TWO SPIRITS, ONE HEART: A MOTHER, HER TRANSGENDER SON, AND THEIR JOURNEY TO LOVE AND ACCEPTANCE By Marsha Aizumi (Arcadia, Calif.: Peony Press: 290 pp., $16.95 hard cover) Marsha Aizumi’s book, “Two Spirits, One Heart,” is a memoir about her experience as the mother of a child who comes out as a lesbian, then transitioned […]
When pursuing love means crossing color lines and breaking sexual and gender hierarchies
July 26, 2012 by Leave a Comment
QUEER COMPULSIONS: RACE, NATIONS, AND SEXUALITY IN THE AFFAIRS OF YONE NOGUCHI By Amy Sueyoshi (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2012, 248 pp., $40, cloth) Amy Sueyoshi, an associate professor at San Francisco State University, has produced an important and timely study of racial, class, sexual and gender hierarchies at the turn of the 20th […]
THE GREAT UNKNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN GREAT: The Japanese American fight for gay and lesbian rights
June 16, 2011 by Leave a Comment
This week’s piece represents a fifth entry in the series of annual columns I have produced for Nichi Bei on the Queer heritage of Japanese Americans. In past pieces I have looked at the hidden and sometimes complex sexual history of early Japanese immigrants; the evolution of widespread anti-gay prejudice in mid-century Japanese communities, […]
Honda introduces bill to end immigration law discrimination
May 12, 2011 by Leave a Comment
WASHINGTON — Rep. Mike Honda (D-San Jose) on May 5 introduced the Reuniting Families Act in the House of Representatives, which according to his office, would help “ensure that visas are allocated efficiently, while alleviating lengthy wait times that keep legal immigrants, and their loved ones overseas, separated for years.” The bill also eliminates discrimination […]
THE GREAT UNKNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN GREAT: Understanding the queer heritage of Japanese Americans
June 17, 2010 by Leave a Comment
Back in 2007, not long after I started writing my historical column “The Great Unknown and the Unknown Great”? in the Nichi Bei Times, I established an annual tradition of marking LGBT Pride Week with a column on the queer heritage of Japanese Americans. It is a tradition that I am happy to carry over […]
Desperately seeking LGBT memories of World War II incarceration
Two years ago, I was invited to participate in E.G. Crichton’s project “Lineage: Matchmaking in the Archive” in which artists, writers and musicians were asked to respond to personal collections in the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society archive. I was “matched” with Jiro Onuma, a gay Issei who moved to the U.S. from Iwate […]