Ami Chen Mills

Contributing Writer

Ami Chen Mills is a contributing writer for Metro Newspapers in San Jose, California. She is also an author, freelance writer, teacher, speaker, trainer and editor.

She has written for Metro and its San Francisco affiliate, The Metropolitan, the San Francisco Examiner, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Examiner's Sunday Magazine, Inc. Magazine, P.O.V., Glamour and Entrepreneur of the Year magazines. She is a frequent contributor to the Examiner's op-ed pages.

Currently based in San Francisco, Ami Chen Mills has won three first place awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association in the last two years for investigative and environmental reporting, and a James Beard Foundation Awards nomination for "best newspaper news reporting" in 1996. Ms. Mills writes on a range of topics, from multilevel marketing to depression to naked surfers to the Headwaters Forest to penile enlargement.

As an Asian-Irish American, she writes frequently about her mixed-race status (she's pleased to be mixed, thinks it's a fine thing), and she is working on a book on this topic. She is also collaborating with her father, Dr. Roger Mills, on a self-help book on depression.

She lectured on tour with ex-CIA agent Phil Agee after the release of her first book on the CIA's relationship with U.S. academia, CIA Off Campus, published by South End Press in 1990, and has served as a teacher and trainer in an odd and wide variety of subjects, including home composting, the LSAT, investigative journalism, Health Realization psychology and self-esteem for teenagers--through the Health Realization model.

Ami Chen Mills also served as a professional waitress for years, and most recently at a marvelous restaurant--full of splendor--in Santa Cruz, California called Gabriella Cafe. There she learned that no matter who you are, you're gonna have to serve somebody.

Recent Articles and Essays by Ami Chen Mills

"Club Meds/Buy Buy Happiness," Metro cover, July 17, 1997: Investigation into the current trend, driven by pharmaceutical companies, the media, patients, doctors and psychiatrists to view depression and other mental disorders as physical ailments. Article questions our loss of free will, of the ideas of soul and growth and of the mind's ability to heal itself. Exploration of the use of medications to treat depression (stories from patients and doctors), and venture into non-traditional approaches to treating depression, including new talk therapies, religion and spirituality. First-person experience with depression recounted in italics throughout piece. Edited portions of this article, unavailable through Metro, have been posted on the web by someone unknown to me.

"Romeo, Juliet and Me," San Francisco Examiner Magazine, June 22, 1997: Narrative essay on how mixed-race people like myself, and mixed-race, mixed-religion relationships (like my own) will overrun the country. Why this is O.K. Why this is, in fact, necessary for racial, cultural and religious harmony. Critique of West Coast writer Richard Rodriguez's poetic yet unfounded pessimism. Arguments for a new "trans-religion." (Serves as introduction to an ongoing book project, Finding My Religion: A Search for Truth Across Cultures.)

"In Defense and Celebration of Mutts," Glamour "Bridges" essay, to be published: Why I'm proud to be hapa-haole (half-white). Why arguments for racial and cultural purity fall flat in the face of my own life, before the fact of my existence.

"Unhung Hero," Metro cover, Feb. 8, 1996: First Place, Investigative Reporting, California Newspaper Publishers Association. Story of Ron Nance, victim of a penile-enlargement surgery gone awry. Investigation into sales and operating procedures of one L.A.-based Dr. Melvyn Rosenstein (profiled--not unflatteringly--in Esquire earlier as the amazing "Dr. Dick") who, subsequent to Metro publication, had his medical license revoked by the California Medical Board. Some cynical musing on the enlargement operation and its practitioners, generally. Close with the future of Ron Nance.

"Hurry Up and Wait/Serves You Right," Metro cover, March 14, 1996: My tumultuous career in the food service industry. Why you should be nice to your waitress.

"Pyramid Dreams/Shaking the Money Tree," Metro cover, Oct. 3, 1996: A tragi-comic expose of multilevel marketing companies, featuring an undercover investigation into gazelle MLM company Equinox International (number one in the "Inc. 500" for 1996), recounting bankruptcies, lawsuits, suicides, broken families. Why multilevels are mathematically destined to fail. Why MLMs aren't regulated. Amway and other "direct-sales" companies as sideshow cults functioning quietly as major players on the corporate and political scene.

"To Shoot a Thief," Metro cover, June 20, 1996: First Place, Environmental Reporting, California Newspaper Publishers Association. Exploration of Pacific salmon fishermen's penchant for shooting sea lions. Interviews and watery expeditions with Monterey Bay fishermen. Interviews with animal rights activists. How this issue relates more to degradation of upstream salmon habitat and international pirate fishing than to mean-spiritedness or even marine mammal protection.

"Corporate Heads," Metro cover, Jan. 25, 1996: Plenty of high-placed professionals smoke pot. Why don't they 'fess up? Argument, with investigation, that regular pot smokers ought to come out of the smoky closet. Sidebar story on obscure RAND report documenting U.S. drug agency exaggeration of incoming drug flow.

"Yogi Bared," Metro cover, Nov. 22, 1995: First Place, Investigative Reporting, California Newspaper Publishers Association. Documents the life and IRS-hounded times of the late Richard Hittleman, 1960s and '70s yoga guru, author and public television show host-how he died and how he left his wife with a $2 million tax bill.

On a good day, Ami Chen Mills can be funny and insightful. And this is sometimes evident in some of the shorter columns she's written for Metro, on topics such as talk shows, cell phones, the 411, going-out-of-business sales, funeral counselors, masala chai and past life regression.

To order hard copies of any Metro articles, phone Metro Newspaper at (408) 298-8000 and request issues by date. There is a small fee for this service. Clips of all articles are available to editors on request. Contact Ami Chen Mills at chenmills@aol.com.

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