Vince Schleitwiler
Vince Schleitwiler, a fourth-generation Japanese American from Chicago, currently teaches ethnic studies at the University of Washington, and lives in Beacon Hill with his family. His book, Strange Fruit of the Black Pacific, was published in 2017 by NYU Press.
Small acts of kindness and solidarity illuminate a new graphic novel of Japanese American...
On the final page of Those Who Helped Us, a new graphic novel by author Ken Mochizuki and illustrator Kiku Hughes, a ball rises in the air, its uncertain fate a matter of chance...
A memoir of friendship, loss, and 1990s cultural politics
Sometimes I try to explain to my students what it felt like to be an Asian American reader in the 90s—the last decade when Asian American books from major publishers were so rare you...
“Rise” looks back on Asian American culture in the era of multiculturalism
In the marketplace of pop culture, history is packaged by decades, and consumers by generations, because memory is currency: nostalgia for the olds, retro-chic for the young. Apart from Bruce Lee’s yellow tracksuit, though,...
Poet Garrett Hongo brings honor and remembrance in a memoir of music
Music has its own ideas about time. When ’90s hip hop had its Super Bowl moment, and everyone my age was losing it on social media, I found myself remembering my Nisei grandmother, still...
Controversies over Asian American issues at Bellevue College continue
At a time when major institutions are scrambling to demonstrate awareness of Asian American concerns, you might think a school like Bellevue College could be a national model. Yet despite the leadership of Interim...
In “The Committed”, author Viet Thanh Nguyen takes his dazzling Refugee trilogy to Paris
When your debut conquers the world, how do you top it?
Few writers have experienced the overwhelming acclaim that greeted Viet Thanh Nguyen’s first novel, The Sympathizer, which made him the go-to Asian American voice...
Family secrets force multigenerational trauma to the surface in a true story of Japanese...
“Mom, why are you yelling?”
This is a story Japanese Americans know: when Shirley Ann Higuchi was at university, she did a project on the World War II incarceration her parents had experienced, but her...
Author Brandon Shimoda reflects on trauma, pilgrimages, and family history
All Japanese American stories are ghost stories. I never really understood why until I read Brandon Shimoda’s The Grave on the Wall.
In 2010, Shimoda, then living in a cabin in Maine, was “having a...
Solidarity with Black lives demands a new Asian American movement
The recent wave of protests and uprisings following the murders of Black people, by police and others acting in their name, around the country and here in the Pacific Northwest, has occasioned a lot...
Community rallies around artist Erin Shigaki’s “Never Again is Now” at Bellevue College
February in the Pacific Northwest is a season of ghosts.
On a small college campus, in a snug, green corner of the Eastside, two figures loom out from a brick wall. They are black and...