At school, Alia Volz was a weird kid without a lot of friends. She had a secret… after school, she’d go home and help her mom make and sell weed brownies all over San Francisco. But one day, Alia discovered something about her mom’s business that turned her secret into a burden that was far more painful than she could have imagined.

I grew up in an underground cannabis bakery. During the ’70s, my family baked and delivered more than 10,000 marijuana brownies per month in San Francisco. My mom dealt brownies out of my stroller in the Castro district, with weekly stops at Harvey Milk’s campaign headquarters and the home of the singer Sylvester. Sticky Fingers Brownies began…

SHOW US YOUR BROWNIES! On 4/20/2020, please join us for a virtual launch party! Since we’re all stuck inside and baking away our blues, post a picture to social media of your favorite kind of home-baked brownie (“magic” or regular – your choice). Use the hashtags #HomeBaked #BakeIn and you could win a book, reissued…

LISTEN: https://www.kqed.org/news/11810528/home-baked-one-womans-subversive-response-to-the-aids-crisis

“The subtitle, “My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco” tells you much of what you need to know in terms of content. But as a portrait of a heroics, innovation, grit, and pot-baking in an epidemic (in this case, the AIDS crisis), it’s also strikingly relevant. And beautifully written, too.” –David Canfield for…