Laura Ulewicz, untitled poem (“[“Houses beyond decay”]”) in a sequence on Locke, CA, undated. Laura Ulewicz papers, 1951-2010.

In 1973, Laura Ulewicz left the San Francisco counterculture scene and relocated to the small Chinese-American town of Locke, California. As time went on, Locke began to deteriorate; the community was threatened with the possibility of being developed into a tourist destination. During this time, Ulewicz crafted a handful of poems to preserve the stories of the community — stories of people who left China to chase the American dream. This particular poem, untitled and seemingly unpublished, sheds light on how the town of Locke was no longer able to provide a chance at the American dream for the new generation. This poem, along with the rest of the sequence, shows the sad portrait of an unnoticed town; Ulewicz, similarly, is an unnoticed figure of the Beat generation. Hopefully the presence of marginalized communities — like the women of the Beat generation and immigrant towns — will be acknowledged as research continues.