by Jill Shiraki | Sep 26, 2020 | American Harvest, Classes & Events
American Harvest, a book talk with Marie Mutsuki Mockett
Wednesday, September 30th, 4 pm
An epic story of the American wheat harvest, the politics of food, and the culture of the Great Plains
We welcome Marie Mutsuki Mockett, author of Where the Dead Pause and the Japanese Say Goodbye, who will join J-Sei once again to share her recent journey through the harvest in the heartland of America. The JSei Book Club will share reflections from their deep dive into the book and pose questions to spark dialogue with author Marie Mockett.
For over one hundred years, the Mockett family has owned a seven-thousand-acre wheat farm in the panhandle of Nebraska, where Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s father was raised. Mockett, who grew up in bohemian Carmel, California, with her father and her Japanese mother, knew little about farming when she inherited this land. Her father had all but forsworn it.
In American Harvest, Mockett accompanies a group of evangelical Christian wheat harvesters through the heartland at the invitation of Eric Wolgemuth, the conservative farmer who has cut her family’s fields for decades. As Mockett follows Wolgemuth’s crew on the trail of ripening wheat from Texas to Idaho, they contemplate what Wolgemuth refers to as “the divide,” inadvertently peeling back layers of the American story to expose its contradictions and unhealed wounds.
Please RSVP for the link to the book talk. If you are interested in making a donation for the program or purchasing a copy of the book, see the form below.
American Harvest is an extraordinary evocation of the land and a thoughtful exploration of ingrained beliefs, from evangelical skepticism of evolution to cosmopolitan assumptions about food production and farming. With exquisite lyricism and humanity, this astonishing book attempts to reconcile competing versions of our national story.
Marie Mutsuki Mockett is the author of a novel, Picking Bones from Ash, and a memoir, Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye, which was a finalist for the PEN Open Book Award. She has written for numerous publications and has been a guest on The World, Talk of the Nation and All Things Considered on NPR. She is a core faculty member of the Rainier Writing Workshop and a Visiting Writer in the MFA program Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California.
by Jill Shiraki | Sep 26, 2020 | Classes & Events, Other News, Seen and Unseen
Seen and Unseen: Opening and Meet Curators Amy Sueyoshi and Stan Yogi
Sunday, October 11, 4 pm
Celebrate the launch of Seen and Unseen: Queering Japanese American History before 1945, a virtual exhibit co-curated by Amy Sueyoshi and Stan Yogi and hosted by J-Sei. Be among the first to get a glimpse of the exhibit. Hear from the curators on their inspiration for Seen and Unseen and the discoveries they made in putting the exhibit together. Prepare for a virtual toast and raise a glass with us as we take a new look at same sex relations in early Japanese America.
Seen and Unseen: Queering Japanese American History Before 1945 is the first-ever exhibit focused on Nikkei (Japanese Americans) who were involved in intimate same-sex relationships or defied gender roles in the early 20th century.
Queer Compulsions: Love, Sex and Scandal in Turn of the Century Japanese America
Sunday, November 8, 4 pm
As poet Yone Noguchi wrote letters of love to his “Daddy” Charles Warren Stoddard, Kosen Takahashi declared himself the “queerest Nipponese” to Blanche Partington. And, while Joaquin Miller most preferred Japanese “boys” to come live with him in the Oakland Hills, San Franciscans involved in a “fellatio ring” found each other in front of Japanese and Chinese storefronts. Join historian Amy Sueyoshi in a talk about how Issei forged queer love in the first two decades of the twentieth century and its indelible impact on the formation of a modern gay identity.
Amy Sueyoshi is a historian by training with an academic appointment at San Francisco State University. Amy has authored two books and numerous articles at the intersection of queer studies and Asian American studies.
We Were Here and Queer Before the Issei
Tues, November 17, 7 pm
Japanese words for generational identity, from Issei to Gosei, are now taken for granted by Japanese American community members and the scholars who study them. However, these terms only entered common use in the mid-1920s, four decades after the beginning of mass Japanese emigration to Hawai’i and the continental United States. Professor Andrew Way Leong documents how early Japanese immigrant community leaders developed and used the idea of generation to promote ideas of stable, permanent settlement through heterosexual marriage and child-rearing. This turn to generational thinking has, despite good intentions, reduced our awareness of less settled and more impermanent forms of queer and same-sex intimacies in early Japanese American communities. How has this shift obscured queer lives?
Andrew Way Leong is a dai-nisei/4.5 generation Japanese/Chinese American and Assistant Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the translator of Lament in the Night (Kaya Press 2012), a collection of two novels by Shōson Nagahara, an author who wrote for a Japanese reading public during the 1920s. Leong is completing a book manuscript entitled A Queer, Queer Race: Origins for Japanese/American Literature. This book examines Japanese and English language texts written by Sadakichi Hartmann, Yoné Noguchi, Arishima Takeo, and other authors who resided in the United States between 1885 and 1924.
Queer Cinematic Visions of Nikkei History
Tuesday, December 1, 7 pm
Join award-winning filmmaker Tina Takemoto for a screening and discussion of two short experimental films engaging with the tactile and sensory dimensions of queer Japanese American history. Takemoto combines found footage and archival materials with performance art and popular music to conjure immersive fantasies that honor queer Asian Americans who lived, loved, and labored together during the prewar era and beyond.
Tina Takemoto is a filmmaker and scholar who has exhibited widely and was awarded Grand Jury Prize for Best Experimental Film at Slamdance and Best Experimental Film Jury Award at Austin LGBT Film Festival. Takemoto is a board member of Queer Cultural Center and dean of Humanities and Sciences at California College of the Arts.
The Virtual Exhibit programs are free. RSVP on Eventbrite is required to receive a ZOOM link. Return to Exhibit Info page to RSVP or for more info via the link below.
by Jill Shiraki | Sep 25, 2020 | Classes & Events, Other News
Tokyo 1964: An Evening with Journalist & Writer Roy Tomizawa
Friday, October 30th, 6:30 pm
Join J-Sei At the Movies to spend an evening with journalist Roy Tomizawa, author of 1964, The Greatest Year in the History of Japan. Roy Tomizawa celebrated his first birthday on the opening day of the 1964 Olympics. His father worked with the NBC News crew that broadcast those games to homes in the United States. His father, Thomas Tomizawa, is pictured above with the news team, including Rafer Johnson. As far back as he can remember, Roy has been a fan of the Olympics. A year after Tokyo was awarded the 2020 Olympics, Roy went searching for an English-language book that chronicled the 1964 Olympics–but he couldn’t find one.
For inspiration, preview Tokyo Olympiad, Kon Ichikawa’s classic documentary, an artistic montage to the intensity, sacrifice and triumph of athletes from all over the world.
Then, join the discussion with Roy Tomizawa on how the world was transformed in 1964. RSVP to jill@j-sei.org with Tokyo 1964 in subject for link.
J-Sei Movie Night Bento
What a special treat to enjoy bento from My Friend Yuji. This month’s offering is:
Kahlua Pork Loco Moco with soft egg and macaroni salad.
Click on the button below to place your order. Cost: $15/bento
We will be coordinating pick up times at J-Sei for 10/30 by region to streamline the distribution:
- Contra Costa (El Cerrito, Richmond, Walnut Creek) – 4 pm
- Alameda County (No Berkeley, Oakland, Alameda) – 4:30 pm
- Emeryville, South Berkeley – 5 pm
by Jill Shiraki | Sep 25, 2020 | Classes & Events
Queer Japan, a film night in collaboration with Okaeri (LA) and J-Sei
Friday, October 23, 6:30 pm
Join us for a film talk on QUEER JAPAN, a feature documentary about LGBTQ+ Artists and Activists in Japan, directed by Graham Kolbeins.
Trailblazing artists, activists, and everyday people from across the spectrum of gender and sexuality defy social norms and dare to shine in this kaleidoscopic view of LGBTQ+ culture in contemporary Japan. From glossy pride parades to playfully perverse underground parties, Queer Japan pictures people living brazenly unconventional lives in the sunlight, the shadows, and everywhere in between.
RSVP at Eventbrite: https://tinyurl.com/y6suz985 to receive a link to preview the film.
Eventbrite will send you a link to the online event page. Then, join us for a lively discussion with Graham Kolbeins on his film that uplifts LGBTQ individuals living out and proud in Japan.
Graham Kolbeins is a Canadian queer filmmaker, writer, and designer living in Los Angeles. As a recipient of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Council Creative Artists Exchange Fellowship in 2016, Kolbeins spent five months directing Queer Japan, a feature documentary about sexuality and gender identity in Japan.
by Jill Shiraki | Sep 24, 2020 | Classes & Events, J-Sei Book Club - Southland
Join the Club, Buy the Book
Join the J-Sei Virtual Book Club and connect with others as we delve into Southland, a timely and standout literary crime novel by Nina Revoyr written in 2003. Book Club format: Curl up and read at your own pace. As you’re reading, you can comment online as it strikes you with fellow book club members on Discord or the secure Book Club webpage. Around the end of October we’ll schedule a Zoom session for members to meet and discuss the book. Sign up for the Book Club so we can be in touch. We have arranged with Eastwind Books to handle book sales. You can order Southland online at the discounted price at $14.75 and either pick up at the store, arrange for shipping or designate J-Sei for delivery/pick-up in the comments.
J-Sei Book Club Pick: Southland
In Southland, her award-winning second novel, Nina Revoyr brings us a compelling story of race, love, murder, and history against the backdrop of Los Angeles. Set in 1994, in the wake of the Rodney King riots, a young Japanese-American woman, Jackie Ishida, is in her last semester of law school when her grandfather, Frank Sakai, dies unexpectedly. Frank was a veteran of World War II who, many years before, had owned a store in the Crenshaw District, one of the first racially mixed neighborhoods in the city and now the heart of L.A.’s Black community. While trying to fulfill a request from his will, Jackie discovers that four Black teenagers were killed in the store during the Watts Riots of 1965 — and that the murders were never solved or reported. Along with James Lanier, a cousin of one of the victims, she tries to piece together the story of the boys’ deaths. In the process, Jackie unearths the long-held secrets of her family’s history — and her own.
Southland explores the fragile and sometimes painful misunderstandings that occur across the lines of race and culture. It is also the story of an ever-changing city. Moving in and out of the past, from the shipping yards and internment camps of World War II; to the barley fields of the Crenshaw District in the 1930s; to the streets of protest in Watts in the 1960s; to the night spots and garment factories of the 1990s, Southland weaves a tale of Los Angeles in all of its faces and forms.
“A story about injustice dressed up as a detective novel, Southland reminds us that activism is both an ongoing project and a deeply personal choice.”
—Vallaire Wallace, Electric Lit
Nina Revoyr was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and a white American father, and grew up in Tokyo, Wisconsin, and Los Angeles. She is the author of several novels: The Necessary Hunger (1998), Southland (2003), The Age of Dreaming (2008), Wingshooters (2011), Lost Canyon (2015), and A Student of History (2019). Nina was a longtime executive vice president and chief operating officer of a nonprofit organization serving children affected by violence and poverty in Los Angeles. She now works in philanthropy, as part of an effort to improve economic mobility for low-income children and their families. Nina has been an Associate Faculty member at Antioch University, and a Visiting Professor at Cornell University, Occidental College, Pitzer College, and Pomona College. She lives in Los Angeles with her spouse and their dogs.
