Densho Blog is so good– entertaining, woke, and rewarding with deep pop-culture dives like this one! Wonder Woman, Magnum, P.I., Teen Wolf!
Source: 10 TV Shows That Depicted Japanese American Incarceration, For Better or For Worse
Good coverage from Democracy Now of the first ever Native-American Presidential Forum.
Wanted to take note of this new podcast from Dissent magazine, Know Your Enemy. I’ve been having trouble subscribing to it through the app I usually use due to a problem I don’t understand with the RSS feed. But the content looks pretty good– basically opposition research, or histories of some of the individuals and organizations that have populated the political right of the United States since the end of World War 2.
Perhaps I’ll follow up on this after I’ve had time to digest more of the show itself. Right now there are only about 7 episodes available. But if the quality of Dissent‘s other podcast, Belabored, is any indication, this one will be a good one to follow as well.
August 6— It’s an overcast and windy morning. There was an occasional drizzle on my way into work. The school and the city just observed the anniversary of the first nuclear carpet bombing. 74 years ago today this city was reduced to smoldering, irradiated rubble in carpet-bombing targeting civilians, designed to strike terror and hopelessness into the hearts of the Japanese population and win the Pacific War ahead of a Russian invasion of the Japanese mainland. It was a unique bombing only in terms of the type of weapon used. Otherwise, it is I think fair to say that bombings like these continue into the present day, initiated by the American Executive, left unchecked by the Congress and largely ignored by the American populace. These bombings still target civilians and kill tens of thousands of innocent people every year in places like Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and Somalia. End the American Capitalist Death Cult!
Portrait of Sadako Sasaki – a young girl who became the symbol of the innocent lives lost in the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and to the brutalities of World War II. Artwork by Joëlle Jones. From Red Flag Magazine: https://redflag.org/magazine/issue-6/wish-upon-a-crane/
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This piece I found on consortiumnews.com was written in June by William J. Astore. It’s a great summary of America’s obsession with “air supremacy.” Astore calls the American Military Industrial Complex a “cult,” as do the authors of the “Eyes Left” podcast, which I highly recommend.
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/06/10/the-american-cult-of-bombing/
Great article from the online version of Teaching Tolerance. The “Uncivil” podcast that the article recommends is fantastic. I have listened to all of the episodes, and I’m hungry for more. Podcasts as a medium or vehicle specifically for historical research holds particular value/ promise/ energy for precisely the reason that this article proposes in its opening lines: “Radio has the best pictures.” Listening to an audio program like a podcast– particularly if it is well produced, with music and the occasional sound effect– is such and effective communicative tool. Propagandists beware. Propagandists take note. Podcasts, when accompanied by appropriate notations and references (=hyperlinks), are the antidote for corporate fake news.
Source: The Subscribed Classroom: Using Podcasts to Teach About Social Justice
Just started reading No-No Boy by John Okada. From the Introduction I was hooked. I mean, I was expecting it to be a powerful book, but Lawson Fusao Inada and the other researchers involved in the Combined Asian American Resources Project (CARP!) which re-published the novel in 1979 were obviously hugely affected when they discovered this book. Actually, the introduction mentions a few others as well, that I wanted to list up here, so I can keep following this thread in the future.
Frank Chin “Chickencoop Chinaman”– first Asian-American drama produced by “legitimate theater”
David Ishii (Seattle “landmark” Asian-Americana bookstore)– what is it called? Does it still exist?
Shawn Wong, Inada, Ishii and Chin, “Aiiieeeee!” Literary Magazine dedicated to John Okada and Louis Chu.
George Takei’s performance of Chin’s “The Year of the Dragon” televised nationally
Franklin Odo– Asian-American Studies Teacher at UCLA.
Carlos Bulosan’s America is in the Heart (1946, 1973)
Louis Chu’s Eat a Bowl of Tea (1961)
Toshio Mori’s Yokohama, California (1949)
Have a look at the review I just posted of this book by Vietnamese-American Author Linh Dinh.
Source: Love Like Hate: A Novel by Linh Dinh | Goodreads
I was surprised to find this title in the small English language section of the used books chain store near Hiroshima University. I wonder if it had been assigned for a class. Previous owner’s marginalia gave hints about their English reading level. Without getting too personal, a big part of the reason I was drawn to this book is that I recognized the author from the Carrboro International Poetry Festival (back in 2005 was it?) organized by Patrick Herron in the heyday of the Lucifer Poetics Group in North Carolina. The serendipity of reconnecting with this author’s work after more than a decade, having moved from the U.S. to Asia myself, felt somehow congruent to this novel’s particular sweeping historic and moral (satirical) power.
It is a novel that manages to capture the aftermath of the Vietnam War– the poverty, cultural and political upheaval, sweat, shrimp paste, inter-generational drama, and prostitution. The author does a great job of drawing out these gamey bits of sinew and collagen from the main loaf. A nod to the allure of dog meat, a pathetic ex-pat’s headache-inducing English “lessons,” the rightful owner of a wad of cash at the bottom of a jar of shrimp paste, the where-is-she-now moment with the Trang Bang napalm girl Phan Thi Kim Phuc (parenthetically demystified), the disdain for the embrace of superstition, and the embrace of superstition. It’s a hypnotic novel in all of its grotesque particulars. But it is gorgeous as well in its depicting an overarching transgressive humanity that extends across national borders and backward and forward in time.
Densho is a great organization engaged in archival work and political activism around the World War II Era Japanese-American concentration camps in the Western United States. It’s based out of Seattle, where they have frequent events. I look forward to learning more about this important organization and hopefully even using some of their archival materials on a future history of education project.
Another Japanese incarceration lead that I just became aware of is this novel, No No Boy by John Okada (Charles E. Tuttle, 1957). Unfortunately I had to find out about this in a NYTimes article this week describing a copyright dispute between the Okada family and Penguin Books, who apparently treated it as part of the public domain when they published the latest edition (pictured below).
Densho also has a great article outlining the story of this book and its publication here.
This is a really important piece by Kate Aronoff about the political situation in Europe from the point of view of the left in the U.S., whose political push for policies to address environmental and economic justice (i.e. the so-called Green New Deal) continues to face resistance within the Democratic party. The punchline, paraphrasing this month’s Dissent Magazine subtitle: “The Neo-liberal center cannot hold!”
Particularly disturbing are the French Neo-Fascists’ fingering “borders” as a way forward on climate? WTF? Identity politics and individual consumer choices are not a solution to climate crisis. This problem demands systemic change and the dismantling of the nationally sanctioned corporate hegemony, which is the source of the vast vast majority of pollution in the world.
Source: The European Far Right’s Environmental Turn | Dissent Magazine
Found these next quotes in a Free Will Astrology weekly horoscope mailing:
I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE SOIL
Poet Gary Snyder wrote:
“I pledge allegiance to the soil
one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun
with joyful interpenetration for all.”
Environmentalist Edward Abbey said, “My loyalties will not be bound by
national borders . . . or limited in the spiritual dimension by one language
or culture. I pledge my allegiance to the damned human race, and my
everlasting love to the green hills of Earth, and my intimations of glory to
the singing stars, to the very end of space and time.”
In *Moby Dick*, Herman Melville suggested that ideally a person should
be a “patriot to heaven.”
