Not yo' butterfly : my long song of relocation, race, love, and revolution / Nobuko Miyamoto ; edited by Deborah Wong.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Miyamoto, Nobuko, 1939- author.

Contributor:

Wong, Deborah Anne, editor.

Series:

American Crossroads

American Crossroads ; 60

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Miyamoto, Nobuko, 1939-.

Miyamoto, Nobuko.

Women dancers--United States.

Women dancers.

Women artists--United States--Biography.

Women artists.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (344 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2021]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

A mold-breaking memoir of Asian American identity, political activism, community, and purpose.Not Yo’ Butterfly is the intimate and unflinching life story of Nobuko Miyamoto—artist, activist, and mother. Beginning with the harrowing early years of her life as a Japanese American child navigating a fearful west coast during World War II, Miyamoto leads readers into the landscapes that defined the experiences of twentieth-century America and also foregrounds the struggles of people of color who reclaimed their histories, identities, and power through activism and art. Miyamoto vividly describes her early life in the racialized atmosphere of Hollywood musicals and then her turn toward activism as an Asian American troubadour with the release of A Grain of Sand—considered to be the first Asian American folk album. Her narrative intersects with the stories of Yuri Kochiyama and Grace Lee Boggs, influential in both Asian and Black liberation movements. She tells how her experience of motherhood with an Afro-Asian son, as well as a marriage that intertwined Black and Japanese families and communities, placed her at the nexus of the 1992 Rodney King riots—and how she used art to create interracial solidarity and conciliation. Through it all, Miyamoto has embraced her identity as an Asian American woman to create an antiracist body of work and a blueprint for empathy and praxis through community art. Her sometimes barbed, often provocative, and always steadfast story is now told.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Illustrations

Intro

First Movement

1. A Travelin’ Girl

2. Don’t Fence Me In

3. A Tisket, a Tasket, a Brown and Yellow Basket

4. From a Broken Past into the Future

5. Twice as Good

6. Shall We Dance!

7. School Daze

8. Chop Suey

9. There’s a Place for Us

10. We Shall Overcome

Second Movement

11. Power to the People

12. A Single Stone, Many Ripples

13. Something About Me Today

14. The People’s Beat

15. A Song for Ourselves

16. Somos Asiáticos

17. Foster Children of the Pepsi Generation

18. A Grain of Sand

19. Free the Land

20. What Will People Think?

21. Some Things Live a Moment

22. How to Mend What’s Broken

Third Movement

23. Women Hold Up Half the Sky

24. Our Own Chop Suey

25. What Is the Color of Love?

26. Talk Story

27. Yuiyo, Just Dance

28. Float Hands Like Clouds

29. Deep Is the Chasm

30. To All Relations

31. Bismillah Ir Rahman Ir Rahim

32. The Seed of the Dandelion

33. I Dream a Garden

34. Mottainai—Waste Nothing

35. Black Lives Matter

36. Bambutsu—All Things Connected

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9780520380660

0520380665

OCLC:

1200036822