Tickets to this program include admission to JANM for Saturday, March 18, 2023. Pricing reflects general museum admission pricing. Learn more about visiting JANM at janm.org/visit.
Join author David Mas Masumoto and artist Patricia Wakida for the launch of their new book Secret Harvests: A Hidden Story of Separation, Silence, Shame, and the Resilience of a Family Farm. They will be joined in reading, reflection, and discussion by Sean Miura, producer and lead curator of Tuesday Night Cafe.
The JANM Book Club is a series of Public Programs that highlight important new literary works related to Japanese American history and culture.
About the book:
I discovered a “lost” aunt, separated from our family due to racism and discrimination against the disabled. She had a mental disability due to childhood meningitis. She was taken away in 1942 when all Japanese Americans were considered the enemy and imprisoned. She then became a “ward” of the state. We believed she had died, but 70 years later found her alive and living a few miles from our family farm. How did she survive? Why was she kept hidden? How did both shame and resilience empower my family to forge forward in a land that did not want them? I am haunted and driven to explore my identity and the meaning of family—especially as farmers tied to the land. I uncover family secrets that bind us to a sense of history buried in the earth that we work and a sense of place that defines us.