The Gate of Memory: Poems by Descendants of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration

Join us as we celebrate the launch of The Gate of Memory: Poems by Descendants of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration edited by Brandon Shimoda and Brynn Saito. The event will begin with words from poet and concentration camp survivor Mitsuye Yamada followed by readings and conversation with Cathlin Goulding, Michael Ishii, Mia Ayumi Malhotra, Emily Mitamura, Paulette “Tkl' Un Yeik” Moreno, Carolyn Nakagawa, Michael Prior, and Anne Yukie Watanabe.

This event is co-sponsored by Tsuru for Solidarity, a nonviolent, direct action project of Japanese American social justice advocates and allies working to end detention sites and support directly impacted immigrant and refugee communities that are being targeted by racist, inhumane immigration policies.

Pick up a copy of The Gate of Memory here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/...

Intro song for live broadcast: "There Is No Moment In Which They Are Not With Me" by contributor Patrick Shiroishi off his album Evergreen

Speakers:

Cathlin Goulding is an educator and curriculum designer. A former public school teacher, she codirects YURI Education Project, an education consultancy that helps PK-12 educators teach and tell Asian American histories. Her grandparents and mother were incarcerated at the Jerome and Gila River camps. She lives in Queens, New York.

Michael Ishii is a healer, artist, and community organizer. His mother and her family were incarcerated at Minidoka concentration camp and his upstate NY relatives were massacred during WWII. Much of his life has been devoted to the work of nonviolence and healing multigenerational trauma related to Japanese American WWII incarceration.

Mia Ayumi Malhotra is the author of Isako Isako, the chapbook Notes from the Birth Year, and Mothersalt, forthcoming from Alice James Books in May. She teaches poetry and creative writing at Left Margin LIT in Berkeley, and her grandparents and great-grandparents were incarcerated at Rohwer and Lordsburg.

Emily Mitamura is a Yonsei poet and scholar of race, gender, empire, and film. With commitments to women of color and Third World feminisms, their work takes up archival, relational, and bodily hauntings in the afterlives of mass and colonial violence. Her family was incarcerated at Poston and Heart Mountain.

Paulette “Tkl' Un Yeik” Moreno is a civil rights leader, poet, and speaker. Her grandfather, George Kamachi Miyasato Sr, and her Uncle George Miyasato Jr, were incarcerated during World War II in Lordsburg, NM and Minidoka. Paulette and Harriet Miyasato Beleal, her mother, are journeying to share their vision of truth that reflects Worth.

Carolyn Nakagawa is a fourth-generation Anglo-Japanese Canadian poet and playwright who makes her home in the territory colonized as Vancouver, British Columbia. Her paternal grandparents were forcibly uprooted from Steveston and lived in Magna Bay and Westbank before returning to Vancouver in 1950. She is currently seeking a publisher for her full-length poetry manuscript.

Michael Prior is a poet and teacher. His grandparents and their families were incarcerated in Tashme, a camp located on the unceded land of the Coast Salish peoples. Prior’s most recent book of poems, Burning Province, won the 2021 BC & Yukon Book Prize for poetry and the 2020 Canada-Japan Literary Award.

Brynn Saito’s third collection of poetry, Under a Future Sky (Red Hen Press, 2023), was inspired by her visit with her father to Gila River, the place where her aunt, grandparents, and other family members were incarcerated. Brynn teaches at California State University, Fresno.

Brandon Shimoda is the author of several books of poetry and prose, including The Grave on the Wall and The Afterlife Is Letting Go, both from City Lights. He had family in Heart Mountain, Poston, and Fort Missoula, where his grandfather was incarcerated under suspicion of being a spy for Japan.

Anne Yukie Watanabe (she/her) is a queer femme yonsei and shin-nisei nurse, organizer, peer counselor and writer living in Chicago. Her grandparents were incarcerated in Tashme and Lillooet in Canada. She is a founding member of Nikkei Uprising, a Nikkei group that organizes for collective liberation with an abolitionist and anti-imperialist lens.

This event is sponsored by Haymarket Books, Tsuru for Solidarity, and The Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Charitable Foundation.

Watch the live event recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRd1HvGzSPk

Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org