically in Hollywood but it’s about movies and Hollywood people. About the native American tribe, the Shivwits, who become extras in the film. About the townspeople—St. George, Utah—who are swept up in the glamour, the excitement, the illusion of Hollywood. One of these days I’ll finish it. 

Anyway, I write this to tell you I finished your book. I loved it. I loved Jose and his journey. I love that he drove a Hollywood tour bus—I have taken many of those! And Rosea… she frustrated, devastated, and ultimately moved me so much! I didn’t want the book to end. I know it’s a cliché thing to say but it’s true. Your book was a wonderful, beautiful, lively, smart, sad, funny, strange, nostalgic, escape for this boy (ok, I guess I’m a man now) who has spent his whole life in love with anything Hollywood, anything classic cinema, anything movies. 

I wish I had talked to you about movies, about Hollywood, about Carmen Miranda and Ricky Ricardo (as a young boy, I used to have a crush on Ricky Ricardo! Hmm, that probably explains why I have rarely dated white guys). 

I could have spent hours with you talking about these things. But I didn’t. I’m so sorry about that.  

But I’m happy to know that I have this connection with you. I hope you don’t mind me saying that. But after reading your book, I feel connected to you. I feel I know you more. And I hope, with this letter, that you have come to know who I am, just a little more. 

While reading your book I wrote notes in it, wrote in the margins, underlined passages—I know it’s wrong to write in books but I don’t care! There is so much in it that I wanted to remember, to go back to. 

This one, in particular: 

I know that only someone who has known love like this, and been loved like this, could write a sentence like this.  

 

Thank you, Kathleen. For making me smile. For giving me such a gift in your storytelling. 

With admiration, 

 

Rob (Williams)