Delayed by about a year, and held wholly online, Okaeri Los Angeles held its fourth conference to connect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Nikkei and their allies from across the country. The two-day conference, held over Zoom meetings, featured presentations on mental health, the state of the campaign for marriage equality in Japan, and […]
Creating Space For Queer Nikkei: Okaeri holds online conference to educate and form community
December 9, 2021 by Leave a Comment
L.A. ministers criticize anti-gay policy of United Methodist Churches
April 11, 2019 by Leave a Comment
LOS ANGELES — Disturbed by the United Methodist Church’s continuing anti-gay stance, Revs. Mark Nakagawa and Sunyoung Lee, two local ministers with connections to Little Tokyo’s Centenary United Methodist Church, publicly criticized that decision and declared their continued support for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer persons. The controversy followed the United Methodist Church’s Special […]
Queering the inquiry of Asian American art
July 19, 2018 by Leave a Comment
QUEERING CONTEMPORARY ASIAN AMERICAN ART Edited By Laura Kina and Jan Christian Bernabe (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017, 296 pp., $90 hardcover; $40 paperback) This anthology grows out of a National Endowment for the Humanities-sponsored Summer Institute held at New York University in 2012, co-directed by Margo Machida and Alexandra Chang and entitled, “Re-Envisioning […]
Japanese American becomes majority owner of LGBTQ newspaper
January 4, 2018 by Leave a Comment
Michael Yamashita, 51, publisher of the Bay Area Reporter, a San Francisco-based LGBTQ newspaper, became the newspaper’s majority owner, the publication announced Dec. 21, 2017. According to the B.A.R., Yamashita becomes the nation’s first gay Asian American publisher and owner of a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer newspaper. Yamashita, who previously owned 31 percent […]
ENTERTAINMENT RE-ORIENTED: #Thiswas2016
January 1, 2017 by Leave a Comment
“When the house is going up in flames, does what’s on the TV matter?” That’s the question I kept asking myself as I sat down to write this year-end column. In October, Michael Luo, then an editor for The New York Times, was accosted on the street by a woman yelling, “Go back to China!” […]
Transgender Americans are terrified of Trump
November 17, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Those who have seen me reporting for the paper may have noticed over the last four months that I am a transgender woman. I did not explicitly advertise this fact, given that my gender does not matter when I’m working on an assignment. The stories I write, after all, are not about me. However, with […]
Scholars showcase future of diverse Nikkei community
July 21, 2016 by Leave a Comment
PAN-JAPAN: The International Journal of the Japanese Diaspora: Special Issue: CONJECTURING COMMUNITIES: Ebbs and Flows of Japanese America Edited by Lane Ryo Hirabayashi (Normal, Ill.: Illinois State University, 2016, $12.50; Spring/Fall 2016: Volume 12, Numbers 1 & 2, 189 pp., paperback). To purchase, write to: PAN-JAPAN (Vol. 12, No. 1 & 2), Subscriptions, Anthropology 4640, […]
Bring back the assault weapons ban
June 23, 2016 by Leave a Comment
There are moments when as a member of the ethnic press we must leverage our collective voice, to push our nation’s leaders to act in the interest of the communities we serve. This is one of those moments. In the early morning of June 12, a gunman in Orlando, Fla. entered a gay nightclub and massacred 49 […]
THE GREAT UNKNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN GREAT: The JACL’s historic support for marriage equality
June 23, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Ever since I have been writing my Nichi Bei column “The Great Unknown and the Unknown Great” in 2007, I have devoted an annual column to studying the history of Japanese American sexuality, and in particular in-group attitudes toward homosexuality and the presence of gays and lesbians. I am proud to continue that tradition with […]
Trying to regain hope in a time of fear and uncertainty
As the election polls started closing on Nov. 8, most of America was in a state of utter shock, as a presidential candidate who so easily stoked the flames of racism, sexism, xenophobia and misogyny was suddenly trust into the office of the presidency. A mere eight years after a movement for hope and change […]