Mary Doi and Cori Nakamura Lin

00:01 My name is Mary. I'm 67 years old today is November 9th 2020 and I'm speaking from Evanston, Illinois. I'm sleeping in the car right Nakamura Lin and relationship. I guess his new friend.

00:19 Hello, my name is Cori Nakamura Lin. I am 28 years old. It is November 9th 2020. I'm calling from the north side of Chicago, Illinois and I'm speaking with Mary Joy who is new friend Japanese American Community member at with me as well. I really want to thank you for taking part in the stories of this is an oral history project that speaking to document the perspectives of artists in regard to their challenges accomplishments and methods of persevering during covid-19. Because we're new friends. I really don't know much about your arts background. So if you could sort of bring me up to speed and and maybe the last question that I have around here arts background is how and when did your maybe avocation turn into a vocation so

01:17 That's a wonderful question. Thank you so much for inviting me to be a part of this conversation Mary and for coordinating all of this. So to give a little bit of an artist background. I will say that I have been someone to visually communicate it in creating for most of my life on some of my earliest memories are of being in the Japanese American Church Church of Christ Presbyterian where I was sitting there during the storm ends like you delaying on the little program book drawing things around and around the sanctuary drying my friends were sitting next to me using drawing in notes to kind of organized the things that I've been thinking has always been really really natural to me and I was lucky to be a part of a family that really did support rates have any I do not like I'm going say I'm a Japanese American side so we were really

02:12 I've really Americanized on that side of the family is Google. My mom was not really swayed by me and my siblings creative and trust and on my time when he's American side of my dad has failed that first generation push to become really successful. So he then he and my amount integrated when I was young and just kind of feel that first and second generation of becoming a very successful by American Standards. And so by the time that he was Raising Me and my sisters who was also kind of a little bit more of like you can pursue your dreams more than I think many other of my peers to have immigrant parents are

02:52 So that being said I did not have a really want to be an artist on being artistic and being creative with something that already always worked in hand with the things I was doing. I really enjoyed making costumes and cars and creative things when for my friends by the time I was in school and studying cultural anthropology. I was making band posters. I was admitted as an Arts minor but mostly because I just felt like I wanted to use the studio not because I wanted to pursue anything greater than the long-term and creating book projects and using them out of the way of analyzing my surroundings kind of making sense of the world with something that I was using painting book and printmaking to do

03:38 I'm an altar to connect kind of with the history about four in Japanese history. There's such a rich culture of paper arts and Barbara Arts and Book making that I was able to study a little bit and that was something that really kind of connected me to the storytelling practices of Japanese people and trying to adapt them in a way that would kind of aligned with Japanese American the story that we tell and our experiences in America. So that's a really good question about when did an avocation become a vocation and I think that it was

04:16 Not the opposite way, but it was it was definitely not linear that I had.

04:24 I've always had a love of making creative work and knew that I was a very strong artist that is something that I always had a lot of confidence in myself with and have always practiced a lot but being a professional artist or being someone who kind of created art for the public was not something that really appealed to me. I think the projects that I built over time. Like I said, I was always making art for other people or for other people who needed art for something usually a band poster or like a event poster things like that create art that had kind of Wheels do it with something that was really interesting to me. And so it wasn't until I became radicalized in my adult life and kind of sit the stories. I was collecting about myself and I integrate histories and I cultural history is sitting that into a wider American story of these kind of political Injustice. Is that are still happening and

05:24 Racial and class issues that we're kind of echoing around me and that I was a part of it had never names before that when working on Art became both of acacian in my calling that I had been making projects with a lot of the noun project non-profit work that I had been employed in after school and working on that was kind of like a bridge of being able to do visual work at

05:51 I guess it's for a good cause like the erratically in the same way that lots of nonprofit work is like abstractly for a good cause but that's really what led me to my real tablet which is creating an artwork with an advocacy and arts advocacy work and knowing that they're so much kind of movement shifting that needs to happen in both internally in our hearts and minds and then also like in popular opinion of where we could meet people as a whole and seeing visuals, especially with the time of social media as being a really really powerful people. I think a little bit of the roundabout way that has brought me to the work and the things I care about now rate. I looked a little tiny bio that you have on the Japanese American Service committee holiday Delight website and one of the things that I noticed is that you make art that fuel actual action. So I think that this year

06:51 Your little biography here really supports that aren't that fuels action? And so I went on your website and I'm just going to show you a couple of things that I think it was straight that I noticed that you have something about Sanctuary cities in the in the Twin Cities. I see sort of a PSA one that you did for Asian Americans advancing Justice in Chicago where you're promoting filling out the census 2020, which is a really important thing and then the third one maybe is a more recent one where you did this Grace Lee Boggs with the quote. The only way to survive is by taking care of each other and I believe that might have been for the Subaru for solidarity.

07:38 You know, so it's like oh, yeah, you put your money where your mouth is that you know, I was thinking about this question about how covid-19 has impacted your arts practice, you know, there is a way in which the office or project stories of Arts resilient has kind of telescope out what I'm playing that microscopic view how has covid-19 your Arts practices and they telescope it out into realizing that it's not just covid-19 that's going on now, but it's the murder of George Floyd a lot of other innocent black and brown people. It's the presidential elections. It's the history of general atmosphere in the US and nationally of social economic and political and health and safety crises that are going on and then I start

08:38 Anchored and also in the Japanese American community and history at I'm a lot older than you and so I remember things that you weren't even alive for but I think of this as an inflection point and by that, I mean that you know, our community has certainly impacted by the things that we I just mentioned but I think it's also impacted by really Rod or social events that I'm going to say start with the Muslim ban in 2017 and how that really does resonated with our community going to take it into the 2018 and 2019 and in the treatment of asylum-seekers, and then I think what really hit home was when children were separated from parents before they were put in prison essentially and so that's kind of how I look at this moment. And so

09:38 I know if that's how you feel about this time. Also, can you give me your thoughts that is a wide Framing and I think it captures a lot of the the way that I've been trying to contextualize this for myself as well. So we're here on July. I mean on November 9th, the presidential election was just called for Joe Biden and is being in a lot of liberal cities in Liberal Liberal spaces. A lot of people celebrating and that's been I think something that I've been trying to emotionally process through as well specially like as an artist as a community member, I think that all the things that you listed for me those stand outside of the relationship to the presidency like I think back to work. I'm reacting very strongly to a lot of people saying that we're going back to normal or feeling like now with Joe Biden as president.

10:38 I think that a lot of the Awakening that has been happening both Within Myself and within the Japanese American community in recent years all those big event that you're doing seem less connected to President Trump did more with the United States of the whole for me. And so it doesn't feel in a lot of ways that there is no going back that like there is no relief in this moment for me because most of those things that you have highlighted are either still ongoing or haven't been resolved or like a lot of families are never going to be United again, or we're going to have to work really really hard as an individual outside of the state to be able to reunite families on and it feels very heartbreaking in the sense of knowing that these harms what happened and that they're not really immediately impacting my life, but they're still out there and how kind of hold onto that feeling of urgency

11:35 This is I got a little bit of a Segway, but I think a lot of what I have been thinking about in relationship to the heightened crises is really about the urgency and how do I add someone to have a lot of safety and access to Staci oldies artist? He's in my body and I think it's thinking a little bit about the time like I grew up for a large part with Obama as President and I think from even though my family and I have like that. My mom is more conservative than I am and her father who was interned in Camp with it even more conservative and she is probably a little bit more like neither of them really Sissy strongly with the Republican party, but I'm just kind of on this day look like

12:32 Radical left is on the two radical conservative. I'm definitely more to radical been liberal. Where is my mother choose to be more liberal? So anyway point being is that was even though we were having one of those conversations back then all the time of Obama, and now that I have been made more aware of how people get marginalize and push the vet the edges of society through both active action by the government, but also by passive action by community members who just let things slide and what does it mean that when we see that there are so many gun deaths in Chicago. What does it mean for us to be like, that's just so sad and then it's kind of move move away from that and those are things that I know two aren't connected to if you have a blue president in office or run President Office those things are just

13:32 Bucked up normally, I'm sorry. I didn't check if we could swear on this. Okay, cool. I'm getting a thumbs-up. But so I just feel like that is something that has been really hard for me to process over the years and I'm really sitting in now, which is to be excited that this big thing has happened with this with Trump is now out of office and a lot of use more blatant pieces of races on will we won't have to fight on the daily as much but just knowing about how much covert racism there is and knowing that like Kamala Harris and Joe Biden both really support the prison industrial complex and support the idea of locking people up and knowing that they're really big environmental things that I really do care about before but now I feel a really strong sense of urgency for my children. So I think in terms of holding urgency environmental issues and food sovereignty

14:32 Sovereignty all feel really important to me because I do swear I have children and I already have nipple rings of knowing that there are future people on this Earth. I really really want to have resources in fresh air like that for Yokai for me, but in terms of none of these other issues, I I feel like it's changing the way of the people that I hold myself accountable and that's something that I have a lot of say in because of who I am that I am a member of a community of color. I'm a member of an Asian community and a member of an educated community and by doing that so many of those are so flexible, like people of color is a category of Asian is such a wide category and I'm meeting educated. I have so much access to these different spaces. Usually that are very powerful. And so and I have a lot of weight adjacency to which is something that we can talk in.

15:32 Little bit more about in Japanese Community as well. So why people off the X listen to me when I have things to say and I think that making sure that I'm still using those resources but holding myself accountable to the needs and the issues of people that are facing the Empire of the US on a Frontline battle again for me. This looks like really paying attention to I guess I can use organizers in Chicago who have been a little bit more mobile than I think a lot of like like more educated like, I don't know I deal with my Cali want to go out in protest like the weekend after like a lot of Youth organizers have been protesting consistently for the last eight years because a driver longer in their 14 years old, so

16:25 Following done and they're working with her sting is urgent song a lot of Frontline indigenous Advocates who are holding like Borderland right now or holding pipelines right now or holding like yeah trying to work at camps like the urgency that they steal is because their lives and livelihoods are on the line and my life and livelihood is not on the line in this moment, but I'm trying to move on like I'm accountable to those people and that's that's hard for me to bills on because I've been doing it slowly and I think it's it's definitely hard to train at a personal orientation regardless, but I think that that's what is a mindset that I'm trying to carry into the next 4 to 8 to 16 years.

17:11 Like I think would you be least rated perfectly is how this time is about much more than covid-19. And that's really just the microscopic view, you know, and there's a telescopic view that we also need to hold so I met you virtually on June 7th. I think it was when you were part of a group in Chicago called Nikkei progressives who joined Cassandra Greer Italy at the Cook County Jail where she has been protesting. I don't leave the conditions of the of imprisonment but making people aware of the fact that her husband died there of covid-19 despite her best efforts. His best efforts to stay healthy. He died in April and I guess ever since his death or shortly after his death. She started to have these

18:11 At least weekly protests maybe daily protests and I'm very proud of you young progressives who kind of sees this as part of what is important in our community right now. And so what I saw you do was you participated as part of a nationwide program called Subaru for solidarity and I'm just going to read from sewer. What's URI for solidarity is it's a nonviolent direct action project of Japanese American Social Justice Advocates and allies working to end attention sites and support directly impacted immigrant and Refugee communities that are being targeted by racist and Humane immigration policies. We stand on the moral authority of Japanese-Americans who suffered the atrocities and Legacy of u.s. Concentration camps during World War II and we say stop repeating history.

19:11 You know, so I think that this this was also just an amazing moment in the Japanese American communities Nationwide history where they had planned there's with their been plans for a nationwide. I'm going to call to protest That was supposed to happen the first weekend in June in Washington DC. The organizers were expecting a thousand people at least to show up but covid-19 and they have to Pivot and figure out what it is. They're going to do instead and so I think not only did they pivot amazingly. Well they were so Nimble but the issues became an enlarged sense of issues. And so the funding the police becomes part of it, I think anti-asian racism becomes part of it, you know kovats

20:11 Becomes part of it. And so there's just this amazing Vitality that I see not just among younger people but even people my age and it's so reminiscent to me of the of the 1980s when Japanese-Americans were mounting the redress movement. I was in graduate school in San Francisco, and it was just a buzz, you know, and I'm sure it was like that in Chicago a Seattle wherever there were large Japanese American communities. And so I think this must be a fantastic time to be a young activist. There's just so much going on and this hopefully it's part of how you reflect on your on your role or your position as an artist. So, you know,

21:06 How have your priorities as an artist change given all these things that are happening in including covid-19, but you know covid-19 is just one one touch point for our community. So if you can kind of reflect on how have your priorities shifted maybe in the last half a year.

21:27 Thank you so much. So one thing is that you keep progressives is a group in California where you get up rising and also an amazing group or just making sure that I was like a Uprising Chicago is a group that has been supporting and I'm also a member with your daughter Lisa who has been leading in many different Japanese American otherwise, but yeah, you describe very well, but it feels like a huge shift and needy and young. This is my kind of my first really big shift and it does feel really exciting for me because there's a lot of things that I never thought were possible to happen kind of in the intergenerational space that now I'm seeing and when you even hearing you compare it to the readers move, it makes me like it likes I felt like a well of emotions of being like wow, this is really a time that we will

22:27 Sometimes for me to feel kind of like well another day out here in hellish 20/20 where we gotta be doing whatever we can but I think that when you give it that perspective, it makes me feel good and

22:45 Yes, so there I have been shifting in a few ways both personally and I think within the Japanese American Community First as I think that when you said that we were able to shift from the national events to going to a virtual space and also to go from just thinking about family separation immigration and also thinking about how are black and brown and Indigenous people kind of all around the world. Like that was something that I thought was really possible because of the people that were in the organizing space is already like everyone was really easy for organizers to repeating this to be like hey here is how we can adapt mass incarceration from not just immigrant a technician to also mass incarceration the us because they have been doing that work already. Like people have already been doing the internal Works contact anti Blackness that exist in Japanese.

23:45 American spaces or and kind of our narrative and so being able to kind of fold in those extra layers is really easy because everyone have been doing that work already. So that was something that I thought was really excited on and also made me feel like that suited for solidarity is a group that I really trust even though I don't know a lot of people nationally the fact that everyone was able to adapt and roll in the hay but this doesn't totally match with our mission excetera like that. I think a part of the pivot moment that made me aware of how of in yeah just like a integrated lens Japanese people were already moving with so as an individual coded

24:32 Mark getting canceled as one of the saddest things ever just because I was ready for that to be like a really big thing for my family and for my community on the biggest Gathering of Japanese-Americans since World War II extremely powerful for me that we were coming together or not to ask her something for ourselves. But just to align our stories with people in the US were facing very similar issues on and when that shifted I feel like we almost kind of weirded more down as Chicago instead of thinking of National Labor like well there issues that are happening right here and I was one of those things with unless you are meeting with Commander group and I think the intention behind supporting her with her.

25:15 Her protest at her rally in front of the Cook County Jail more regularly is that we're trying to build relationships going for it. And I think that that's something that I really started to doing in my personal life as well is like, okay, so we're cut off from a lot of our relationships because we are in this virtual space, but at the same time, we really need to build or network of trust and relationships and like almost like the favourite at work like who can you ask for favor from like who is really who you comfortable with Rick you need help and you could ask for that because I think that that is really the thing that's going to protect as we move on through. I mean even with a Biden president, but I consider to be probably a very scary future where we can rely Less on these days and will need to rely more on like a closed community connection. So I think that that's kind of something that's really shifted for me is like before I had a lot of I think anxiety and now I

26:15 A lot of like realisation and preparedness on greasing the food chain break down due to covid-19 Racine food workers be treated extremely terribly need packing workers on food distribution in school distribution be really mishandled in Chicago. We stay in school and education be extremely deprioritize by the city not even by the national H-E-B totally militarized and the idea like, what do we do when we protect someone and all of these things to me? If you like a Connie Moore from Lori Lightfoot and they are from a trump presidency wanting to make sure that we had these networks on I see your kind of like as a whole but there is a lot of flow from the Asian Community is on the North side where organized into diaper finest to both like Rogers Park area, and then also to the Westin R5 where there was like a lot more violence and like stores thing.

27:15 Like shut down in like a lack of food after happening a lot more working people there who aren't able to work from home and I'm after so it like I see a lot of mutual Aid swimming in that direction. I think in general, I feel like there is an awareness of what it means to have mutual Aid and have to have a network that takes care of each other more than before. I think I was a little bit more focused on. Advocacy. Is it appeals to the top? Like, how do we get these elected officials to make a decision that protects all of us and now I'm a little bit more of this in the space of okay will do some of that advocacy. How do we try to address these issues that make these people that would make everyone's face on and so just for me that's like I'm planning on taking some like bystander intervention or says I'm planning on taking self-defense courses cuz I'm a small agents that walking through the streets and I don't want to call the cops though. Like really, how do I protect myself?

28:15 And

28:18 Yeah, I just feel like it's a really big emotional set of what how long is a cycling to be like that's the question that I definitely have for you. Harry has being kind of like the Japanese American Community shift so much and kind of like a flow through kind of being big wins as what it's been like for you to kind of see Japanese American Community shift and like what you feel like we need to do to kind of hold energy, but I just recognized all of a sudden our community feel so alive that even though we're not, you know, we don't have a Japantown in Chicago like they still do in LA or San Francisco or San Jose. I feel connected to different Japanese American communities across the country and that must that was really something that I felt during redress movement.

29:18 But I'm going to try to Pivot it been really talking more about the parts, you know, so I think we've done a great job of setting the temporal and social climate under which we both in a live right now and we will definitely share a lot of the same perspectives. So in your Arts how have your priorities shifted? You know, I'm not just in the time of covid-19 this bigger time of so much upheaval. Thank you for that redirect also because for me sometimes it's like it's all the same like her and organizing like they all they really are alike. Even in those things that I mentioned. I was like, oh, yeah, like making posters for those things like making art for to share about the specific issue. Those were things that were all kind of like embedded in all of those projects. I listed it just did whatever I had to to bring the bus. So I think for me I have been honest.

30:18 I need to figure out like what is it that I want to say? And that's something that I feel very strongly that I have technical skills. And I've always felt really insecure over like is what I have to say we're sharing and that's something that I resisted of becoming a kind of the studio artists early on before I knew what Arts organizing was because I didn't feel like the stories that I had to tell myself were worthy of kind of like thought he ran attention or like put in like a big white room, and spend thousands of dollars on a really loud noise right outside. So I'm okay. Well, we have 10 minutes and I think that I'm going to actually go into somewhat more of these Target questions that were suggested to us and I found this really an interesting one and this is what do you find yourself drawing on or thinking about to persevere during this?

31:18 Are there any specific family community or cultural legacies or sources of strength that you are reflecting upon and leaning into right now? Maybe I'm going to ask best to give us like a five minute warning also. Okay that question. It's it's not a specific story cuz for me the ancestral history is clearly a round.

31:44 Make the Japanese American journey and internment redress and like yeah moving from there. So that's clearly for me like to touch them that I was referred to but I think in general the things that I've been thinking about us like a mixed person and also with someone who's speaking to a lot of mixed people is like the fact that we have ancestor Legacy at all is something that we should be focusing on like

32:09 I'm interested in talking to people not about whiteness as much but about a bike. How are you channeling your the ancestry of your heritage and with the meaning of whiteness is the same for me as my my Asian Asian American history of being like the rules that I make as a 28 year-old in present day, not just from this like reaction to what it means to be a person of color or really like what is it the struggles in the journeys of both of my ancestors that brought me here and how is that Shane from the way that they were seeing the way that I'm seeing and how can I use that power to advocate for the things I want and I always hear this phrase in women of color circles, which is like you are your ancestors wildest dreams. I totally relate and understand Abba. I don't totally understand. I don't totally relate to and understand it cuz both because my aunt

33:09 Grizzly want me to sit down and shut up. The other ones would want me to take too well to save an inherited and hoard it all for themselves. And those are both things that I don't plan on doing. So I think that I am not my ancestors Wildest Dream but I will be using the dreams they have passed onto me. I'm in trying to share them with other people that I related to as well who I consider family on the they might have seen so I think that I

33:36 That's it. Bring it. That's what I've been trying to do in my artwork is to try to tell my own ancestral stories for myself and to encourage other Japanese and Chinese Americans to take more on big steps. And then also to use the extra art time that I have to invest in on the causes and stories and actions of other people of color is intended to keep people, you know, as I mentioned. I'm not an artist but one of the things that I find so compelling about art is that it gives you a chance to use your imagination to Envision the world that you want. You know, how do you respond to to my my notion hear about artists have the power to create symbols that can imbue that can illustrate the world that you want?

34:31 That seems like a really amazing place to end cuz this is something that I have been really settling into right now. I have been thinking a lot about abolition and a lot about Sue Justice and in both cases. We have two systems the prison system in our big food system that are really hard to imagine our way out of and so it has been talking to artists creatives poets dreamers all of those people who have helped me see what type of world could be on the other side. What does pure safety really look like what does True Food sovereignty issues like justice look like to have control over the fruit of you producing create pull up your community and how you want to hold them accountable and it seems like it might be really hard for us to get through that in between because with kind of the u.s.

35:28 Empire state that we have now. It's definitely not set up to bring us to that spot, but we will never be able to fight against the energy. Let me start over. It's really hard to fight from a place of we hate this thing and it's only Life Giving and like the only thing I can commit like my whole life too is to fight for the Senate would really really cool. And so I think it is it really an artist and I'm meaning I'm done and I'm trying to create stuff for my stuff myself and others that show people what that world those possibilities are.

36:05 I think that's a great answer and I think that's a great ending but I usually end interviews with is there anything else you want to tell us a poem by Minneapolis poet? Janata Tetris called give the police department's to the grandmother's the poem that she reads aloud sometimes and it's something that I think really emphasizes this the way that creative work and really just open up new doors for us and bring back that what we're hoping for nausea.

36:45 Well, thank you so much for a this has been a great interview for the Chicago Cultural Alliance and the Chicago Japanese American historical society, and I think a great hunt. I hope a great contribution to storycorps do honor to have been apart of it knowing the other people and also you being a part of it to marry. So thank you so much for asking. I'm delighted to have done this. Thank you Corrie, bye-bye.