Gil Asakawa's Nikkei View

July 21, 2017

On writing about the JA community

I started my writing career as a music critic and became a journalist with jobs at various mainstream media newspapers and later, websites, and wasn’t much concerned with covering the Japanese, Japanese American or Asian American Pacific Islander communities or issues. I became curious about my roots when my father was diagnosed with lung cancer in the early ‘90s, but...

August 28, 2015

Being JA v2.0 is here, and I’m so glad to be JA!

I gave a recent reading to a full house at the Japanese American Museum in San Jose's lovely Japantown, and had a blast. During a recent trip to San Francisco to attend the annual conference of the Asian American Journalists Association, I squeezed in two readings from the new revised edition of my book, “Being Japanese American.” The two events reminded...