Author Amy Uyematsu wrote a post for Huffington Post about growing up in a time where there weren't many other Asian-American poets, and how that has had a large impact on her life:
"I grew up at a time when the internment of my Japanese American parents and grandparents was not given a single line in my history textbooks. Or the term 'Asian American,' must less 'Asian American poetry,' didn't even exist. We were called 'Orientals' back then…At UCLA, the best class I took was 'Orientals in America,' in my senior year 1969…How liberating it was to release our pent-up anger for decades of racial discrimination and injustices. On a big white-majority (at that time) campus like UCLA, we finally had a home."
To read the full article, go here.
Amy Uyematsu's debut poetry collection comes out April 2015. To preorder