Community Education: Student Empowerment

Assignment 1: History and Autobiography

Essay Assignment (Autobiography & History): According to sociologist C. Wright Mills, we can always discover an intersection between autobiography and history. Each person’s life unfolds within a particular historical period, and an individual can understand their own experience by locating their life within history. Each person’s life is shaped by historic events such as war, immigration, racism, oppression of women, economic recession, civil unrest, etc. As C. Wright Mills states, this discovery "in many ways is a terrible lesson; in many ways a magnificent one." For this Essay Assignment, each student will write a three-to-five page autobiography linking their life to history. Students should provide some background information about themselves (where they were born, where they live, what are the important things in their life, what are their life aspirations, etc.). However, they should focus their essays on three main questions: 1) How does their life intersect with history? (Have certain historical events, such as war, immigration, etc. shaped their lives or influenced their life plans?) 2) Why is the discovery of the intersection of autobiography and history "in many ways a terrible lesson; in many ways a magnificent one"? 3) Once a person has discovered this intersection, what meaning does this discovery have for that person’s life? This assignment is due by Friday, Oct. 5.

• Eriko Suzuki, "My Life's Intersection with Asian American Studies"
• Dean Saranillio, "Waking People Up to Their Humanity"
• Raymond Ramirez, "Shaping Our Destinies"
• Cheryl Samson, "A First Generation Pinay's Experience: Transformation and Responsibility"
• Elizabeth Delgado, "My Family and My Culture"
• Diana Yi, "The Historical Context of My Life"
• Minyoung Bae, "Intersecting Life with History"
• Mina T. Son, "My Role in Governing Change"
• Melissa Hilario, "Redefining My Life Goals and Aspirations"
• Christine Tran, "Our America: Building a New World"
• Genevieve Espinosa,"Who Am I?"
• Meredith Lee, "Intersection to the Path of Life: A Historically Related Autobiography"

My Life’s Intersection with Asian American Studies

Eriko Suzuki

I was born and grew up in Saitama (near Tokyo), Japan. I am a Sociology major at my home University, Meiji Gakuin, but I am a reciprocity student, majoring in Asian American Studies in the United States. I will talk about my personal statement related to the main questions assigned for this assignment regarding my experiences.

The first one is how my life intersects with history. Before this, I want to talk about my interest in Asian American Studies. I was a junior high school student when I started to grow fond with America’s multicultural society. But to be very shameful, I hadn’t known about the Japanese Americans’ hardship during WW2 until entering university. I was a "buddy" (designed helper) of UC students at Meiji Gakuin when I was sophomore. Then I made many Asian American friends. Some of them were born in Asian countries and immigrated into the U.S. One of my friends was a student who was Yonsei(4^th generation). She came to Japan looking for her roots. I heard Asian Americans, including Japanese Americans who wanted to know about their culture and keep their roots and identities as well. This made me interested in Asian American Studies. Since then, I started to study about Asian Americans from two different viewpoints. One is their identity and the other being on Japanese Americans’ hardships

during WW2. Of course, Japan endured many damages, but Japanese who lived in America were also victims of the WW2 and were forced to go to the concentration camps. Especially for Nisei, it was very cruel because while they themselves were Americans, they were still persecuted and sent to concentration camps. Some people pledged their loyalty to the U.S and yet remained excluded from the political propaganda that occurred. As I studied them, I wanted to know more. This is why I decided to study abroad and reside in Los Angeles where many Asian Americans play an active role in society. Of course I studied from books and mass media, but most impressive of all was going to the Japanese American museum in L.A. There, I could listen to Nisei’s viewpoints directly.

My answer to the second question of why the discovery of the intersection of autobiography and history is "in many ways a terrible lesson; in many ways a magnificent one," was quite interesting. I did a survey about Americans and American society to Japanese due to my graduation thesis. I have not analyzed all of them, but as I checked, I noticed that few Japanese knew the fact Japanese Americans were forced to go to the concentration camps and even the existence of Asian Americans. Moreover, even some adults did not know. However, in a way, that cannot be helped. We do not learn about the history in detail. It is a big deal not to teach about it in junior high or even at high school level. Mass media is very much the same as television which have strong influences on people should handle programs about Japanese Americans’ hardship and recent lives. One of the reasons that I want to be a teacher is to tell the important history to the next generation. To tell the history in depth and passionately will lead to a brand-new history of Japan and the world. When I was a student teacher and taught about the diversity of race in the U.S, children listened with great interest. They were so surprised that there were Americans who have Asian faces. So I believe they have an interest in studying their history, too.

The third question is once a person has discovered this intersection, what meaning this discovery has for that person’s life? When I went to Little Tokyo for the first time, I felt out of place a little bit. It was a little different from what Japan is. But, what I thought was that Japanese-Americans understood the importance of the real, good, traditional Japanese culture. At that time, I recognized my identity, "I’m Japanese." We are not as conscious of identity as much as we should be in our day to day life. For, in Japan, generally speaking, most of the people are Japanese. Of course, there are the Ainus, foreigners living in Japan – such as Korean – but it is not as much as the U.S. to think about our identities. The world has become smaller and smaller. We can access the Internet and go abroad very easily. We cannot help thinking about our identities then. When I listened to the speech of Mr. Yasushi Akashi, who was the first Japanese citizen to join the United Nations Secretariat, he said that real globalization is to recognize the walls that separate our nations and races from each other. I think so, too. And we should share and broaden our own culture with other people. For that reason, each person needs to recognize his or her identity. This way we can get recognition of identity from studying history and thinking about ourselves.

I would like to think about my identity by studying the history of Asian Americans in the United States. Moreover, I would like to think what we can do the same as Japanese. This is important for native Japanese and Japanese Americans, I think.

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