I wrote about us immigration’s racist and exclusionary past/present

Very excited to have this conversation about Viet Nam and Palestine. The histories of the Vietnamese and Palestinian people have been intertwined since at least the 1960s, when Palestinians looked to the Vietnamese revolution as a source of inspiration... bit.ly/ACCENTED53

i love it when people care. about words, about meaning, about each other, about what we mean to one another, about the world we’re making—or could make

Feb 21: @jamuseum.bsky.social’s annual Los Angeles Day of Remembrance -> www.janm.org/events/2026-... “This year’s theme...highlights the current climate where our history, not only as Japanese Americans but as all communities of color, are under threat of erasure or censorship." #EO9066

「私の選挙権は…」急な衆院解散で投票できなかった海外有権者　怒りを込めて「ネット投票」を求める動きも：東京新聞 www.tokyo-np.co.jp/article/468665 「在外投票率が低いのは、興味がないからではない。過程がアナログでハードルが高いからです…このままでは、未来の世代が投票しなくなる」

For this year's Day of Remembrance, I'll join Carole Hayashino and Hanako Wakatsuki-Chong and get to meet Jeanne Houston's daughter at this doubleheader in Portland: two screenings of the 1976 TV-movie of her book.

Manzanar Committee is proud to co-host the annual Day of Remembrance with many organizations including JANM, JACL, and Nikkei Progressives and others. Join us Saturday January 21st at 2pm -3:30pm. Nishi Betsuin - LA Hompa Hongwanji 815 1st Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012

Our annual Day of Remembrance rally outside the Northwest Detention Center will be on Feb 21 at 1pm. For years, Japanese Americans have been saying Abolish ICE, no more U.S. concentration camps, and let no politician give empty platitudes on DOR while imprisoning and deporting our neighbors

This is also an opportunity to articulate new visions for what America could be. I touch on it in a different context in this essay, but I think the image of America as a mosaic articulated by the work of Karen Tei Yamashita is a pretty damn good one

Also moderating a panel at UCI Global Asias 2026 which brings Brynn’s anthology into conversation with the work of co-editors of two other new (2024/2025) Asian American anthologies, Floyd Cheung (Smith C) and Lan Duong (USC)

Excited to be hosting Brynn Saito on Feb 19 for Day of Remembrance 2026 at Chapman U, to celebrate/ commemorate her work including her anthology on Japanese American wartime incarceration descendant poetry she co-edited with @brandonshimoda.bsky.social

I hope & believe I shared this at some point in 2024 when it came out, but it's sadly only more timely still & must-read material here in early 2026. Incredible work from @frankabe.bsky.social & my friend Floyd Cheung, full of authors & texts that will be new to most of us (me included). 🗃️

What’s colonialism got to do with it? Tracing the connections from sugar cane to power outages to ICE.

I’m doing a community preview of my memoir A PLACE FOR WHAT WE LOSE on 2/21, 10-12 at the WA state fairgrounds in Puyallup. Honored to be a featured speaker at this event organized by Puyallup Valley JACL.

May We Stop Repeating History! May We Close ICE Detention Sites! May All Families Be Free!

This February, many Japanese Americans commemorate the unjust incarceration of over 120,000 people during WWII with Day of Remembrance events. Meanwhile, the U.S. government is building similar concentration camps. Let that sink in. #AbolishICE www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

A deeply felt review by Amy Hirayama upon publication of "The Gate of Memory: Poems by Descendants of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration." Join us this Thursday 4/10 at Elliott Bay Books in Seattle with editors Brynn Saito and Brandon Shimoda and four of the poets anthologized.

“I begin here, with this, because despite how it reads, I loved my father…I begin with this as an attempt to bear witness to the shadows of our suffering, and, most importantly, the love that shaped my anger.” Happy pub day to @ayendy.bsky.social!

By the brilliant Michelle Huang!

After being held in two of them as a boy, I fought for decades urging America to never again build concentration camps and put human beings in them. It breaks my heart to watch this happen twice now in my own lifetime.

Peek into the mind and family history of graphic novelist Adrian Tomine, son of Dr. Satsuki Ina. Tomine and Ina will be at @jamuseum.bsky.social 's Democracy Center to discuss Ina's memoir, The Poet and the Silk Girl, on Feb. 7.

Read about it here www.clmp.org/news/books-l...

for Alex Pretti

Los Angeles: I’ll be in conversation with poet Yahya Ashour after his reading at USC this Friday afternoon. From Gaza, he found himself in exile in the United States after October 7. A powerful poet and a dynamic speaker. RSVP with the QR code or link in comment; there will be a reception afterwards

I first joined the Tule Lake Pilgrimage in 2010 to grasp the devastating consequences of resisting a loyalty questionnaire in the middle of a war. At the last pilgrimage in 2024, I documented the movement to translate and interpret the Japanese-language literature of incarceration. buff.ly/cOgAUSB

昨年、河出書房新社から『きみはメタルギアソリッドV: ファントムペインをプレイする』という邦訳短編集を発売しました。 その著者ジャミル・ジャン・コチャイさんの新作短編が発表されています。 コチャイさんが自分の家族をもとにして描く、アフガニスタン系アメリカ人一家の新たなストーリーです。 「きみはメタルギアソリッド～」は、主人公の「きみ」が、アフガニスタンでソ連軍に拷問された父を畏れながら隠れてゲームをする話でしたが、今回の新作はその父が主人公で、ソ連兵に捕まって脱出する話です。 翻訳ツールを使って読んでみてください。 www.newyorker.com/books/flash-...

I host a podcast on Vietnamese and Southeast Asian diasporic arts with Philip Nguyen. This Thursday at 6PM Pacific time we talk with Vu Tran (author of the noir drama DRAGONFISH) and Thi Bui (creator of the graphic memoir THE BEST WE COULD DO). rsvp for free for our conversation bit.ly/ACCENTED52

I am so sad. Prof Laurence Coderre (of NYU) was one of the first undergraduates I had the great fortune of advising. A Physics concentrator at Harvard who ended up double-majoring in Lit and Musicology after watching a yangbanxi in my Chinese cinema class. Great scholar, great human. Safe travels.

"Robert Nakamura, ‘Godfather’ of Asian American Film, Dies at 88." NY Times obituary by Jeré Longman. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/m...

Been sharing this collective enterprise with colleagues here. Many good ideas. I reject the notion that doing analog exercises is somehow "turning back the clock" or luddism—same as I reject the notion that digital technics are a priori evil. So much power in analog exercises and rituals!

We are so pleased to share our newest issue of Canadian Literature, issue 261, Swirling into a Field of Life: Works in Conversation with Y-Dang Troeung.

A little compendium of a few things I've translated. A varied group, but worth your attention, I think!

Check out our 3 CFP's for @the-ala.bsky.social 2026 conference! We have panels on model minority discourse, materiality, and new directions in Asian American literary studies! Due 1/22/26: caals.org/archives/1622

The Best Asian American books of 2025 list is out from Soapberry Review! I wrote about @estherwslin.bsky.social ‘s Cold Thief Place. bit.ly/3Lay11f

Binge listeners, your time has come! All six episodes of Rachel Maddow presents: Burn Order are now available to listen to for free wherever you get your podcasts. Enjoy! podcasts.apple.com/me/podcast/r...

I've written a review of Rachel Maddow's new podcast #BurnOrder, about Japanese American incarceration in WWII. This is its opening. I'm pitching it to editors right now. Know someone you think would be interested? Please let me know! #MSNow #Maddow #RachelMaddow #ExecutiveOrder9066 #internment

Two new episodes of Rachel Maddow's BURN ORDER podcast available today. Ep. 3, "One Drop," features Norm Mineta, Satsuki Ina, and Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga. Ep. 4, "Like an Ordinary American," highlights the Supreme Court cases of Gordon, Min, Fred, and Mitsuye Endo. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/r...

📣 Poetry lovers! ⁠Join us Tues, Dec 9 at 6:30pm PST / 9:30pm EST for Nikkei Uncovered V, a virtual poetry reading hosted by traci kato-kiriyama featuring @aaroncaycedokimura.bsky.social, Erica Isomura, and Syd Westley! ⁠ ⁠ ✨ FREE! RSVP required to receive the Zoom link www.janm.org/events/...

Literary journals, small presses, zines, these are the gifts we need all year.

My new essay, "Transpacific Exceptionalism: The Making of Japan-US Militarist Interimperiality" is out now. Open access at the Journal of Transnational American Studies. あたらしい論文が出ました！オープンアクセスです。

Rachel Maddow has a new six-part podcast on the time “the US military deployed on the streets of America" to forcibly remove a targeted minority. I'm told I'm featured in Part 2. The first two eps drop on December 1 from MSNOW.

new @carceralhistory.bsky.social: an author's pitch from David Coogan, editor of The Cambridge Companion to American Prison Writing and Mass Incarceration, recently published by @universitypress.cambridge.org carceral-history.ghost.io/prisoners-wh...

I was so moved by the tenacity and love documented in this film about the long campaign to Free Leonard Peltier. The film is streaming until November 30. $15. www.docnyc.net/film/free-le...

Suddenly So Alone: Jean Chen Ho on Dislocation and Longing in Upstate New York: On Lunar New Year’s Day in 2024, I drove for two hours from Saratoga Springs, New York, to Dia Beacon, the contemporary art museum on the banks of the Hudson River. I wanted beauty. Tall trees stood… #Features #Memoir

I am so so sorry that Alice Wong has left. I didn’t know her well, but I knew her for a long time and had many convos - and her words, her advocacy, and her humor meant so much for so many. And in classic Alice fashion she generously left us all a note. Safe travels, @sfdirewolf.bsky.social. 一路走好

PLEASE CONSIDER SIGNING! The UC President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program is under attack. UC admin is in the process of gutting the heart of this 41-year-old program, which has had a profound impact on the UC system. There's still time to save it. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Registration for UC Irvine Global Asias 2026 is now OPEN! sites.uci.edu/globalasias/.... No fee for non-tenure track participants or UCI community members. For non-UCI tenure-track registrants, there is a sliding scale fee.

Exciting CAALS event! 🎉 Join us Fri, Nov 14, 2:30-3:45pm EST for a talk with Chris A. Eng & Roberta Wolfson on their new books, Extravagant Camp: The Queer Abjection of Asian America & Refiguring Race and Risk: Counternarratives of Care in the US Security State! Zoom link: bit.ly/4nFc73u