by Jill Shiraki | Jan 15, 2025 | American Harvest, Classes & Events, Lament in the Night, Minor Feelings, Phone Booth at the Edge
Mizuko: True Sprit – Meet Artist and Writer Art Nomura
Saturday, February 8, 2024, 2 pm
Mizuko: True Spirit is an epic American-immigrant tale of hardship, assimilation, and the eventual triumph that ensued. When the Takahashi’s, one of the wealthiest families in western Japan lost their great fortune in 1900, five-year old Mizuko Takahashi went from riches to rags. Mizuko’s lifetime in Japan and America offers the reader an intimate look into the world of an Asian immigrant. This book is the story of one woman’s efforts to surmount racism, sexism, and poverty in the 20th century. Featured is a riveting accounting of the matriarch’s life in Manzanar Concentration Camp for three years beginning in 1942.
Art Nomura will share his book, the creative process of memoir writing, and inspiration for his work.
Art Nomura has worked as a painter, sculptor, potter, filmmaker, writer, and New Media artist since 1968. Several of his works have themes directly connected to the Asian American experience. His work has screened on PBS, cable, and in festivals, galleries, museums, and universities worldwide. Nomura has taught media production and writing since 1981.He is Professor Emeritus in Film/TV Production at the School of Film and Television, Loyola Marymount University.
RSVP for this free event.
by Jill Shiraki | Jan 15, 2025 | Classes & Events
COURTING A MAN WHO DOESN’T TALK
Writer Shizue Seigel, in conversation with Alameda Poet Laureate Kimi Sugioka
Saturday, February 15th, 2 pm
Courting A Man Who Doesn’t Talk began thirty years ago as midnight journaling to puzzle out a budding romance between a fortyish, Asian American single mother and a twenty-something white man. The personal experiment has stood the test of time, but the larger social battle for equality and respect between women and men is still being waged, one day at a time, one person at a time.
Many men don’t have words to express what’s deepest in their hearts. Lover or husband, father or son, employer or co-worker—each has different styles of wordlessness and different reasons for it. In today’s polarized world, breaking through the silence is essential, especially across divisions of race, class, generation, culture, or religion.
Shizue Seigel is a Japanese American writer, visual artist and arts activist who has supported 500+ writers and artists of color with workshops, events and publications since 2015 through her arts organization Write Now! SF Bay.
Shizue Seigel, founder/director of Write Now! SF Bay, is a third-generation Japanese American writer, visual artist and community activist who explores complex intersections of history, culture and spirituality through prose, poetry and visual art.
Born just after her family’s release from WWII incarceration camps, Shizue grew up as an Army brat in segregated Baltimore, Occupied Japan, California farm labor camps and skid-row Stockton, before finding home in San Francisco in 1956. She’s a college dropout who learned from experience in the Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s, Indian ashrams and the counterculture in the 1970s, corporate advertising in the 1980s, and HIV prevention in the 1990s.
She has helped tell community stories for 25 years. She’s written, co-written or edited nine books, Including In Good Conscience, My First Hundred Years, and five Write Now! anthologies. Her poetry and prose have been widely published, most recently in Ginsoko Journal, Porter Gulch Review, and Colossus: Body. Her work was recognized with a KPIX Jefferson Award in 2021, and her literary and visual art papers are archived at the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives, University of California, Santa Barbara
Kimi Sugioka is a mother, educator, songwriter and poet. She earned an MFA from Naropa University and has published two books of poetry; the newest of which is Wile & Wing on Manic D Press. She has been published in numerous anthologies and is the Poet Laureate of Alameda, California. As an active board member for literary arts organizations, she curates and hosts readings for the Alameda Island Poets and the San Francisco International Arts Festival, among others. She believes that creating community through art is a revolutionary act.
Born to a Japanese American father and Scots Irish American mother in North Carolina, Kimi Sugioka grew up in Chapel Hill and Berkeley, California. Constantly moving between the two starkly different cultures and not blending into either, Kimi often found herself in liminal circumstances that squarely placed her in the category of other. Family divisions and trauma contributed to her feeling a lack of home and identity. Consequently, she was always trying to fit in and please whoever she was with.
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RSVP for this free event.
by Jill Shiraki | Jan 3, 2025 | Classes & Events
Mokuhanga: Japanese Woodblock – six 3-hr classes
Fridays Feb 7, 14, 28, Mar 7, 14, 28 (no class on the
3rd Fridays)
9:30 am -12:30 pm
Mokuhanga – a water-based Japanese woodblock printmaking – is environmentally friendly and can be done at home, any time, and anywhere without a press! Participants will learn the basics of this unique process, carving the woodblock, using kento (registration system), and printing with water-based ink on Japanese paper. Participants will create a small edition of beautiful, multicolor prints. All levels are welcome.
The suggested donation for the six class session will be $150( includes $45 materials fee).
Limited space is available. This class is for beginners and continuing students. For any questions, please email
jill@j-sei.org
by Jill Shiraki | Dec 5, 2024 | Classes & Events
Mikami Holiday Wine Tasting
Sunday, December 15, 2 pm
J-Sei, 1285 66th Street, Emeryville
Come meet Jason (and hopefully Mitzi and Kate too) for a special presentation at J-Sei on Sunday Dec 15 at 2pm! Over the years, Jason Mikami of Mikami Vineyards and his family have generously donated their delicious wine and participated in J-Sei Flavors of Spring and other events. Out of this, an informal J-Sei Wine Club formed in 2021.
Jason will talk about the history of Mikami Vineyards and their wines. Plus you’ll have a chance to purchase bottles – great gifts for the holidays/new year and for yourself too! We’ll have nibbles to go with the wine tasting along with some music and a festive atmosphere.
If you’d like to attend our Mikami holiday wine tasting party on December 15 (friends and family are welcome!) please RSVP to give us an idea of head count for food.
