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Janice Mirikitani

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Name
  
Janice Mirikitani

Role
  
Poet


Spouse
  
Cecil Williams (m. 1982)

Children
  
Tianne Tsukiko Miller

Janice Mirikitani httpsuploadwikimediaorgwikipediacommonsthu

Education
  
University of California, Los Angeles

Parents
  
Ted Mirikitani, Shigemi Mirikitani

Books
  
We - the dangerous, Love Works, Out of the Dust: New and Sele, Shedding silence, Awake in the River

Similar
  
Frank Shozo Baba, Ai (poet), Cecil Williams (pastor)

Insight janice mirikitani founding president glide foundation pt 1


Janice Mirikitani (born February 4, 1941) is an American Sansei poet and activist.

Contents

Janice Mirikitani Janice Mirikitani The Poetry Foundation

She was born in Stockton, California, to Shigemi and Ted Mirikitani, who were Nisei farmers in San Joaquin County. During World War II, she was interned along with her family at the Rohwer War Relocation Center in Arkansas. Following the war, the Mirikitani family moved to Chicago. After her parents were divorced, Janice was brought back to a chicken farm at Petaluma, California, with her mother, where they would be near the remainder of their family. During the time that followed, Janice Mirikitani became the victim of sexual molestation by her step-father up to the age of sixteen, and was saved from suicide only by the love and care of her grandmother. She would later speak of the pain of her incestuous abuse through her poetry.

Janice Mirikitani Janice Mirikitani phatitude Conversations in Literature

Janice Mirikitani attended UCLA, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree. During this time, she struggled with her ethnic identity, which she would later portray through her poetry. After gaining her teaching credentials, she taught in the Contra Costa School District for a year. She worked at Glide Memorial Church in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco as an administrative assistant.

Janice Mirikitani Janice Mirikitani Poetry Foundation

From her first marriage, which ended in divorce in 1966, Janice Mirikitani gave birth to her daughter, Tianne Tsukiko Miller, in 1967. Janice Mirikitani then entered graduate school for creative writing at San Francisco State University, but later discontinued her studies. After participating in the Asian American Political Alliance, she joined Third World Communications and became the editor of Aion, the first Asian American literary magazine, from 1970–71. She edited two anthologies for Third World Communications: Third World Women (1972) and Time to Greez! Incantations from the Third World (1975). Mirikitani then became project director for Ayumi: A Japanese American Anthology (1980).

Janice Mirikitani Alumna Janice Mirikitani to share poetry from book Out of the Dust

After two years of activism for Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in 1969 she became the program director. In 1982 Mirikitani was married to Reverend Cecil Williams. That same year she was chosen as the president of the Glide Foundation, where she was responsible for fund raising and budget oversight. In 2000, she was named the second poet laureate for the city of San Francisco. The California State Assembly named her Woman of the Year for the 17th Assembly District.

Janice Mirikitani Janice Mirikitani

Experiences as a Woman of Color - Janice Mirikitani



Janice Mirikitani Janice Mirikitani Densho Encyclopedia

Janice Mirikitani Why is Preparing Fish a Political Act Poetry of Janice Mirikitani

References

Janice Mirikitani Wikipedia


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