Essays and reporting

The Sunshine Cure

via Electric Literature, Spring 2024

A hybrid essay blending personal narrative, critical family history, and settler colonial history of Tucson, Arizona. 

“I’ve spent the better part of the past decade researching and writing about settler colonialism, but it’s only now that I’ve had the courage to use those same words to grapple with my own family’s legacy. To look squarely at our settler entanglements and the harm they have done. It’s always been too much, too tender, too many feelings to potentially hurt. Too challenging to ask: What kinds of settler violence tether us to this place we call home? And harder yet to ask: What do we do about it?”  Read here.

What an Epic Women’s Strike Can Teach Us Over 70 Years Later

via The Nation, March 2023

How the longest strike in New Mexico’s history became a film with a cult following and and a message that still offers potent lessons for organizers today. 

“As we grapple with increasing threats to women’s bodily autonomy in this post-Roe era, let the Empire Zinc strike be a reminder that women and their needs cannot be ignored—and that no movement can be won if we don’t let the most marginalized among us lead.” Read here.

Found: An 80-Year-Old Wedding Cake With a Tragic Past

via Atlas Obscura, February 2023

A daughter’s surprising discovery, and the layers of tragedy and resilience beneath it. 

“That the cake survived so long is made even more remarkable by the circumstances surrounding its origins. Nishimura’s parents, Frances (née Itabashi) and Shizuo Nishimura were married in Tule Lake, a Japanese American WWII concentration camp in Northern California.” Read here.

Unsettling Settler Belonging in the American Southwest

via The Abusable Past, October 2020

“My grandmother died more than a decade ago. At first, wearing her squash blossom necklace felt like an act of love, but now when I put it on I feel a soft strangling. It’s still precious to me in the memories it holds of my grandmother, but it has also come to symbolize this legacy of violence and of taking. Now I see it not an inheritance, but as a haunting. It unsettles me, but that’s exactly what is needed.” Read here.

The US Imprisoned Japanese Peruvians in Texas, Then Said They Entered ‘Illegally’

via The World from PRX, September 2018

In the 1940s, the US government launched a program to relocate some 2,200 Latin Americans of Japanese descent from their home countries to detention facilities in the US. They were taken under the pretense of a World War II prisoner exchange, but only 865 detainees were ultimately sent to Japan via the program. Several hundred others found themselves in a fight for justice that continues today. Read here. 

Meet Doña Luz Jiménez, the forgotten indigenous woman at the heart of Mexico’s cultural revolution

via The World from PRX, August 2017

“Jiménez, a Nahua woman from humble origins, posed for many of the greats of the Mexican mural movement: Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Rufino Tamayo and Fernando Leal, to name just a few. Thanks to them, her image adorns the walls of the national palace and other imposing buildings throughout the city’s historic center. 

Despite this visibility, Jiménez lived in constant poverty and is scarcely remembered today. The story of how her image became so ubiquitous while she remained so obscure is as complex as the countless works of art in which she appears.” Read here.

“The Curious Origins of the ‘Irish slaves’ Myth”

via The World from PRX, March 2017

The myth underlying the meme holds that the Irish — not Africans — were the first American slaves. It rests on the idea that 17th century American indentured servitude was essentially an extension of the transatlantic slave trade.

Popular among racists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, white nationalists and neo-confederate groups, the “Irish slave” trope is often accompanied by statements to the effect of, “Our ancestors suffered and we got over it, why can’t you?” According to Liam Hogan — a librarian and scholar who has tracked the myth — references to these “Irish slaves” are used to derail conversations about racism and inequity. Read here.

Strikers, Scabs, and Sugar Mongers

via Jacobin

“Though King Sugar’s reign has ended, the industry and its worker uprisings have had a lasting effect on the islands’ ethnic makeup, politics, and social order. The state is now one of only five in the United States that has a “majority minority” population, and the only one that has never had a majority white population. It also remains one of the most heavily unionized states in the nation, with membership that includes a multiracial coalition of descendants of original plantation workers, Native Hawaiians, and haole.” Read here.

Full list of publications

As a member of New America's second cohort of fellows exploring themes of pride, reckoning, and aspiration in advance of the upcoming 250th anniversary of America’s founding, I’ll be reporting on the afterlife of Amache concentration camp and its contested path to becoming one of America's newest National Parks. This fellowship is an extension of my work as a community-engaged public historian and ten years of working in the field of Japanese American history. My research and interview techniques adhere to journalistic best practices and also draw from my background in archival research and ethnographic fieldwork.