CHC Class of: 2010
Hometown: Cornelius, Oregon
Coffee or tea: Tea! I am too anxious for caffeine, so I always need decaf options. 
What's in the fridge: Seaweed salads, dairy free cheese, and Strawberry and Cream Dr. Pepper
Song on repeat: “Read My Mind” by The Killers or “Kremlin Dusk” by Utada Hikaru 
The book everyone should read: I can’t choose just one. “Yellow Bird” by Sierra Cran Murdoch, “The Book of Longings” by Sue Monk Kidd, “Crying in H Mart” by Michelle Zauner and “The 1619 Project” by Nikole Hannah-Jones.

As a child, Natalie Jacobsen escaped into literature. She jumped from train to train with the Alden kids of “The Boxcar Children” fame. She learned wilderness survival skills with Sam Gribley and his falcon while reading “My Side of the Mountain.” And in “Hatchet,” Jacobsen discovered an abandoned plane that reminded her of her father, who traveled by air every week during her childhood to transport elephants or vaccines or supplies to soldiers in Afghanistan.

When it was Jacobsen’s turn as an adult to present a character of her own to readers, she drew on her education in East Asian languages and her experiences in Japan. Jacobsen, a 2010 graduate of the Clark Honors College, published her first novel last fall. “Ghost Train” is set in 1877 in Kyoto, Japan. The story follows the daughter of a samurai, Maru Hosokawa, during the Meiji Restoration Era, as her family is stripped of its privileges under Japan’s next emperor during industrialization.

At UO, Jacobsen was a part of the initial class of the cinema studies major and she minored in East Asian studies. After graduation, she moved to Japan where she worked for an international school. She also wrote feature stories for travel magazines and other publications.

“It was through all those stories that and people that I met that I learned so much more,” she recalls. “Family folklore, family history, parts about the cultures that I never would have learned inside a classroom.”

While in Japan, Jacobsen married her partner of 15 years, Max Hare. A fellow Duck, Hare graduated in 2010 with degrees in business and political science. After Hare was accepted to law school at University of Virginia in 2016, the couple moved to Charlottesville.A year later, Jacobsen pivoted to full-time activism when white nationalists gathered during a rally in Charlottesville. She later worked as a community builder and journalist, traveling to Ghana to study the roots of slavery and reporting about the descendants who lived in Virginia. She transitioned to the field of marketing and communications, helping a Washington, D.C., firm raise money for charities that offered humanitarian aid.

Jacobsen currently lives in Washington, working as a marketing director for Airlink, a nonprofit that helps charities deliver aid globally with the help of airline partners. She is also working on a sequel to “Ghost Train” and a story about the incarcerated people who fought the 2020 Oregon Wildfires.

“Being an author, I’m doing everything I’ve ever wanted to do,” she says. 

This interview was edited for clarity and length. 

Your parents would play at least an hour of news for you and your younger sister every day. Were there any specific experiences your parents had that motivated them to raise you in such a way?

My mom was a Navy brat. She grew up on the Midway Islands, which is now a bird sanctuary. My dad grew up on a farm, but his family were pilots in both military and civilian life, and his dream was to travel everywhere. They farmed and supported wildfire-fighters; and they also fostered children over summers. My parents raised my sister and me in a rural farmhouse in Western Oregon. Instead of posters on my walls, we had maps, and we would go “Dad took off here and flew all the way here.” The last thing he did before he retired was distribute COVID-19 vaccines. After Hurricane Mitch in 1998, I stood in front of my elementary school and gave a speech about how we need to help these kids in Central America who needed shelter and food. We raised enough money to send a small plane to Honduras. That was the start of activism for me, and also storytelling.

How did you end up at UO and the Clark Honors College?

I was told my whole life that school was my job and I needed to treat it as such. My dream in high school was to be a big-time journalist at the New York Times or work for the United Nations or go in the direction of something world focused. I found a happy medium with the Clark Honors College because it was this honors program within a large school that had a ton of resources with lots of options for studies. Also, it was home, so I knew that I would also be helping my family. In the end, it was right where I needed to be. It was painful, really painful at first because I felt like at the time that Oregon wasn’t the place for me. I really wanted to be out in the world doing something, but it’s where I met my husband and it’s where I’ve met lifelong friends. It’s also where I got inspired to do the work I do now and the skills and the development and the idea for “Ghost Train.” It’s become an invaluable part of my life and now I’m really happy to meet with other alumni all the time here in D.C. and give back and cheer on the Ducks.

Where did you meet your husband?

We were walking towards each other on Agate Street and just kept staring at each other and that was the moment he finally asked my name. Then he added me on Facebook and sent me a poem. We started doing study sessions together. 

You were a part of the initial Cinema Studies cohort at the UO. Is there anything significant you remember learning about storytelling from that program? Would you ever be interested in writing for or displaying your story on the big screen?

In the Cinema Studies program, I was able to take screenwriting, editing animation, history of cinema and political science. Those classes all taught me lessons about different types of communication in storytelling. I watched French movies, movies from India, Thailand, Korea and Hong Kong. I learned how they perceive and use colors and use different senses to tell a story. 

When I was in Japan, I took a specific directing class through the New York Film Academy which was doing a special program in Kyoto. It was being held at this preserved samurai village, so we were able to make our own old films and that was a really cool experience. In Charlottesville, I was part of a team that made a documentary that premiered at the Virginia Film Festival. I am still very interested in movie making I’m working on a movie proposal right now for “Ghost Train.” I would love it to be available in visual media format someday.

I have to ask you about your hair, how long have you had it like that and what was the inspiration?

I’ve had it since 2014, with a two-year break for it to heal and switch sides… I remember wanting to go all blonde, but then my hair dye ran out halfway through and I embraced it. Also, I was in Tokyo at that point and it wasn’t too unusual, thankfully. 

“Ghost Train” is set in Japan and heavily inspired by Japanese folklore. It starts with a preface stating that you are not of Japanese ethnicity and this is a labor of love, research, and cultural competency. Can you tell me a little bit about your background research and how you held your identity in contention with the content of your book?

We talk about enslaved people from Africa and how that built up the East Coast and plantations and fostered that economy. They kind of gloss over the severity in which Asian people were and are treated especially on the West Coast. The west and the railroads were built by Asian immigrants that were essentially enslaved, too. In Oregon especially, we have this idealized Oregon Trail, manifest destiny narrative. It sent me down this rabbit hole. My husband is Chinese American and he’s taught me a lot about his perspective and his mom coming from Hong Kong. He has the experience of being Asian, American, and also Asian-American. There are so many people like him who are now – with this administration – feeling like “where do I belong here? Do I even belong here?” 

With the book, I started with the main characters being three little boys and I gave it to Chris Matheson who was a screenwriter and in the Cinema Studies department at UO. He gave me some tips on it and basically told me I inserted too much of myself in it. I then spent years reading more books from Japanese authors’ perspectives and from white women writing Japanese characters. And that’s kind of where the message in the front came from, to let people know they have a choice in reading this, but they also should be reading all these other things, as well.

Can you tell me about the main character, Maru? What was the inspiration that brought her to life and what was the message you intended to send with her?

I picked a young woman who had lost her wealth and her class status because I feel like a lot of books are opposite – where you’re building up into some sort of power or status. She has this eye-opening experience where she needs to see how other people live. I struggle a lot with depression and anxiety, and so I wanted her, unfortunately, to also have similar struggles because people are human. Something I found in my research was Japanese people are perceived as always composed and respectful, and I met tons of people who suffer from deep stress and deep anxiety and worry about their place in society. So, I wanted to reflect and give nuance to people who are usually seen as a monolith. I wanted to convey that history does repeat itself, and these people live through these horrible waves, economic, political, social, environmental, and how we keep finding ways to survive.

Can you take me through your day-to-day at Airlink? What skills or knowledge do you draw on daily?

Airlink is responding to multiple disasters or complex humanitarian crises at the same time. Right now, we are offering support in Sudan, Gaza and the West Bank and Vanuatu. We are continuing to support hurricane victims in North Carolina and parts of Florida. My day-to-day changes a little bit, depending on if there’s a rapid onset response that we have to tackle or we’re just looking at a protracted crisis. I talk to our NGO partners and figure out how to procure items and then how or where they need to transport them. We are booking tickets and routing safely to destinations. I’m analyzing the performance and then compiling it into a narrative that then tells the story of how these items are helping individuals, communities, whole families or countries. My skill set is around communications and extracting and forming the narrative because we actually are a very data- and analytics-driven organization. So it’s up to me to take the numbers and then write around them. I use a lot of my journalistic abilities and interview skills. My skills overseas helped me kind of get ready for transcontinental communication.

How did the CHC help you develop as a person and guide you to a career? 

The CHC prepared me for life after college, not just academically, but also in how I saw the world and interacted with people and cared for communities around me. I grew into a more emphatic person, deeper thinker, and motivated individual to impart change. CHC professors developed and strengthened my communications skills and taught me how to craft my own story and research and listen more effectively — all of which created the professional communicator, writer, and journalist I am today.