Beginning Ukulele

Tuesdays, 12:45-1:45

The joy of music is good for the soul. Learn and practice the basics of ukulele, from chords to strumming, and fine-tuning rhythm and voice. We offer this beginning class in 8-week sessions. Susan Sullivan has been teaching ukulele at J-Sei for many years. She invites you to join in her love of music.  Suggested donation: $28/for 4 classes, or $8 drop-in. RSVP to jill@j-sei.org

Long-Overdue Reparations for African Americans: Why Japanese Americans and AAPI’s Should Care – Saturday, Feb 10, 2 to 4 pm (Hybrid)

 Don Tamaki, who served on the 9-member California Reparations Task Force, will make the case that the racial pathology that resulted in the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans has its origins in the cultural values, policies, and laws that propped up slavery and its aftermath. Four months after the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, which triggered the largest protests in U.S. history, the California Legislature passed AB 3121 creating the Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans.

 The Task Force convened in June of 2021, and on June 29, 2023 its ground-breaking 1,100 page Final Report was presented to the Legislature.  The Final Report traces the harm of 246 years of slavery, 90 years of racial segregation after slavery ended, and decades more of continuing discrimination—resulting in today’s outcomes.  

 “California’s history is rife with instances of how anti-Black animus so easily morphed to target other people of color too. Decades after California passed Fugitive Slave Laws and adopted Jim Crow policies, the rounding up of Japanese American families was so normal as to be beyond question.”  Don Tamaki is a Senior Counsel at Minami Tamaki LLP, and participated on the legal team that reopened Korematsu v. the United States. 

Co-presented by Friends of Topaz Museum. RSVP at http://tinyurl.com/long-overdue

Pictures of Belonging: Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi and Mine Okubo

Art Talk by scholar ShiPu Wang – Saturday, March 2, 2 pm (In-person only)

Pictures of Belonging brings together over ninety works by three pioneering Japanese American artists from the pre–World War II era. Despite long careers and critical acclaim, Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi, and Miné Okubo have largely been overlooked in traditional American art history. This groundbreaking exhibition reintroduces their work and explores their deep connections with each other for the first time. The traveling exhibition will begin at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (Feb-June 2024), Smithsonian American Art Museum (Nov 2024-Aug 2025) and will follow at several other sites. 

Curator and scholar Dr. ShiPu Wang returns to J-Sei to talk about the new exhibit he has curated. He is the Coats Endowed Chair in the Arts and Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at the University of California, Merced, and Commissioner of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Pictures of Belonging: Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi, and Miné Okubo, co-published by the Japanese American National Museum and the University of California Press, will be available for purchase for $50. 

Co-presented by Friends of Topaz Museum. RSVP at http://tinyurl.com/pictures-of-belonging

I Would Meet You Anywhere – A Book Talk with Susan Kiyo Ito

Saturday, March 30, 2 pm (in-person)

Growing up with adoptive nisei parents, Susan Kiyo Ito knew only that her birth mother was Japanese American and her father white. But finding and meeting her birth mother in her early twenties was only the beginning of her search for answers, history, and identity. Though the two share a physical likeness, an affinity for ice cream, and a relationship that sometimes even feels familial, there is an ever-present tension between them, as a decades-long tug-of-war pits her birth mother’s desire for anonymity against Ito’s need to know her origins, to see and be seen.

Along the way, Ito grapples with her own reproductive choices, the legacy of the Japanese American incarceration experience during World War II, and the true meaning of family.

“A brave, compassionate, and necessary memoir that bears witness to how we let go, when we hold on, and how families are not just born but chosen.”

— Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, author of Hiroshima in the Morning

Susan Kiyo Ito is the co-editor of the literary anthology A Ghost at Heart’s Edge: Stories and Poems of Adoption. Her work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies. A MacDowell Fellow, she has also been awarded residencies at the Mesa Refuge, Hedgebrook, and Blue Mountain Center. She has performed her solo show, The Ice Cream Gene, around the US and adapted Untold Stories: Life, Love, and Reproduction for the theater. She writes and teaches in the Bay Area.

Join us for a book reading, an engaging conversation with writer and artist Patricia Wakida, and tea.  Book sales and signing will follow.  Hardcover, Retail: $24.95

RSVP for free event. Limited space available.