LyrArc Article Gist
 Her mother was a real pioneer and large influence on Kamala Harris. Michael Kruse tells this story of Kamala Harris and the influence of her mother Shyamala Gopalan, a biomedical researcher at Berkeley, Cal and other national laboratories.

 Shyamala had the same sense of adventure of America's pioneers on the frontier since George Washington in the  Pennsylvania country around Pittsburgh. And her striking attitude raising Kamala, one of two daughters, living in a minority neighborhood in the Berkeley area, and moving twice including to Montreal's McGill University and to Cal as a researcher.

“Don’t let anybody tell you who you are. You tell them who you are.” 

“Focus on what’s right in front of you, and the next thing, whatever that’s meant to be, will come." 

"And … “don’t do anything half-assed.”

Shyamala landed in Honolulu in 1958 when only 200 Indians were admitted each year, 1953 in all for the decade of the 1950's. America was 90 percent white and Berkeley was 98 percent white. America that we see today did not exist. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson opening America to immigrants from Asia happened years later in 1965 with the Immigration Act. She started classes at Berkeley in Nutrition on a $1600 scholarship.