This week’s column marks the 12th entry in the annual series on queer Japanese American history that I have undertaken to mark LGBT Pride Month. Previous entries have shed light on the nature of sexuality within Japanese communities, the rise and decline of homophobia, past gay activists and community debates over LGBT civil rights. This […]
THE GREAT UNKNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN GREAT: Unmasking the complexities of documenting queer Nikkei sexuality and history
June 21, 2018 by Leave a Comment
THE GREAT UNKNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN GREAT: Queer non-Nikkei figures in Japanese American history (Part V)
October 2, 2014 by Leave a Comment
(Editor’s Note: This is the last of a multi-part series) One especially noteworthy aspect of Karon Kehoe’s groundbreaking Japanese American camp novel “City in the Sun,” published in 1946, is its portrait of sexuality in camp, especially alternative sexuality, a point that raises interesting questions both for scholars of literature and for historians. In […]
THE GREAT UNKNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN GREAT: The civil rights politics and complexities of Nikkei ‘coming out’ as LGBT
June 13, 2013 by Leave a Comment
This week’s entry represents the seventh annual column that I have produced for the Nichi Bei on the queer heritage of Japanese Americans. In past entries, I have explored such topics as the varieties of Issei sexuality, the turn to Western-style family models (and homophobia) within Japanese communities, and the community’s turn to support for […]
The princess phenomenon
January 1, 2012 by Leave a Comment
CINDERELLA ATE MY DAUGHTER: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture By Peggy Orenstein (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2011, 256 pp., $25.99, hardcover) While true gender equity has yet to be achieved in this country — women are still underrepresented at top levels of government and industry — we’re at least at […]
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, […]
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