Yoshikawa on the Arc of Identity: Los Angeles Review of Books

Professor and Graduate Program Director Mako Yoshikawa spoke with the Los Angeles Review of Books about her new book and memoir Secrets of the Sun.

Much of the memoir discusses the strained relationship she had with her father.

Researching my father, I had to look at myself. The quest to understand my father was so much about understanding why I felt the way I did. I looked hard at my own preconceptions and blind spots. There were ways, particularly with racism, that I was willfully obtuse. I did not want to believe that he had faced that much racism. That was so stupid because, of course, I face racism, and it had to have been worse for him, being of a different generation, being in America decades earlier, and having a thick accent. Not being born and raised in this country. It turned out that this quest to understand my father was one to understand myself. Yeah, I love that, the arc of identity.

Read the full interview on Los Angeles Review of Books.