6th Piece Accepted in 2016

Today I got an email telling me that my personal essay, "When Words Make You Real," was accepted in the mixed-race anthology The Beiging of America, which is awesome.  I'm happy, proud even, to be part of such a groundbreaking but also crucial anthology exploring what it means to be mixed race (in my case, hapa) in America.

Reading at the Mixed Remixed Festival

I got the good news a few days ago that I've been accepted as one of the readers at the Mixed Remixed Festival 2016 for a panel on hapa writers entitled "Hapa Writers:  Our Stories."  As some of you might remember, I went last year and the festival blew my fucking mind away.  Suddenly, mixed race identity was the rule.  It felt amazing to be part of a community (even a temporary one) made of multiracial artists, intellectuals, poets, writers, activists, and filmmakers, all of them with different stories, different narrative modalities, different experiences and cultural vocabularies.  It was so fucking dope going last year and it'll be even more dope participating in it this year.  I'm incredibly proud and excited to be part of this project

Personal Essay Published on the Good Men Project

My newest essay about polymorphous masculinity, boyhood, Diasporic alienation, Asian Illegibility, feminism, and self-belief is now live at the Good Men Project.

When Your Hapa Face Becomes The Rule

I went to my first Mixed Remixed festival today at the Japanese American National Museum, and I have to say, it was an amazing experience.  For the first time in years, my phenotype, my story as a hapa writer, my experience being biracial and multicultural (in my case, Japanese, French, and American)--was the rule of the universe.  Being biracial and multicultural was normal, even common.  It was fucking amazing.

Though simply the experience of being there and connecting with other mixed, biracial, hapa, and multicultural writers was enough for me, I really enjoyed the multimodal panel ofJamie Ford, Mat Johnson, Bryan Medina, Marie Mockett, Michelle Brittan, and James Tyner.  Hopefully, I'll find a way to get on this panel next year for the next incarnation of the Mixed Remixed festival.  That would be both fun and also an honor.

Memoir about Being a Secret Hapa + Nerd Masculinity Republished in Discover Nikkei

My memoir/essay, "American Otaku" about the life of a secret Asian American + nerd masculinity that was originally published in the GMP was recently republished at Discover Nikkei, a site that explores transnational hapa identity + interconnection between cultures, celebrates community + also provides a forum for hapa + nikkeijin history to be retold + therefore, reremembered.  If you have a second + you missed it the first time around, you can check out my piece here.

1st Piece Accepted in 2013

After a rigorous (+ very helpful) revision dialogue with Jennifer Derilo, the very sharp, very smart + very detail-oriented Creative Nonfiction editor, I'm proud to announce that my lyrical essay "The Transfusion of Yukiyo Kanahashi" will be published in the upcoming issue of the Kartika Review.  This lyrical essay is part personal narrative, part memory + neuroscience critique, + part metamemoir.  It's a non-linear work about the last week of my sobo's life (my Japanese grandmother's), intertwined with political, cultural, nostalgic + speculative narrative strands.  It's a beautiful + heartbreaking + language-driven + emotionally raw piece, + needs to be shared with the world I think. I honestly can't think of a more culturally important journal to publish an essay about my sobo's life than in the Kartika Review.   I'll keep you posted. 

David Mura Writes Back

I wrote David Mura a few weeks ago, author of recent poetry collection Angels of the Burning + novel Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire (Coffee House Press), among other books, telling him I really admired/loved Where the Body Meets Memory + that I was planning on using part of it in the critical component of my dissertation I've been working on at SC.  Anyway, I'm included part of his response which he kindly sent me:

Dear Jackson
 
Thanks so much for your kind words about my work. It means a lot to me that someone like you is taking an interest in and writing about WTBMM. Your dissertation sounds like an interesting and exciting project (I have a friend who's also doing a dissertation combining scholarly and creative writing although her committee only allowed a chapter for the creative writing) . . .

Good luck with your work, and yes, if your novel is published, do hit me up for a blurb.

Good luck with your work.

--David