Soft sand and warm winters. I can dig this side of Miami

There are some interesting similarities between Okinawa and Miami that I noticed almost immediately.  This is a city of multiple borderlands and funky politics that are constantly being reproduced in transnational spaces here.  To really know Miami, you have to your ear to the ground all across Latin America and the Caribbean.  Because of my husband, I’m immediately connected to a large and intimate network of Cubans.  It’s been fun getting to know this side of the family.

Cuban food galore. And so cheap. Can’t find this in Okinawa.

Gajimaru like –next to my house

The trees here remind me of Okinawa

There are so few Asians in Miami.  And many Asian I have met here are like 3rd generation Chinese hailing from Jamaica.  Check out this guy’s funny post about a Chinese festival in Miami.  So not having an Okinawan community anywhere remotely close by like in CA is a bit hard.  There are not many good Japanese restaurants in Miami that are reasonably priced and the ones that are stink.  There is one tiny Japanese market here but it’s very pricey.  I’ve been craving soba and ramen lately.  I’ve been told from the handful of Japanese I’ve met here that there are just no good ramen or soba places in Miami.  Period.  One was written up highly in some guidebook so my friend who was visiting me from Tokyo went to check it out and she said it was terrible.  She couldn’t even finish her meal and said it was extremely overpriced — for ramen.  I tried to warn her but she was pregnant and craving ramen so she had to go.

At the Morikami Museum–”Japanese cold noodles”. I don’t think so. Just spaghetti noodles with an ugly blob of peanut sauce. Look at that sad presentation. <wimper>

I miss Okinawa — my family, the ocean, the events, the quirky ways things moved there.  Maybe it’s because I think about all the people I spoke with while there.  I read my “fieldnotes” and listen to transcribed audio files from interviews.  I think about how some people’s opinions might have already been transformed by new experiences, new encounters.  I am trying to think about a shifting Okinawa as I write in a bustling Miami.

Something like or a little batido stand would clean up in Okinawa.  This guy parks in my hood everyday. Need to check it out.

My mom comes next week.  It’ll be her first time in Miami.  I wonder what she’ll think.  She may find it similar to Okinawa in some ways too–the weather, the abundance of PORK, the “it’ll happen when it happens” attitude, the banyan like trees and clear, warm ocean.  She may be in for a shock however with how rude everyone seems up front.  People are not the warmest here (unless you are somehow inside a network–fam, work, etc.) and there’s crazy road rage.  But the diversity of people here is really great (except for Asians) and I think she’ll find that interesting.  Or she may just think everyone here are Mexicanos.

What to expect when you get invited to a BBQ in Miami–a whole pig picked up directly from the slaughterhouse in town and cooked over hot coals all day.

When I was in Okinawa, I met a few Cubans living there.  One had come by way of Spain, two other Cuban-Americans from Miami were working as contractors with the base, one just passing through.  Okinawa made them nostalgic.  Hmmm, nostalgia is not the perfect expression.  Perhaps the portuguese word saudade is better–sugarcanes, ocean backdrop, the way people make connections to each other, island living…  So with the large Cuban connection in Miami, I’m not sure why there are not more linkages between these two places.  There is a small community of Okinawans living in Cuba.  Folks have written about them.  But I don’t know about Okinawa-Miami connections.

A jammin block party in my hood. Music, local art, and random juggling dudes. No this doesn’t match up to the the excitement from an eisa group flowing through the strerets on the shima but it’s still good fun.

Just the other day, I was talking to this water heater repairman, a recent immigrant from Cuba. He  asked me if I was part Chinese because I looked like someone he knew back in Cuba.  I explained I was part Okinawan and he lit up and told me in Spanish that he had a dream that he lived in Okinawa and that this was a sign that before he died he would have to go there.  I asked what he knew about Okinawa and he said he had always been fascinated by Okinawan karate and wanted to go there and had started reading everything he could about the islands.  He said that for some reason, he thought that he as a black Cuban he could live freely in Okinawa (“en Okinawa, es posible que un negrito como yo, puede vivir libre, libre!”).  His gruff Colombian boss came in and told him to stop talking and get back to work before I could ask him if livingfreely meant for him a de-racialized way of being.  It was so interesting.

On a hike through the Everglades

Just outside Miami — so full of wildlife in a delicate ecosystem

I’ve never seen so many gators in my life. At my feet. In the wild.  Within potential attack range.

A nice break from the city.

Dusk in the Everglades. Rustling gators on the move, growling and hunting. Beautiful but a bit scary.

In the meantime, for those of you who are in the Berkeley area, check out this cool event on Friday.  Wish I could go:  http://ieas.berkeley.edu/cjs/berkeley_japan_prize_current.html

I wish I could see this but I’m not in Okinawa right now.  But Prof. Laura Kina is back in Okinawa and she’s lecturing at Ryu Dai on a very interesting topic– “Mixed Race Asian American Art- Chanpuru Spirit and ‘Hapa’ Identity.”  Check it out.  It’s on Dec. 5th for you folks in Japan.

IIOS_Flyer_LauraKina_Okinawa_2

Please go to the special event page (gritsandsushi.tumblr.com) where you can submit your question and answer via the comments section. You can also submit a question to me on this site. English or Japanese if ok.

Please join me for the second installment of Nappy Routes and Tangled Tales in Ginowan at Cafe Cotonoha.  It’ll take place at 6:30pm.

Please visit the special event page for more information: gritsandsushi.tumblr.com

The inspiration

One of the problems of communication for people across the fences and especially for mixed people in Okinawa is that there is very little opportunity us to come together in person to share their disparate stories with each other.  After having conducted many interviews over this past year, I have noticed some repeating stories and patterns as well as some really striking surprises.  I have yearned to introduce interviewees across the fenceline, especially mixed folks I’ve met from all walks of life, to each other.  Not necessarily to become friends, but to hear some of the stories they told me in the interview.

Because I have been interviewing all types of people in Okinawa (military, residents, expats, business owners, etc) I have been privy to some incredible stories (and gossip and secrets).  What was a surprise for me in this process is that these interviewees (I hate that word but will use it this once here) were aware that I was interviewing all kinds of different people and would sometimes ask me what others  I had met with thought about issues we were raising.  I became a bridge in a sense.  I’m not the only person who has been put in this role.  I think many mixed Okinawans who can move back and forth (through the fences) have this role.  Bilingual/bicultural people in Okinawa have this role as well.  And I think women in particular take on this role more so than men.

I saw  a very interesting documentary called Question Bridge.  I contacted someone involved with that project, watched their blog closely and watched all their various off shoots of that project.  I think it’s brilliant.  I wanted to adapt that idea for an in-person, cross-cultural, bilingual and transnational setting with intensive input from both Americans and Okinawans.  Although this is nothing remotely close to that scale, I wanted to do a pilot of what I will carry out on a larger scale next time, with a professional video crew later.

Description

For this session of Nappy Routes and Tangled Tales, the emphasis of our conversation will be placed on mixed roots in Okinawa.  As Okinawans of mixed heritage, we are the ones who embody these issues of fence-line cultural practices/mentalities the most intimately.  The bulk of the front of our conversation will set the stage for the rest of the conversation in the evening.  The second half of the event will be opened to other types of hybrid cultural practices that occur around the fencelines (both literal and emotional) and how those also inevitably impact the livelihood of mixed people living in Okinawa.

There is no singular mixed race voice in Okinawa.  Our circumstances vary depending on language, class, racial mixture, family life, emotional/educational support, etc.  This is a unique conversation as it will bring mixed people in Okinawa from various positions to dialog about what matters to us. Some participants are not mixed but are deeply invested in this issue as well–parents, teachers, friends, colleagues.  They will take a secondary position in this conversation as active listeners first and then will contribute their piece in the second half of the discussion.

Participants are asked to submit at least one question* to be directed at others who live in Okinawa (Americans, Okinawans, mixed people, military, civilians, etc).  These can be asked anonymously as well as answered anonymously under the comments section (use a fake email address if you’d like). I will compile these questions and answers and present them at the event.  This will start our dialog and focus group session.  A handful of individuals have been asked to speak for 10 minutes, answering a question that Mitzi has given to them ahead of time.

*Questions should center around these topics:

• Racial identity  and racial representations of US Americans and Okinawa and around the bases
• “On base” and “Off-base” spaces– identities in flux
• Interracial Dating/ Blended Families/ Mixed Families and Belonging in Okinawa
• Strategies for making home along the fenceline
• Anecdotes that are circulated and repeated about fenceline cultures.

Please remember, this  gathering seeks to encourage dialogue by asking the questions that we rarely ask of each other.  We live in the is same space but there are so many divisions in Okinawa.   Feel free to elaborate on your question.

What are the questions you have always wanted to ask each other but were afraid to ask.  Questions are monitored so only those that will be constructive and are respectful of the nature of this project will be selected to be posted.  You can also send your questions or answers anonymously (using a fake email address if you’d prefer) through the contact page here.  If you know of someone who would like to participate, please forward this information to them as well.

Here are a few questions that have already been submitted.  Be sure to visit the event page to see more questions:

1. Question for Okinawans (from a black/Okinawan woman, late 20’s, base employee)

When you meet a mixed Okinawan person, what is your usually first thought about them and/or their mother?  Because sometimes I feel like people immediately think my mother was a prostitute, or that I am abandoned, or without family, or not loved.  I sometimes see the stares and wonder what thoughts are really going on.

1. Question for Okinawan men (from an Okinawan woman, mid 20’s)

What do you think when you see an Okinawan woman with a black man?  Do you think we are easy? I sometimes wonder if you think we are all the same, all “Amejo” without any power.  Does it make you upset?

1. Question for black people in the military (from an Okinawan man, late 40’s)

Why have you lost your soulfulness?  Many of you are nice but I realize that many of you have lost your unique identity of your circumstances.  I used to admire black people from your music to your style and still do but now you seem to just be a government toy.  Do you feel like something happened to your soul when you joined the military?

Please be sure to visit the separate event page:  gritsandsushi.tumblr.com

We went back to the house and had a terrific conversation about some of the jokes they told about the base officials they used to work for.  My auntie was a housekeeper and she had some good ones.  Believe it or not, a lot of people on the bases now call the women who do errands, babysit, help spouses in the home with domestic duties “mama-san.”  It makes me cringe every time I hear it. My uncle was what they called a “houseboy.”  They had me rollin’ as they did their “GI English” which consisted of “goddamn” and orders.  My other uncle worked in the mess hall which I learned was a coveted job because they could bring home all kinds of scraps of food (so if it was a chicken they could bring home, they stuffed the hell out of it with anything else they could find) and would divy the goods.   My mom had told me similar jokes when I was growing up.  She used to do a number of odd-end jobs around the base (babysitting, making id’s, bowling alley attendant, etc).  It was good to hear how they looked at labor, the sheer difference in wealth and power between themselves and those they worked for, and “defeat.”

my relative (mom’s uncle?–have to check again) who was apparently very high up in the munchu and in their old neighborhood community

Anyway…my uncle told me more about the land they owned.  The place where they grew up right on the ocean before the war.  They told me of how generous some Americans were to them in their extreme poverty but how little they really knew about how they lived–suffering with very little and just barely scraping by.  They talked about how sometimes those blue eyed men looked like goats to them.  And the jokes they would make at night at home.

Then they pulled out all kinds of historical information for me.  My Okinawan family is displaced in Okinawa.  Their original land is old Oomine where the imperial Japanese military set up a airfield, then where Naha AirBase was built (where my dad worked), then where the Naha Airport and now Japanese Self Defense Forces operate.  The last time I was here my uncle took me to just outside the barbed wire fence and off-limit signs.  It’s where my mom used to play just before the war began, just up to the point when the sirens sounded in 1945.  And they ran.

Map of my mom’s old neighborhood before the war

Map of my mom’s old neighborhood — I think this one was of the land divisions before they were displaced

Their old original neighborhood organization is still going strong.  About 11 years ago, I went to the undokai (field day) organized by the various munchus 門中 (like a family clan) and was deeply moved that for the most part, stayed connected after all the deaths and war and displacement (not all in a romanticized way b/c there’s a lot of infighting and nastiness in lots of munchu politics all over Okinawa).

One of the plots along the waterline is my family’s original home–right on the water. My mom always says she’ll never forget the taste of salt on everything.

Our family tombs from the Uehara side and my grandmother’s Akamine side are pictured on this page in a book published recently by the old neighborhood association. It lists where all the munchu graves are located now-where we go frequently to pay respects. My great grandfather and others had to go to the original land and take out all the bones from the old grave there and bring them to the new one they built pictured when they were kicked off their land for the base to be built. Can you imagine the feelings one must have when doing that?

I hope these memories of the pre-war Oomine community will continue to persist.  If this area or places like these ever are returned, I always wonder how the memories of these spaces, how the festivities and activities that center around the actual place, and the intricate  assemblages of culture at work in the continued persistence to map and remember this area physically will shift.  There needs to be more work on this as more foreigners come to Okinawa to buy land (many American military expats) and wealthy mainlanders and superstars who have their second homes here.  I worry.

If my Japanese were much better, this would be my next research topic but alas, my kanji is still not good enough for the type of deep archival and legal work in Japanese needed for this.

I’d like to introduce to you the great  ”Unqle Kaya” of Freek Productions. He played a major role in shaping hip hop on the island.  My dear friend Akiko (Awich) introduced us to each other and to the lovely cafe.  He produced her music, along with several other Okinawa rappers back in the day.  He was on this panel Akiko and I organized together in May but I didn’t have a chance to talk with him much at that time.

Akiko and Kaya

Kaya and me (do I look ghostly?)

We met at a hip bar/cafe in Naha called Owl Cafe 385 (the owners are from Miyako, hence the 3(MI) 8 (YA) 5(G/KO).  The abstract artwork on the wall is done by Okinawan artist Eiten Oshiro.  Talking to Kaya and Akiko in that space was like listening to a mixed tape of Pharoah Sanders, Manu Chao, Mos Def, and Kina Shokichi in one sitting–abstract, politically astute, smooth flows, playful yet soulful.

OwlCafe

OwlCafe385

I won’t transcribe the entire yuntaku-kai here (chatting session–Okinawa City hosts a weekly group by this name and I love it) but I’ll just say that he gave me a really good sense for how hip hop, blackness, and global circulation of dislocated “call and response” forms can be transformative to one’s sense of “the local.”

Getting into “Black”

Kaya started feeling a strong affinity towards “black music” at an early age.  While playing on the floor at his parents clothing boutique in Shikoku in the 70′s, he could discern what was black disco from what he said sounded like white disco as it pumped through the speakers. He loved the black disco sound and always felt it somehow spoke to something deep inside.  It moved him.  Literally–he began traveling around to the world’s great clubs to hear black music transformed, he started to make interesting connections about how hip hop crosses borders and how it becomes adopted into certain places (and to a certain extent, why the representations attached that adoption become whitewashed and/or commercialized.

He saw how the rap music that was emerging from the underground scenes in many US urban areas were being picked up by London DJ’s like Giles Peterson who were a bit like music archaeologists–interested in uncovering the sedimented sounds of black music (digging out the dusty blues in Texas roots music, the funk in the New Orleans sounds, and layering them onto more contemporary grooves) — and moving those sounds out of the US, where it became popularized and well respected, especially in Tokyo which he says was still focused on emulating the London club scene.  I found it really interesting when he said that folks in Tokyo couldn’t go straight to the source of black music–that they needed an intermediary (London) to appreciate it at that time.

As a salaryman in Tokyo during the crazy economic bubble, he was using nearly half his income each month to buy vinyls and began to build a ridiculously massive collection of club music from around the world.  He was deep in the scene.  When he came to Okinawa, he brought with him this fabulous collection of music and made it a mission to share his finds with folks here, wanting to see what kinds of collaborations of sounds — Ryukyuan and black urban hip hop forms could be pulled together.

Kaya says that in the 90′s the “black” soundscape in Japan was transforming.  Acid jazz was on the rise and groups like Gang Starr, the Roots, Tribe Called Quest, DJ Premium, etc were being imported back to the US after already being recognized and loved here in Japan and Europe. He said Japanese  were deep into hip hop and rap, funk, and soul and this new circulating black hip hop sound that was traveling worldwide.  They got it.  They didn’t need a third party any longer.  They were micro-brewing it at home now.

Africa Bambaataa for example, was hot diggety here in Japan.  He said they were even surprised by how well known they were here.  Check Kaya out in these pics from back in the day.

Kaya thrilled with his signature from Afrikabambaataa back in the day in Okinawa (Pic courtesy of Kaya)

AB Concert in Okinawa (pic courtesy of Kaya)

Back in the US, he says West coast rap and Miami booty music (ie. Two Live Crew) was on the up and up.  Guess the two places in Japan where folks were really paying attention to that style:  Yokohama and Okinawa.  Could there be a correlation to the  high concentration of military?  Absolutely he says.  Besides that connection however, he also believes that the climate in Okinawa has a lot to do with the kind of shared music affinities people have in other warm climates–like Miami and Jamaica (hence the abundant love of reggae here).  I differ on this view but who knows, he could be totally on point.

Okinawa Hip Hop Scene and Young Black Military Folk in Okinawa

When he started rapping and recording music in Okinawa, he inevitably started working with rappers who happened to be in the military.  They were doing club gigs together, promoting events together, recruiting the same audiences.  Many of these guys would come by his record store frequently, buying up the vinyl.  They shared his love and excitement for hip hop and rap.  They tended to like their own local music while he (being a more global connoisseur of black music) was also attracted to a black London sound or African mixed dub, house, or acid jazz sounds.  Some of the guys from the military were really young and had not been exposed to all of these other sounds outside what they were hearing at home.  And he’s not judgemental of that–acknowledging that that’s what makes good music strong–the local, the groundedness of a sound but it’s when that local sound gets hijacked by greed when it becomes uninteresting.  And some of these guys were listening to that monotonous stuff that had already become too mainstream.  He’s not just one of those guys who likes “exotic” sounds or is a record store diving hipster looking for “the authentic.”  He really appreciates the traffic of sounds through history and understands their complexities and the representations in flux with their time traveling.

As I was listening to this, I was thinking about an interview I had done with a former black Marine who talked about how he would bring his own vinyls to the Japanese clubs asking them to play rap and hip hop and how difficult that was.  Local clubs were just starting to get into the R&B scene.  He said that his music was his outlet-away from the country, rock-n-roll dominant Marine base club scene at that time–away from the restrictive base that he felt was harsh towards black Americans at that time.  For him, going off-base was liberating.  He felt he could be black again.  It was in the club scene where he felt his blackness and individuality could flourish.  

AB in Okinawa (pic courtesy of Kaya)

It was during this period of intense contact when Kaya observed some very interesting dynamics and made some terrific observations and revelations–about where people came from, what expectations they had of each other, what he thought about different militarized spaces/branches.  He had hilarious stories about the tensions in the room when the very intense east coast/west coast battling would start (Remember those days? Eyes rolling…) in these clubs and the fights that ensued when he got the mic and busted a rhyme in Japanese.  (“So man, are you east coast or west coast? Say what? I’m Japanese?”) Can’t do all those details here, just getting your taste buds ready.  I gotta leave something fresh for my dissertation right?   Wait for it, wait for it.

By the mid-90′s he laments that hip hop in the clubs, like vinyl, started to die a slow death.  Not that they are still not his favorite things in the world, it’s just that it was too costly to continue with vinyl in a digital world and because hip hop had become so overly commercialized.  The DJ’s were no longer creative artists in the clubs that they had become after they had been liberated from the stiffly  hierarchical organized disco era club scene.  Now he said they were reverting back to just taking request after request and had little liberty to create their own unique sound, to really mix and merge.  It was disconcerting.  He was still in the scene though–producing, DJing, rapping, hustling but the scene had shifted, as do all music scenes he said and it’s not to make a judgement on weather that’s good or bad, it was just different now.

AB Concert in Okinawa (Courtesy of Kaya)

We chatted about some of the various groups that made it big here, especially those black Americans who came over and made a small mark on the scene but took off  or whose groups fractured or fizzled away (like Okizoo, Infinity Pomotion, etc).  There are others who are trying to make a more lasting presence here.  See around2:45 in this interview Akiko did with Syndicate Family.

Their tags still remain–Koza

Hip hop in Okinawa is like that to some extent.  It’s transitory. Some folks PCS (military talk for moving to a new base), or they became expats and decided to go home, or their groups just get stale.   It’s got an interesting sound b/c of the large number of black people here with the military and to some extent, the club sound is affected by their dominant tastes that some of these folks are bringing with them.  With it comes an imagined lifestyle too.  A group of South Asian vendors and Okinawans have built up businesses selling baseball caps, low hanging pants, even grillz to promote a singular type of hip hop style to not just Americans but Okinawans living here.  Just walk down Gate 2 street or around Chatan and you will know what I’m talking about.

Keepin it real in Okinawa

For example, around the late 90′s and early 2000′s, Southern bouncy drawly rap began drawing more airtime and breaking through the East Coast/West Coast dominant scene in the US.  (I know this personally because my lil’ brother was part of this scene back home in TX.  He and his group would go around touring the Houston/Dallas/Atlanta club circuit and spent lots of money in the studio with their southern style sending my mother into  fits of nonstop screaming in Uchinaguchi at him and his boyz if they dared call the house.)  Anyway, because there are so many southerners in the Marines in Okinawa, their musical taste came  over to the island with this movement of people.

In a separate discussion I had with another rapper I spoke with a few months ago, I was told that the hip hop/rap  in places like  Gate 2 Street in Koza (Okinawa City), was so stale and uniform that it was really difficult to break into “the scene” anymore with a non-commercialized sound.  This person said that a certain type of sound, a certain expectation of ‘blackness’ was being required  for performance/to be performed.

Hip Hop and basking in the Black Glow?

It was so interesting to have this talk because my friend’s dance crew just won the World Hip Hop Dance Competition in Las Vegas.  They recently came back to Okinawa overjoyed with this enormous title of best varsity hip hop dance crew “in the world.”  They are a dedicated group of students and my friend R is a dedicated  instructor and leader (as well as owner of the dance studio with his own brilliant story of coming from an Okinawan blended family). There is no denying, his students LOVE hip hop, the feel of it, the blackness of it so I cannot say that its commercialization is fully lamentable.  Do his students know what all the lyrics mean?  Probably not.  Does every kid in Atlanta really think about them either these days?  Pssh, not even.  But has it allowed for some ways for black folks in places like Japan to be seen differently, less sambo-like, possibly less militarized, than they had been before?  Yes and no.  In Okinawa, being black and being military is so closely linked it’s hard to break from that categorization whereas in places like Tokyo or Osaka, black and military are not so immediately connected.  It takes a different kind of navigating away to distance oneself from that immediate linkage to the bases.  In some cases here, it may have given some black folks in Okinawa a way to be visible in a less institutionalized way.  This is one thing we’ll be discussing at my next focus group I’m conducting and I’ll try to come back and report on this here later.

I asked Akiko (Awich) why she wrote the lyrics to her music the way she did (in English, with a tough spitting style) and she said her idea was not simply to copy a hard rap style back in the US, but to raise an emotional connection across the Pacific.  She was drawn to the ways in which urban rappers in the US could create these intense stories about the world around them.  She was attracted to how their music allowed them to express details about their surroundings to a greater audience and that their difficult situations were what partially shaped them and what gives them a hard sound.  She liked that they were demanding visibility.  She wanted that for Okinawa.  To pay homage to where rap came from, she rapped in English but connected her words and ideas to Okinawa.  She said she ultimately wanted to create a sound and accompanying story that would tell the world about how hard it was to be in Okinawa too and that the situation here is difficult, that Okinawans are circumscribed in a geopolitical windstorm that keeps folks pissed off by the more of the same attitude.  Kaya must have seen this fire in her when he produced her and she took off.  She’s onto some really amazing projects and I encourage you to visit her site. We’re collaborating on another big project and I’ll post more info on that here later.

These talks with Akiko and the latest with Kaya make me realize that hip hop in Okinawa was not necessarily about a direct dialogue with the originating caller (of the call and response) form as Paul Gilroy has already written so beautifully.  Shoot, that’s long been dislocated.  It’s about how one  responds with all the interruptions and haziness of the routes on which it travels.  There’s some really good rap and hip hop that is still coming out of Okinawa today.  The imported form and how it is received here was our main topic of discussion.

Perhaps another post another time on the other forms in development on the island?  Check out Kaya’s blog.  He now does a lot of storytelling and has written a book on ghost tales in Okinawa and a history of hip hop production and clubs in Okinawa.  He recently appeared on an Okinawan comedy show that I like.

In the meantime, I leave you with this video of Sol-T Shine of Okinawa’s Ti-da dance studio doing their thang in Las Vegas:

Thanks for the pic Ed.

Last Friday, I gave a talk at Kyoto University.  Edward Sumoto of Mixed Roots and Professor Yasuko Takezawa (of the Takezawa Research Lab) organize these very interesting seminars on Japanese mixed race issues through the Institute for Research in Humanities.  Using the theoretical work of one of my professors at Berkeley, I talked about how the “cartographies of communicability” in the specific practice of the interview tend create particular racializing subject positions for some mixed race people in Okinawa.  Then using the Foucauldian geneological work of Annmaria Shimabuku, talked about the “petitioning body” in Okinawa (as she conceptualizes it) and how that limited range of possibilities created in interviews work to displace “petitioners” with resisters and what that means for mixed folks, especially black mixed folks in this particular militarized zone of Okinawa.  This won’t make any sense without reading her work.  Sorry but I want to talk about something else right now.  I’ll publish the paper talk later.

I had to cut about 35% of my paper because I knew it would be too long.  Afterwards, I realized that I probably cut in places I shouldn’t have.  I also wish I had remembered to talk about my own hesitation with writing about mixed issues in Japan in an academic way.  I was talking to a woman the next day about these things.  My real research is actually not specifically on “mixed race” in Okinawa.  I will be bringing in A LOT of these areas into my work but it’s not the primary focus as it is in this blog.  I’m obviously very invested in this topic but I’ve always been hesitant about writing about it with academic language.  Even after the talk, I felt awkward.  I wondered, did I leave enough space for contingency?  Did I leave enough wiggle room for cases that can turn my entire thesis on its head?  The finality embedded in academic discourse can sometimes close off creative routes to spaces of belonging in places like Okinawa, where guarded check points and off-limit signs normalize detour mentalities.

And because I presented in English, I was very aware of all the issues of power, nuances missed, areas that could be disputed.  I put up a few slides with some quotes from a few folks that I’ve interviewed and I didn’t get a chance to explain why I included them and how they intersect with my main points about communicability.  For example, there was one slide called “Refractions” about how some mixed folks see each other through the fence lines (those with ID’s and those without).  I didn’t have time to get into how interviews block the refraction lens through which we see each other.  What is expected and desired in the interview process is a reflective lens approach.   I’m noticing that many of us mixed folks in Okinawa do not see each other clearly sometimes.  We see each other through the prism of racial triangulations in this complex space.  It’s why I included the quotes of some mixed Okinawans who grew up on the base, a mixed mainland Japanese person who later moved to Okinawa but now works on the base, and a mixed Okinawan who grew up in the South far away from the base.  We see each other. We are all mixed yes, but there is something different.  I’m interested in how that difference is expressed.

While I was at Kyoto, I learned quite a bit from the other mixed race scholars there.  Some are wary of outsiders, including mixed race folks like me who grew up outside Japan or those who left and have made their permanent residence away from Japan.  They feel they have every right to critique the state but are sensitive to it when launched by outsiders.  And I get that.  I feel the same way about the US South.  People can miss out on all the complex feelings that border love and hate one lives on at the cusp of belonging, or where there is an incredibly intense history of violence, hate, or rejection. If one is not from that space, can they get all those complex emotions and put it into discourse that makes sense for others?  Can they really capture the urgency which one feels in making sure that the knowledge created is just right, because it affects our lives in the most minute ways, or the lives of those we love.  (I am reminded of this article my new friend Kyle sent my way not long ago).  It’s why I am always hesitant about writing with finality on these issues.  But the parts of my talk that seemed to resonate the most with folks was the parts that I felt most strongly about– that we are sick to death of being boxed into “the abandoned amerasian” or “identity crisis” child category.  That narrative is so strong that it limits other possibilities/experiences, especially in Okinawa.  That narrative is not as defined in the US anymore the way it was here/sometime still is here, but it still creeps into racializations there too.  I brought up an article that one of my mixed Okinawan friends was in and how even though the article was supposed to be about language revitalization, it ended up starting off as his supposed “identity crisis.”  It’s as if nothing else we say matters unless we are first situated/hailed as such.

In Okinawa, when I tell someone that I am black and Okinawan, the response I might get from someone who works on base is, “So where was your dad stationed?”  The following question, “are they still together?”  Both questions attempt to locate me into a particular space.  If my parents are not still together, does that mean I was not able to access the base?  Does that mean I fall into the “abandoned” category.  Does that mean I am being hailed as a “shima haafu”  (an Okinawan half who grew up off base and not “Americanized”) and with that hailing, a long set of refined, yet possibly unconscious techniques that mark my body and make me “depictable” and insertable into particular racialized subject positions?  If my parents are still together and I grew up on base, does that make me less haafu and more half?  (And yes, there is a distinction– A rising scholar I met in Kyoto named Hyoue Okumara who is German/Japanese is working on these terms for his very interesting PhD project on labeling in Japan).  Also — props to Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu who was the one who brought up this major distinction in his work.  All of us doing work on mixed race issues in Japan owe him big time.

I grew up in the US but in a world where we heard stories that helped outline and give some shape to not just my future possibilities but the world that could have been my reality.  In our home hung military souvenirs of “stations”– a black lacquered plate with a map of Okinawa etched in, base names mapping the island, military plaques with achievements stamped onto gold tags, “Air Force” tours inscribed onto a picture of the South Korean flag.  It was a world where my dad’s military friends came by often and reminicsed about Okinawa and where my mom and her friends would catch up on gossip about the dispersed Okinawan women they knew either back home or in the US “military diaspora” of spouses.  The narratives of abandonment, memories and tales of my mom’s friends who “just couldn’t do it anymore” (raise their blackanese babies or stay in partnerships with their military husband-abusive or not) hovered quietly.  Tales about a guy who left a pregnant Okinawan back on the island, or Korea, or Thailand were passed back and forth.  Over beers, bbq, ocha, sweetened ice tea, goya champru, and greens.  My understandings about Okinawa, about mixed kids, about abandonment were made in transnational space.   I still struggle with how to express how I can feel connected on a visceral level to my mixed Okinawan peers who grew up here and yet feel so far apart.  I know when I am seen as an outsider in Japan (even among other haafu), because I am in many ways.

There is also something to be said about being raised with siblings and many shima haafu seem to largely have grown up in their family units as the only child.  I was talking to a friend who is a black shima haafu here recently who said she was one of the few like her who grew up with a biological sister also black and Okinawan.  She thinks it made a difference in her own working out her identity because they could bounce ideas off each other about uncomfortable situations that you probably can’t articulate with non-family members. In my situation, I was able to participate in collective eye-rolling with my sister.  ”Girrrrl, uh uh. Can you believe mama said this about my hair!”  We could intimately work out a lot things that might hard to do without a sympathetic sibling who might be going through some of the same growing pains.  One lady contacted me after I published my first essay “On Being Blackanese.”  She was also Black and Okinawan and grew up in an all white community in the Northwest in Washington State.  She felt completely alone, thought that her mother was emotionally abusive, constantly critiquing her for being overweight, saying her hair was too wild, that her skin was too dark, etc.  I remember telling her I thought it was funny because a lot of my peers (mixed and not) who have Okinawan mamas will complain jokingly (and with love too) that this is “an Okinawan thang.”    I’ll never know the degree to her mother’s criticisms but I do know some of the things she mentioned to me are the kinds of things that even as very young kids, my siblings and I could laugh through/work through as a team.  I don’t know…I haven’t really thought this through except on a very superficial level.

Maybe this is why I am working on my stage play.  I can work out all these issues through that format and layer these complexities in a way that I can’t seem to do with academic discourse.  Just a few weeks ago, I met with award winning Chicano poet, author, and professor Alejandro Murguia who was visiting Okinawa. As someone who focuses on border work/issues in Chicano/Central American literature, a lot of practices in Okinawa felt very familiar to him.   Professor Kina, Alejandro, and I had a very interesting topic about using hybrid methodologies to talk about mixed/hybrid spaces.  He and Kina-sensei (whose own work also focuses on borderlands) encouraged me to use my mixed creative work to further understand this mixed space.  I can raise transnational/transracial triangulations, my southern mixed roots.  Yes yes…I should be working on my dissertation and I am but as I write about my main topic — the excess ends up in this creative form, where it uses all these various routes of mixed communication.

Reblogged from Power of Okinawa:

The 3rd Flow Manifesto event is to be held at Cotonoha in Ginowan, Okinawa on the 24th of this month at 19:00. This bilingual spoken-word show in both Japanese and English features Okinawan, Japanese and American poets and performers. Tickets are 2,000 yen in advance or 2,500 yen at the door.

The previous event in March was a great success with many participants and a large, enthusiastic audience and it was also reviewed on this blog.

Read more… 50 more words

I liked this section under “Tender Spirit” in this museum flyer — about the traumatic, unbearable points when a survivor blanks when recounting certain battle narratives.

On top of the roof of the museum are stairs that lead to a view of the Futenma Marine base fenceline.  Looking down to the right is an Okinawan ohaka (grave) inside the fence.  It’s a powerful statement.

Stairs on top of the museum lead to a view of the fence along the controversial Futenma Marine base

Ohaka behind the fenceline

Just a couple of months ago I also went to the Peace Memorial Museum with my mom.  I have been there several times before but going with her was a different experience.  Throughout much of it, she would say while pausing at each black and white photo:

This was like us.  

That’s exactly what we used to eat.  

My god, that could be me.  

Yes, that’s how we scrunched together like that, we were so scared.  I remember this.  

I used to wear those type of clothes.  I remember the dead people’s eyes.  We walked over them….

Then when we got to the diorama of the cave where the sounds of the tanks and bombs were simulated overhead, she quickly left.  ”I have a headache Mitzi.  Let’s go home.”  She used to hide in those same caves as a child during the war.  Her mother had been shot as they were running through the whizzing bullets flying past them on the way to one (she ended up surviving but she didn’t know that until after the war was over because she was taken away).  When I told her about the controversy surrounding the representation of the Japanese soldier and how the museum felt forced in moving the soldier’s gun pointing toward the family on the ground and having it pointed upwards, she scoffed angrily.  ”But they did point their guns at us!  They kicked us out of caves and stole food that we found.”  She became very upset.  The photos outside that area were very disturbing.  They were the raw war photos, mostly if not all taken by occupation soldiers/photographers I’m sure.  At the Okinawa conference a few months ago at Waseda I heard Kyle Ikeda give his brilliant paper on war narratives. He mentioned something I hadn’t payed much attention to before–that so many of the photographs of the war have shaped our thinking about the war itself because the perspective of those shots were from the outside looking in: from outside the cave looking in at scared and hungry people, from outside a plane looking down, outside a truck looking at kids running after them, etc.  It took the memories of people, the stories of the survivors to create those intricate details of inside looking out because they are not pictured in black and white photos.

Going through the last part of the museum was also emotional.  My mother doesn’t talk much about her childhood days the way she did about the battle.  She was busy trying to survive the post-war devastation so I think she thought of her stories as mundane.  She and her brothers worked hard, had multiple jobs trying to keep the family afloat.  Her father had not been accounted for yet so they grew up without him (long story).  When the war began, my ojiichan was in the Philippines as were many other poor Okinawans who had to leave the island to find work, as is still the case). When you’re that busy, who has time to voice their opposition about all the injustice?  They thought about it for sure, but taking time from work to take action was another thing.  The massive land seizures, the massive displacements of people into new areas of the island, the heavy-handed oppression blocking the freedom of speech and organizations voicing their opposition to USCAR authority?  No, that was for the enraged elites with time or people who had absolute nothing left but pride to fight. I think this was the first time my mom had a chance to go through the museum and really pay attention to all the policies that were enacted against Okinawans.  In the place of resignation (“well, this is what happens when you lose a war”) was anger, (“I didn’t know this was happening!  I didn’t know.  We were just trying to survive.  This is why things were so hard.”) This realization and being able to contextualize her experiences in the events happening all around her has started something new in my mom.  I know, I’m diverging with this entire paragraph but I can’t help it.  Another post on this later.

Just this past week, I went to another amazing museum–The Haebaru Town Museum/Haebaru Town Culture Center.  I encourage all visitors to Okinawa to see this incredible space.  My friend and amazing scholar Tsugiko is a museum curator there.  She along with several of my good friends and colleagues and also professors at Ryu Dai have translated their fabulous museum guide into English.  It’s so good–goes through how Okinawa was militarized before the war (the efforts to make Okinawans push back their ancestral worship and make imperial worship first–ie building shinto torii shrines in front of utakis, etc) to the postwar culture to Okinawan traditions (what Okinawans do when a baby is born to what major Okinawan events are celebrated each month and why).  All kenjinkais, people interested in Okinawan history and visitors to the island need to buy this booklet.  It’s a great summary of a lot of the major points you’ll want to know as you move about the island.  It’ll be around 500 yen (price still being determined) and can be purchased from the museum.  I’ve asked if they could add an online option to buy it through their website.   You will not see any fluffing of history here to appease visitors from either the mainland or the US.  I love this museum for its straight forward approach.  In case you are not sure what I mean, check out some of the literature out there on the politics of peace museums in Okinawa.  I recommend an excellent essay by Gerald Figal called, “Waging Peace on Okinawa” which is a great book Islands of Discontent and also an essay by Linda Asako Angst “Gendered Nationalism: The Himeyuri Story and Okinawan Identity in Postwar Japan.”  I will do a separate post on this museum because it was so fabulous. I just learned Figal has a new book out that I’m excited to read.  I just ordered a copy and will post a review here if I have time.

The eyes remember. This mosaic was created by local middle school students. Located outside the Haebaru Cultural Center/Museum.

In the Haebaru museum

A couple of weeks ago I got to finally meet the great Mao Ishikawa.  I’ve been following Mao’s work for a while now because of her particular lens on Okinawa.  I read Jon Mitchell’s article on her in the Japan Times a while back and then later a follower of this blog wrote me and suggested I reach out to her agent Naoko who is also way cool (a photographer herself from Okinawa who moved to London and came back to represent Mao to build a greater network of support for Okinawan photography (that are different from the mass produced tourist market). She’s trying to get Mao’s work more internationally recognized.  Anyone interested in base issues, colonial spaces, talking back, gritty hybrid frontier zones, need to really look at Mao’s contributions closely.  I took a friend down to Naha to see her works in the photography exhibit “Memory of Eyes” which was a collection of  photos by all Okinawan photographers.  Floored.  We looked through the books for sale before heading into the exhibit. I saw Mao’s works there and picked up her book Fences.  I told my friend “Mao has done my dissertation through photography.”  Seriously.  She looks at a lot of the same matters as me-what happens along the fenceline, spaces of blackness, the blurry transnational representations and racializations, the gritty everyday life of Okinawa, the shake it like yo’ mama gave ya sensibilities of women who do what they need to do to survive but also create a culture that gets passed down not just here but also in a diasporic space.  I love this woman.  Her framing is spectacular.  She gets to know a lot of the people she interviews and you can tell because many of them will just let it all hang out in front of the camera.  And they know she’s taking pics because there’s an easiness to their stances, her camera is jus an extension of her.  The other photographer’s works there that I really loved was Yasuo Higa.  His point of view was mesmerizing.  His daughter was there at the exhibit.  I didn’t get a chance to tell her how moved I was by her late father’s works.  But I could see the memory he was trying to capture for the future.  I wrote down his name and scribbled in my notes, “look up more of this man’s works.”  Mao came around the corner with her charisma and surprised me.  I didn’t realize she would be there.  We chatted for some time.  We have a few friends in common and talked about them, about her work, about her photos of former black soldiers who were in Okinawa and then how she went to live with them in Philly to photograph their lives there.  It was so cool.  We took photos.  She signed my copy of her book.  I am easily thrilled by the little things…she made my day.

With Mao Ishikawa. And yes I like to use blurry filters on myself since I’m not keen on  uploading my own pic on this blog.

I also think of the title of that exhibit, “Memory of Eyes.”  When my mom came to visit my office at Ryukyu Daigaku and met some of the staff members there, my friend C* said, “Your  mom has those eyes.  Some battle survivors have those eyes–they have seen so much.”  That has really stayed with me.  I never thought about my own mother’s eyes, the memories that are still reflecting there.  I think that’s why those photographers framings were so powerful.  They were trying to capture a series of memories to tell future generations of Okinawans “do not not forget this soul.”  Words are not enough to remember.  Remember the eyes…

Another completely different exhibit just a few days after going to that one was at the Plaza House Shopping Center.  I had the chance to see a collection of what looked like mostly personal photos from former military personnel stationed here.  It was also an exhibit of how some Okinawan companies were born in the occupation era to Americans.  This picture I snapped at Junkudo much earlier pretty much sums up how a lot of these businesses think of themselves.  Funny.  I have been talking to quite a few business owners that were once American owned but are now Okinawan and hearing some great stories about their growing pains.  They are very interesting sites of cultural production.  This is another area that I discuss in one part of my dissertation.

These were interesting photographs.  They captured the landscapes of Okinawa differently.  Many people seemed to be aware of the photographer in a different way than in the photos at the exhibit I mentioned earlier with Mao’s works.  I noticed that most of the subjects of the photos tended to be in a posed position or in larger group shots.  At other times, they shots are taken from afar capturing a scene candidly, quietly.  In the previous exhibit mentioned, the photos are intimate.  People are shot close up, relaxed, aware they are being photographed but without any preoccupation.  They are laughing, drunk, in their underwear, dying their hair, telling a story with their eyes– so that the photographer can then make connections to other stories through their photos.  An assemblage of photos, an assemblage of memories.  The gaze and memoryscapes at the two events were starkly different and interesting because the imaginary being shaped was so different.    A large collection of photos at Plaza House were from Blackie-san as he was known here.  He was a photographer who took a substantial amount of photos and video of Okinawa in the post-war era.  You can find them on several sites by doing a quick google search.  I would love to know more about his story and more about the stories of other former US military members who have a particularly strong nostalgia about Okinawan history through photos.  I am really fascinated with the formation of nostalgic routes in Okinawa.  Want to read more on how/if that has shaped particular framings of Okinawa, especially against Okinawan self-representations.

At Plaza House ( plaza house exhibit flyer –click on link)

How this was conceived:  A few of us had come together several times, meeting casually on Monday mornings at Bird’s cafe.  We chatted intensively about about race and space in Okinawa.  Bird, a former Marine in Okinawa said he did not know about events like the Koza Uprising until many years on the island had gone by.  He felt like he had come from a place where these kinds of things mattered.  Why didn’t it seem like anyone cared?  Why was this type of history so silent?  Why had no one talked about previous forms of solidarity between blacks and Okinawans to him before?  Why weren’t people talking about issues of disillusionment or how and in what ways our identities shift once in Okinawa?  Akiko is a hip hop and spoken word artist among other things. As an Okinawan so intimately involved with an art form with its origins in the  black urban cultural world and someone who has lived in both Okinawa and in black neighborhoods in the US, she also asked the same kinds of questions.  Why isn’t there more understanding beyond an affinity to “try on” or “approach” variations of blackness.  Why not something more substantial?  If you have followed this blog, it is obvious where my interest in this matter lies.  It is both personal and academic.  How is someone like me who is both Okinawan and Black represented over time?  How possible is it for me to carve out my own meaning/naming/spaces when the processes of racialization both in Japan and Okinawa seem to depend on hardened socially constructed boundaries?  How far can representations of blackness shift in a transnational space to the degree that “mutual trans-pacific racisms” (referencing historian yukiko koshiro here)  slip and create pockets of transformative notions of difference/solidarity?  How is race manifested, made, created, routed transnationally, especially in a militarized context?  How are bodies being defined racially, geographically and through memories?  These were some of the questions I wrote down after my meetings with Bird and Akiko –things that came up in our long and deep conversations which meandered as the sun grew stronger over the ocean in front of us at Bird’s cafe. Our primary goal:  We wanted to pull various outspoken people together with extensive and moving stories about their “routes” and “tangled tales.”  I was thinking of this all in a very Paul Gilroy/Stuart Hall kind of way.  Others probably took the theme to heart differently.

We called this an experimental focus group.  We wanted each discussant to bring their own idea of blackness to the table and we wanted to see how those issues would circulate/meander/intersect with other themes, tales.  What spaces moved us towards or away from feeling more or less “Black” in Okinawa.  I wanted to see what kinds of inquiry were important to us, which ones would be useful for building stronger conversations later.  I had talked to most of the discussants extensively before the event; either in a 2+ hour interview or by email/phone.  Others were brought to the table through Akiko- like Kaya, a music producer and author of books on hip hop in Okinawa.  We wanted to keep this very open in format as we knew that there would be a second event where we could fine tune what was brought up this time.  We wanted the conversation to roam naturally.  After all, this was the first time for anything like to happen in Okinawa in a public space, especially off-base.  Many of the discussants had either not seen each other in many years or it was their first time meeting.  Some folks have been in Okinawa for nearly 30 years and had never met.  I overheard one brother tell another, “Man, where have you been hiding out?”  Because really, most black folk who have lived long-term in Okinawa at least know OF each other.  There was an excitement in the air.  We even had “Afro Eric” of Black Tokyo skype in with us and he did a marvelous job of helping to co-facilitate the discussion.

Akiko welcomes everyone to the event

We did film and audio tape the nearly 3 hour discussion.  A couple of people do not feel comfortable with airing the event online so I won’t post it.  However, I am in the process of writing a paper about the event: the making of it, the discussion and dinner afterwards, the Sunday event that was mostly female centric and how that differed from the Friday event, etc. Here is a rough summary though of some of the topics that came up:

• Racism in Okinawa (interesting that it was the first topic that everyone really wanted to discuss, ex. “I feel like I’ve been treated well in Okinawa” to “I’ve been misunderstood here for these reasons….”
• Black cultural forms–music, food, etc.
• Black spaces–where one felt the most comfortable, the most “black,” the least comfortable, the most aware of one’s difference  (I have interviewed many of these folks and was hoping some more of this would have been brought up.)
• Black Okinawans– mixed Okinawans, the rise of black Okinawans after hip hop blew up, child support, absent fathers, transitioning from childhood to adulthood in Okinawa (one black Okinawan woman who grew up here talked about her difficulties in finding work outside of the base areas even though she spoke perfect Japanese.)
• “I see me here too”– Things that reminded the discussants about black issues in the US, riot tanks in Detroit, military tanks in Okinawa
• History of solidarity– Koza uprsing, fighting white supremacy on/off base
• The language of racism vs language of colonialism– different vocabularies to address similar issues, difficulties in coming together because of that
• Militarization–Pride in uniform, disillusion, security and identity, escaping unsafe neighborhoods at home by enlistment, how racial practices differ in each branch, black nationalism, opportunities for advancement through military enlistment
• Gender issues– Okinawan women and black men, dating, power relations, Okinawan men and black male friendships
• Performing blackness– Acting “blacker” in Okinawa, motivations for that, loose boundaries of race, and restricting boundaries–when those shift.

As you can see, we went all over the place.  It was good though because I was able to see what issues were easiest to discuss.  I noticed which ones were not raised (but had come up in private interviews).  The questions were more direct and gendered on the Sunday event which was fully bilingual.  Akiko did an amazing job of translating everything and questions between Okinawan audience members and black men and women in the audience were more candid.  I wish I could have done a better job directing/focusing the conversation a bit more on both days.

Annette breaks down some legal issues

Audience from day 2

Each person brought their own tales to the conversation– From what it was like to raise black Okinawan kids in Okinawa as a black man, to what it was like working as an interpreter in a meeting between black nationalists and Okinawan base workers in the 60′s, to being a twin of a Koza City “Bushmaster,” to challenging each others’ intersections with blackness over time (the generational differences were quite interesting).  I’ll put this all into the paper and will post a link to it here later.

Former music producer and author of hip hop books breaking down the “black” club and music scene in Okinawa

Before each of the discussions had begun, I did a quick presentation on the history of the Koza Uprising in Okinawa and black Okinawa relations in the 1960′s and 70′s in pre-reversion Okinawa.  That talk was based on a lot from the paper already written on this subject by my friend Wesley Uenten.  I encourage everyone interested in this issue to check out his essay on the Koza Uprising in this book.  I focused on that issue because I wanted to talk about a period of time when there was a heightened consciousness of race and identity and possibilities for real transformations to break molds of race-making in a militarized, transnational context, for both Okinawans and Blacks. It was the era of the reversion push so Okinawans were looking at themselves internally against Japanese, against the US, against other “third world” peoples.  It was a dynamic period for African-Americans as well, fighting segregation back home and in the social spaces in Koza, where Jim Crow like protocols were enacted in some places.  It was dynamic for women — who were positioning themselves in the world differently, thinking about the domestic sphere differently, thinking about their own race and gender in ways that challenged men’s power on both sides of the fence, and especially in the space between.  I was hoping that the discussion could move from that point to what is happening now.  It transitioned clumsily from that presentation to the next topics but once everyone got comfortable, it started to move along.

The feedback has been generous and I’ve gotten a lot of constructive criticism on how to shape the next one and center the discussion a bit better.  On Sunday, we ended the event with a video I made about my mother’s idea of Blackness in Okinawa, her fears about introducing my father to her family, and her fears about staying in Okinawa with us –her mixed black Okinawan kids.  The discussion was so busy on Friday that I forgot to show it there but somehow, showing to the Sunday crowd that was mostly made up of Okinawan women, felt like the right space.

I’m hoping the next event will be able to take the broad topics raised at the first gatherings so we can carve out our own theories and methods about race and representations.  It’s exciting to unravel the discourse and build a new one in real time.  The next event will be in late August or early September at the marvelous Cafe Cotonoha in Ginowan.  We are still hammering out a date so stay tuned!

(Also my apologies for these horrible ads below each post–I looked and there’s no way I can take them off since it’s a free blog theme).