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.
Poet, demographer and activist Juanita Tamayo Lott recalls the origins of ethnic studies
Imagine you’re barely in your twenties, and you and your friends have already made history. What would you do for a second act?
In 1968, Juanita Tamayo Lott was an undergrad at San Francisco State,...
“Aiiieeeee!, An Anthology of Asian American Writers”: If you think you’ve read it, you...
What if Aiiieeeee! is still waiting for its moment? It feels odd to say this about a 45-year-old anthology that’s seen multiple editions and a sequel, secured the reputations of a shelf’s-worth of authors,...
Celebrating Norman Mineta in Seattle, whose lifetime achievements are rare, valuable and timely
In two days, it would be his 88th birthday, but he didn’t tell them.
The crowd gathered in his honor at the University of Washington one recent Sunday didn’t need any more reasons to celebrate...
Celebrating Norman Mineta in Seattle, whose lifetime achievements are rare, valuable and timely
In two days, it would be his 88th birthday, but he didn’t tell them.
The crowd gathered in his honor at the University of Washington one recent Sunday didn’t need any more reasons to celebrate...
Sue Taoka’s story is the story of a community
Sue Taoka doesn’t like talking about herself.
A longtime fixture in the ID and community development circles, Taoka recently retired, and won one of this year’s Lifetime Achievement Community Voice Awards. What better occasion to...
A Buddhist scholar unearths a story of racism, religious discrimination and perseverance
Some stories are patient, resting quietly underground for decades, waiting for the right storyteller. The history of Japanese American Buddhism in World War II is like this, the scholar Duncan Ryūken Williams learned. Seventeen...
Controversy inspires a new reading list of neglected Asian American classics
Forty years ago, the University of Washington Press began publishing John Okada’s classic 1957 novel No-No Boy, three years after Jeffery Chan, Frank Chin, Lawson Inada and Shawn Wong’s Combined Asian American Resources Project...
Social media tempest brings new attention to Asian American literary classics
Over his long literary career, the book that Shawn Wong worked hardest to bring to readers wasn’t one of his own novels. Now it was about to be reprinted by one of the world’s...
A family’s photographic treasure trove of Japanese American history in Yakima Valley, created in...
Even in dismal times, the world is always a little bigger than you think. For instance, at the Heart Mountain concentration camp, once upon a time, in barracks apartment 15-9-A, there was a little...
New book looks behind the surface of Seattle classic, No-No Boy
No-No Boy, John Okada’s classic Seattle novel, is a founding text of Asian American literature, but its author was modest, once describing himself as “endowed with a larger capacity for normalcy than most people.” That’s a paradox, quiet as it’s kept, until you realize that “normalcy” is a performance, diverting attention from the drama and strangeness that defines a life.