#Harlem2Tokyo

Harlem2Tokyo: A Memoir of Women's Art and Activism provides first-person accounts of Black and Japanese women's shared engagements with Black radical and socialist global movement strategies. This book details correspondence and collaboration among Black and Japanese comrades who utilized a variety of art and direct action to further peace and freedom movements. Though creative and fierce, the complex contributions of those featured in this book are rarely known and fully accessible to many--even within the movements that they engaged or inspired, ranging from Black Power to Black Lives Matter. 

The narrative of this work is intimate and accessible as well as applicable for academic venues as it builds on my decades of unique experience and contributes to current demand for Black feminist and decolonizing anthropolgical research. I combine autobiographical accounts with interviews, art, photography and other research collected (from dissertation through tenure). As I already mentioned, some of the women that engage in this intergenerational dialogue are well known in certain political literary circles and some are not: they are/ were “rank and file” community members committed to social justice. I tell the story of my mother's activism and her advocacy work with photographers such as Ruiko Yoshida, writers like Mayumi Nakazawa, activists like Yuri Kochiyama and more. These women utilized creative arts and writing as part of a complex international Black radical agenda that I narrate through intimate lens.

This is a movement that raised me and my generation of Black and Japanese women continuing the work of our mothers and mentors. Centering gender in the global struggle for peace and democratic values, this book addresses distinct stories of women radicalized in the 1960s and their legacies among women like myself, from the 1990s through the present. It also features the international Black radical work of those who my generation mentors:  young women leading current critical arts activist agendas.