By Justine Trinh
I first met poet Mitsuye Yamada seven years ago for an oral history project for the University of California, Irvine, and we talked about her experiences regarding the creation of Asian American Studies on campus as well as the 1977 National Women’s Conference. When I first met Mitsuye, I was absolutely starstruck because she is remarkable in every sense of the word and has achieved so much in her lifetime. Since then, I have continued corresponding with Mitsuye every so often such as going to her house to visit or attending her book launch in 2019. From my time with Mitsuye, I have learned she is a warm compassionate woman who has done so much in her life and has given so much and continues to give. This conversation is about her poetry collection, Full Circle, which she completed at the age of 95. Full Circle is a collection of both previously unpublished poems and new poems that reflect her own life journey as a Japanese American woman who was incarcerated and now as an elder.
Justine Trinh: On your website, you state, “At 95, I figured it was about time to write another book.” What compelled you to write Full Circle?
Mitsuye Yamada: In the 1960s, I became very active in human rights, including with the Human Rights Amnesty International group here in Irvine. I was traveling quite extensively. I worked to form adoption leagues in places like Guam, South Korea, Japan, and so forth. I went to South Korea to help the local people organize and start Human Rights Amnesty International local groups in various countries and adoption groups, and I also was teaching classes Monday to Thursday. I tried to keep Fridays open so I could travel to Europe and to Asia, and Saturday I would have all day meetings in South Korea or wherever. Then Sunday I would fly back, and Monday I would go back to teaching.
I was very busy, so I didn’t do much writing during that time between Desert Run and Full Circle. But I had been thinking about publishing for a number of years, and I had been writing over the years. My good friend, Shirley Lim, could be considered my most persistent nudge toward publishing again. I would visit her in Santa Barbara over the years or she would come here, and we would casually chat about me publishing. Finally, a few years ago, we met with Hedi [Yamada’s daughter] and Diane Fujino. I agreed to just put together a collection of a few of my unpublished poems into a chapbook, but the collection grew as we started working on it.
JT: There are a lot of poems I love in this collection. It is hard for me to choose a favorite, but I think my favorite line is “I will fulfill / every / single / ineffable / moment of life / left in my body” from “Sphere.” This line and poem speak to the circular nature and theme. Can you tell me more about the circular theme and nature of this collection, and what made you choose a circle?
MY: “Sphere” was one of the newer poems, and it fit into the circular, the theme of the Full Circle. It was a way I felt as I approached life. You people have a whole life ahead of you, and I am at the end of my life cycle. I can look back and see how full my life was and my contact with women of color like Doris Davenport, an African American woman whom I have known for forty years. Additionally, Cherríe Moragawho, who was the co-editor of this book called This Bridge Called My Back, wrote the foreword, and Shirley’s and Diane’s essays precede the poems. These bring together multiple identities among women of color that culminate into a natural complete circle. I am so fortunate to have these women among my circle of feminist friends. The wealth of material and emotional support that I get from my friends is just wonderful. I felt that Full Circle reflected the completeness of my life cycle as I entered the end of my life cycle.
JT: One of the major themes of Full Circle is memory, such as remembering and forgetting. For example, there is the juxtaposition in Part II—specifically “Hinomaru Nigiri”— where there is a sense of shame that comes with the memory of you throwing away the rice balls since your mother spent time making them, and “Economics” where your mother finds a positive in forgetting when she says, “I never had to buy / another book.” What inspired this juxtaposition?
MY: Looking back to our childhood, we often have pangs of regret that we have not appreciated our rich heritage or the struggles of our pioneer parents. When my mother came to live with our family later in her life, we came to appreciate and understand her in ways that I never did while growing up.
My mother used to make my lunches, and she didn’t know about sandwiches. So, she would make rice balls and put them into my lunch, and I was too busy in the morning getting ready for school. I would take the lunch to school, and I would see these rice balls. Someone said, “What is that?” It was in those days that there were very few Japanese restaurants that only Japanese people went to. Rice balls were unheard of. I was too ashamed to take it out and eat it. I remember not eating my lunch and throwing it in the wastebasket near my classroom. When you think about how lovingly your parents make your lunch and pack it for you day after day, and my mother did that, you know? She put rice balls, and she put some pickled cucumbers and maybe fried chicken. And I would throw it out because I was too ashamed to eat it in front of my classmates. So, years later, I was thinking, “Why did I do that?” I was thinking of how unappreciative children are of their parents’ efforts. I think that’s what prompted the poem. Because my mother was totally unaware of what I was thinking. In those days, we didn’t really tell our parents anything. I don’t know what your relationship with your mom is like. You have a fairly close relationship with your mom I imagine?
JT: Yeah, sometimes. Depends on the day.
MY: In those days, we never really had conversations with our parents except, “clean your room,” “pick up your shoes,” and, “wash your hands before you eat.” They gave children these kinds of directives, but we hardly ever talked about anything substantive or had any discussions that I remember, until my mother came to live with us after many years. I was retired, and my mother came to live with me. She lived with me and my family for about 19 years, and I came to know her much better as a person. It kind of reflects the lack of a real human relationship that you have with your parents as a child which was too bad.
JT: And with “Economics?”
MY: My mom had a great sense of humor, and she was also quite frugal. When she came to live with me, my children were quite young, and then she lived with me for about 17 years when Steven was a baby in 1957. She helped me through the birth of four children. I would not have been able to work full time as a teacher if my mother had not lived with me and done the cooking and cleaning. I didn’t really think about how lucky I was in those days to have had her because she was so willing. My father died quite early, and my mother was quite lonely in Chicago. She was always in tears because my dad was such a social butterfly. They had such an active life while my dad was living, and she was very lonely in Chicago, so I invited her to come live with us in California. I really got to know my mother late in life. She was with me for 19 years when my children were growing up, and she used to go to Seattle to visit her friends in this retirement home. Her friends were having this wonderful time. They had bridge parties, dancing lessons, calligraphy. She was quite envious, so she decided one day when my children were in High School to move to Seattle to be with her friends. When she was in her late 80’s, however, all her friends started dying off, and she became very lonely. So, I brought her back here to California, and I had a wonderful opportunity to develop a very close relationship with my mother. She had this great sense of humor, and she had this wonderful laugh. She was very much unlike many Issei. She was very outspoken, which was kind of a problem for her when she was young. Later years, it was quite endearing, and as she was getting older in her late 80’s and early 90’s, she said that she was beginning to forget because her mind was going. She would joke about it, and so this thing about not having to buy another book was very quite funny. There were other very funny things she used to say and those were the very wonderful lines that I remember: “So I just read this book, so when I come to the end of it, I forgot what the book was all about.” It’s a wonderful line isn’t it?
JT: Yes, it reminds me of my own mom. She forgets things all the time, and we’re watching a movie and halfway through, she says, “Oh, I’ve seen this movie already. Let’s keep watching, I don’t remember what happens.”
MY: I wish I could remember some of the things she would say that were very funny. One of the things was “I have 14 grandchildren, and all of them are married except 8,” and I would go “what?” I really missed her when she died. When she got sick, she was at the Irvine Medical Center for about a week or so before she died. I went to visit her every day, and then one day, the nurse came running after me and said, “Your mother might be a little bit upset today because we had to take the call button away from her.” I said, “Oh, isn’t that kind of dangerous.” And she said, “Well, she kept calling the nurses about every five minutes to tell them to turn the lights off in the hallway because they were wasting electricity.” Then I said to my mom, “Mom, the nurses are very busy people, you shouldn’t bother them very much,” and she said “well, the electricity, the lights are on 24 hours and no one’s using it.” The nurses said, “We tried to close the door, but then she could see the light in the cracks.” So they took some towels and tried to stuff the crack, but she could still see it. When I went to the nurses’ desks, they were all laughing and saying that my mom kept saying “waste electricity, waste electricity.” She would do that at my house, and my husband got very annoyed because he would go into a room, and it was dark. She would always say “no waste electricity.” The term is “mottainai” and means being very wasteful in Japanese.
JT: My friend said the same thing to me a couple months ago. We live in the apartments at school, and he was like “Turn off the lights, you’re wasting electricity, turn off the lights!”
MY: My mom was ahead of her time. The older generation were environmentally conscious and more aware of the environment than we are.
JT: I have a couple more questions. Can you tell me more about your poem “Bees?” In the opening lines, you state you have a fear of bees that you want to overcome. You also speak of our dependence on bees. We fear a lot of things that we depend on, but we do not always admit it. How did you come to these thoughts? What inspired you to write a poem about something you feared?
MY: I think it is the situation of opposites—of contradictions in our lives when you hate or fear something like the hawks, but these things are things that are very useful in our lives. I remember we used to have chickens around here, and we would have hawks circling, and we were very afraid the hawks would swoop down and capture the chickens. But the hawks were necessary in our environment, and there are many things in our lives that we either fear, or dislike intensely. I think the poem simply encompasses the contradictions in our lives. Loving or hating something that is very useful to other people, or the world. It encompasses a very broad theme of contradictions in our lives.
JT: I really like it though, that poem, it’s one of my favorites.
MY: Really? That’s interesting.
JT: Because I feel, although we don’t always admit it, we’re afraid of something we need.
MY: That’s right. Or we’re afraid of something that’s necessary, and we want to get rid of something that is very necessary to our life, or life in general.
JT: Because I’m afraid of the doctors, and I need the doctors.
MY: That’s right!
JT: There are a couple of allusions to Greek mythology in your poems. What inspired you to bring in these references?
MY: In our readings in high school and college, there were many references and allusions to Greek mythology. I researched some of the references and was fascinated by the humanity of the great gods and goddesses.
Well, in my high school and in college, I was fascinated by Greek mythology in our readings. I remember teaching a course in mythology to my children’s school. I complained to the principal that the children were not getting enough poetry. Their textbooks were very narrow in their subject matter, and he said, “Well, why don’t you come teach it to them?” I decided to teach them poetry. One of the poems I taught mentioned a reference to a Greek god, Zeus. The children asked about it, and I remembered they didn’t know anything about the Greek gods, and they should know something about that. They would run into a lot of Greek references in their readings, and they would not know what it is. So, then I gathered materials where each of the students chose a Greek god and researched them. They went to the library and looked up Zeus and Hera and so forth.
Anyway, as an English major, I found that you find a lot of references in poems and stories about the Greek gods and their shenanigans. They’re so human, and they seem to have very human characteristics. It kind of came naturally. I think there was one poem in Full Circle about Penelope, and what was her son’s name?
JT: Telemachus!
MY: Oh yeah, and I remember, he comes in and orders her to go back to her room when he becomes quite powerful as a man. His mother! He was a child at one time, he grew up, and he became domineering over his mother, and he ordered her to go back to her room. I thought, “How dare he!”
Like Sisyphus rolling the rock—all of that effort and then he had to start over? It’s really interesting because they were written in the 8th century BC. Can you imagine way back then? And the characters are so real, and there isn’t that much that has changed in the world. I think that is what is amazing about literature. The characters, you know? The humanness of the Greek gods and goddesses for instance. I loved it and how emotionally wrenching it is—the emotional intensity, the hatred, and the love that is expressed among the Greek gods is just amazing.
JT: This is my last question. I know Hedi, your daughter, designed the book, and I think it’s absolutely gorgeous with the colors and the circle imagery. Did you collaborate with Hedi to come up with the concept?
MY: Hedi’s absolutely superb artistry went into high gear as she read the poems and shaped the visual part of the book as a whole. She designed the book and contributed with the typography, visual art, and pulling together the sections, binding it, and how the story was going to be told. She then found the art and brought some visual artists into the circle. What began as that “chapbook” that we were originally envisioning ended up evolving into a fuller piece with essays by Diane and Shirley and with visual elements contributed by some young talented artists. Today, it is a very different landscape versus when I began writing. The writers and artists and indeed historians in Asian American community are so active and they inspire me. Hedi and I worked to acknowledge that.
Justine Trinh is an English literature Ph.D. student at Washington State University. She graduated from the University of California, Irvine with B.A.s in Asian American studies and classical civilizations and a B.S. in mathematics. She then went on to earn her M.A. in Asian American studies, making her the first student to graduate from UCI Asian American Studies’ 4+1 B.A./M.A. program. Her research interests include Asian American literature, critical refugee studies, family and trauma, and forced departure and disownment.