WhatAreYou?
a Mixed Roots Nikkei Sansei
readingof the poem byNobuko JoAnne
Miyamoto
Gerry Yokota
What Are You?
when I was youngkids used to ask mewhat are you?I’d tell them what my mom told meI’m an Americanchin chin Chinamanyou’re a Jap!flashing hot insideI’d go homemy mom would saydon’t worryhe who walks alonewalks faster
Age 4, 1959
people kept asking mewhat are you?and I would always
answerI’m an Americanthey’d sayno, what nationality?I'm an Americanthat's where I was bornflashing hot insideand when I'd tell them what they wanted to knowJapanese...oh, I've been to Japan
Age 6, 1961
I'd get it over withso they could catalogue and file mepigeonhole meso they'd know just howto think of mepriding themselvesthey could guess the differencebetween Japanese and Chinese
they had me wishing I was what I’d been
seeing in movies and on TVon billboards and in magazines
Age 18, 1973
Age 15, 1970
while they were making laws
in Californiaagainst us owning landwe were trying to be American
and laws against us intermarrying with white peoplewe were trying to be American
My parents, 1947
when they put us in concentration campswe were trying to be American
our people volunteered to fight against their own countrytrying to be American
when they dropped
the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
we were still trying
finally we made itmost of our parentsfiercely dedicated to give us a good
educationto give us everything they never had
we made it
now they use us as an exampleto the blacks and brownshow we made ithow we overcame
but there was always
someone asking mewhat are you?
now I answerI’m an Asian
and they saywhy do you want to separate yourselves?
now I sayI’m Japanese
and they saydon’t you know this is the greatest country in the world?
now I say in AmericaI’m part of the third world people
and they say
if you don’t like it herewhy don’t you go back?
-Nobuko JoAnne Miyamoto from
Roots: An Asian American Reader, edited by Amy Tachiki, Eddie Wong & Franklin Odo (1971), pp. 98-99.
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