The 40th annual american book awards. I say it is very appropriate that we are holding this ceremony on the day of the dead. In San Francisco. And in california, and at the end of the west. Not just geographically mind you, you go any further west, you are in the east. Far east. So just this last month, afghanistan turned 18. I say its you say is going to vote . Congressional budget for every 24 hours the war cost hundred and 74 million. So in a city named for st. Francis, who city fathers and mothers now treated citizens as if they were merely detritus of capitalism, is trying these big two. And if state named for a black lesbian amazon clean of the islamic faith took up on that, but these are just the names that we know right now. Because there are monday names for this place became long before any of us were here and there will be monday names to come. In fact the origin of those names came from a group of people who arrived from youre up are increasingly starting to up here within the arc of Human History as some sort of death cult. If you can imagine what the nation of nigeria might look like that went out any black people, you could get a pitcher of what actually happened here. Before the arrival of the europeans. As a matter of fact, the state of california didnt even become a part of the United States into the 19th century it was almost halfway over. And i say it can be fairly argued that perhaps california remains and settled certainly not settle the matter of which we would say of virginia or maryland had any of the socalled 13 colonies so im thinking of the day of the dead, and understanding that this is the centennial whole of red summer, 1919, red summer not just because of the race rebellions and race riots, but also because of amicus and socialists and labor leaders and communists who were gaining extraordinary power throughout the United States seeking revolution. In fact the american industrials are so terrified that the revolution that was unfolding in the youre up would cease north america that they began to commit to active extraordinary violence in order to eliminate both that threat that red summer and it was during a time 100 years ago, the claude mckay, compose this poem that i would like to share with all of you as our beginnings of these ceremonies the state of the de dead. In San Francisco. If we must die, let it not be like hogs. Hunted and panned and in a glorious spot while ground is bark the man and the hungry dogs making their mock of our cursive lot. If we must die, oh let us nobody die so that our precious well have may not be shed in vain. Then, even the monsters we define shall be constrained to alan or us though dead. Oh kids men, we must meet the common foe though far outnumbered let us show us brave. And for their thousand blows, neil one death. What though before us lies the open graves like men wear face the murderous cowardly pack pressed to the wall dying but fighting back. On the centennial of red summer i say that we must die is the very appropriate way to begin because all of those who are honored by the american book award this year, have answered in one way or another club case call and that went out them i like to redo the stage a poet, and fellow board number jenni lynn to begin her sermon is this afternoon. [applause] thank you justin for that eloquent introduction to our american book awards ceremony. Thank you all for coming. This was First Published 1957 after the obscurity for 13 years. It was discovered by in a small bookstore in San Francisco stay tampered a. K. A. Japan town. Like jeffrey chan and published and republished by the Nonprofit Group combined Asian American resources project. I want to read an excerpt from this book notably by john nakata. I had this kawhi for live, a good 35 years and it has all these markings from the required reading in my creative writing classes in the humanities courses. In the main easterbrook, is talking to his mother. I am not your son and im not japanese, i am not american. I can go someplace and tell people of weve god and inverted stomach and i am an american and true envelope and hail columbia but the army wouldnt have me because of the stomach. Thats easy and i would do it all they have got to convince myself first and that i cannot do. I wish with all my heart that i were japanese or that i were american. I am neither an ugly meal and i blame myself and i blame the world which is made up of monday countries which fight each brother and chill and hate and destroy but not enough. So that they must kill and hate and destroy again and again. It is so easy and simple that i cannot understand it all. The reason i do not understand is because i do not understand you whore the half of me that is no more and because i do not understand what it was about that half made me destroy the half of me which was american and a off which mightve become the whole of me if i had said yes. I will go and fight in army because that is what i believe and want and cherish and love. He would refuse to sign the oath of loyalty to the u. S. This divided the Japanese American Community very bitterly in fact. I teach creative writing class to seniors and for years i couldnt understand why two of the women in my class who had husbands who were awarded very late in the life, they went to dc in their 80s to receive recognition for fighting with the 442. And the gentleman in the adjoining classroom, who they were always frowned upon by these two women. Found out later because he had been in the know boy. And refused to fight on behalf of the United States. So these are ones that are not totally historical. They fester to the present day. Thanks to the page take effect cappelli exhibit a should of the development as an artist. The discovery never writing by oconnor, was done by frank kolbe and Greg Robinson and chain. They compiled Meticulous Research that is the Lasting Legacy to valuable writings that have not yet been published until this volume. In a comprehensive biographic study of the author his life work with his photographs. John nakata, the life and we discovered work of the author of notably by university of Washington Press. I wanted to also mention but not go into any detail that this book was republished by penguin but there was an ensuing bitter loyalty fight but shaun heroically engaged in and thought penguin and one. The book had been called. Because of copyright infringement. So thank good news, we have a book that really deserves an american book award. Done with integrity, and scholarship, great scholarship. Great robinson and floyd has brought here to receive the award. I like you to come up here. [applause] background sounds. [background sounds] simply to be here, lets acknowledge the past of a previous of the book award. He works at with a real little boy. He refused governments royalty of questionnaire inside american conservation cant be thought to resend his american citizenship on duress. Im in cobbs incarceration. Ales actually passed away earlier this week. He wanted it he planned to be here today. We will miss you, he will be very much missed. John nakata, and brother races are like him and celebrated. [inaudible] novel 1957, recovered here in the bay area. 1974 by frank chen. The combined project. Also along with nathan who is joining us here today. They see then. They included a chapter of it in the mythology of Asian American writing. I. E. Was might evoke an awakening that asian america has brought just asian and not just american and not just the best of these to the best of the west by the thing called Asian American. With its own voice and sensibility in 45 years ago, there was a radical idea. I. E. Would not have been possible with the publication by Howard University pressure and 74. The First Black University press in the nation. And chief executive late Charles Harris the following year and it was published in the third issue of your reader. Thanks to its publisher, and with the public reaction to the cart republished novel in its entirety. I say i see jenni has an original here. Very nice. Fortyfive years ago was when i first arrived in San Francisco as a wideeyed know nothing from the south bay. I went to the theater. This was a time of continued discovery and great possibilities and ishmael want to thank you for being so welcoming welcoming to me. The wideeyed kid i was. And at the center for me was this great novel. It gave voice to a japanese american which you just heard, and it trivia, the cover design, and is based on a photograph of my 25 yearold self. The after work of this book, by friction, as if you expressed information about anna at the time, in search of john nakata that ignited in me, desire to learn more about this author and his urge to write the great novel. So that it japanese american draft resistor. That search led to our book which muchneeded biography. Lori margaret solomon, and close the loop theyve just reissued i. E. In the 45th anniversary edition. As arco editor would see if you are here, imagine he would be here today accepting the american book award so is the humility that we accept this honor and surprise for john. Thank you very much. Thank you. It is actually back in 1971, a week after john early death at edge 47 that a team of young Asian American writers and his novel and then all but unknown, championed the work of the range the publication and reprint edition to help bring it into the american tenant. Celtic 47 more years before another team could complete the work they started by bringing to live the broad range of oconnor his writing and a full account of his life story. I am very proud to be part of that new team. Ten years ago while reading through the postwar seattle newspaper, started my research into japanese American History, i came upon the series of stories in the oneact play by the young john nakata. About my findings to frank whose decadelong spacers on the credit lending to interview family members and locate far flung documents. I audaciously suggested that we joined forces on a book. That unraveled this unusual mens life. This frankie was actually the real. Here of the saga because he directed the project and made it happen. Working with him was the best kind of partnership a joy mixed with an education. Thanks to frank were able to recruit an allstar team of collaborators. Frank was far more successful than the u. S. Government to sway japaneseamericans to see went from no no cs yes. Plus the irreplaceable stephenson data plus jeff, and martha, and it is further blessed my old friend floyd chung agreed to join our team. He conducted art his own research into the hal qaeda and is scholarship and what he found conducted his own, brilliant analyses of his unknown works. Floyd helped us in monday ways. We also benefited from university of Washington Press editor, laura mclaughlin, and mike beckham. Who are always welcoming and encouraging. I wanted to thank particularly the before Columbus Foundation. As a historian of our team, remember 35 years ago, monday skis meet received one of the first extraordinary graphic camp citizen 13660. If exploited by see, we are standing in for john accepting this award today, it is also great honor for me to be able to follow in the footsteps and in those of hiroshi. Thank you very much. [applause] useful phrases for immigrants. The strength of the stories, live in their unvarnished nononsense honesty. There are no rags to riches chineseamerican and racial success stories. Or women warriors triumphing over the patriarchy. An hillside from the island identified the body of a Young Chinese woman discovered by construction workers and the new site. Our Shopping Center in a chinese city. Hes a rather ordinary men and women. Young and old. His struggle for validation and survival on their own terms. Whether it be the classic to press chineseamerican daughterinlaw who strategizes cleverly to get rid of her abusive in law parents. Or the poor fish scaler who literally fights his way out of the bottom of the barrel to become a street thug to be feared and reckoned with. Their struggles for survival both noble and deviant weather in china or the american soil, in the face of social and economic oppression, are handled with humor and often a chilling irony. Useful phrases for immigrants gives us both heart and a hard look into the suttles complexities of the Chinese Culture and the psychology of assimilation of immigrant chinese in america. With great pride, i want to bring up here, mainly chai, you spoke phrases for immigrants. [applause] thank you so much. It is such an honor to be introduced by jenni, i am a tremendous fan of her poetry and activism. Tremendous honor to receive an american book award from the beyond columbus, foundation. I cannot believe im enjoying the company of writers who have read and respected them in full by writing in the and never thought is rags i would join. Monday legends. Monday. I decided to put together my short story collection useful phrases in 2016 during the president ial primary as you may remember when a certain new York Real Estate developer was talking smack about immigrants. I was shocked by the ugly over racism of his rhetoric and equally shocked the Mainstream Media was simply repeating the very ugly things he was staying that went out critiquing him. That went out questioning why such oh man might feel entitled to spread hate. As you may recall, he called mexicans rapists and he said the entire nation of china was raping the u. S. I had not heard such over hate speech since 1980s, one of the child. And my family was leaving in a Rural Community in south dakota in those days and white man used to shoot at her house. The killer dogs, the rate that yield racial slurs at us. They didnt like my father because he was a chinese man married to a white woman. And they sent letters staying that he was a china man who didnt know his place that my mother was a suzie my brother and i, were satan his spawn. In the media was constantly feeding the hate and his agent in those days because of the rise of the japanese Auto Industry which was seen as economic threat to the United States. The term of the cover a National Newsmagazine which had the statue of liberty dressed as a geisha. And another in a sumo wrestler striving Rockefeller Center because the japanese conglomerate had purchased the building. I remember when 27 yearold chineseamerican engineer vincent chan, by two white autoworkers in detroit because they blamed japanese carmakers for unemployment in their industry. I remember the. [silence] of the Mainstream Media in the face of this hate speech and the violence in this anti immigrant renter. I remember also the. [silence] from the Reagan Administration about aids that callousness from the administration the rising number of Homeless Veterans and every member of the hate and fear of this era. Back in the 80s i was a child there was little i could do but try to survive but this time im an adult and i can fight back. So in addition of course to try to get the vault out and denouncing the orange ones he felt rhetoric, i thought what can i do. Im a writer, so i can write. So put together in this collection of short stories stories about working people as jenni said, ordinary chinese and about migrants with in china from rural to urban areas in chinese diaspora to the United States and i wanted to write about my community and my family and i wanted to write about people in diaspora and i wanted to remind the media we exist and we speak back and we will remember. Eight speech has repercussions. We are human and we are families and we are here. We have a right to be here. We have voices and we have a right to speak truth to power and we have a right to hold you accountable. [applause] i am very grateful to my press which is the small defendant press in North Carolina and their teams and i am very grateful to my editor robin and my publisher lynn your and i am especially grateful to novelist jones who chose my book and my collection for the award and thats why it was published. Im also very grateful to novelist edward pretty jones who used his voice to bring attention to the stories. Together we can speak truth to power and we can hold these people accountable. I never imagined that that near real estate developer, when actually win the presidency. Perhaps he did not want it but there he is. I never imagine how bad things would get less than naive and feared children in cages and family supported separated from the children children denied their shots and immigrants and migrants across the u. S. Targeted for harassment called bill that wall but ongoing destructive trade war with china. A member of the state department staying that china was the threat to the u. S. Because that was the first time the u. S. Was a non convocation enemy. This is ridiculous. It is stupid and is terrifying. Because there are people who will follow this hate and act upon it. But i know i had to speak up and keep speaking. Im grateful to the before Columbus Foundation that their work in providing the voices of resistance to colonization, of resistance to racism and hate speech the violence against the bodies of immigrants and migrants in the indigenous and the defendants of slate africans were kidnapped and brought to this country against their will. Im honored to receive this american word accord in this historic moment and to be