Danielle Yuki Yang

Naomi Hirahara, Japanese-American writer and Los Angeles local, is known for her thrilling (and award-winning) mystery novels featuring not only Asian American protagonists, but the culture and communities that have created them. Her next novel, Iced in Paradise, soon-to-be-released September 3 of this year, is no exception. This latest novel introduces readers to Kauai’s very own Leilani Santiago, who recently left behind a relationship and a whole other life in Seattle to return to her family’s business in Waimea Junction.

Leilani is just getting used to taking care of her mom and younger sisters, keeping the Santiago shave ...

When I enter that “nonki” (as my grandma jokingly calls it) state of being where I sort of zone out of the present time and space, I often find myself ruminating upon the insignificant features of myself. I self-consciously think about the parts of myself I don’t like, which currently is the peeling skin on the back of my legs from a bad sunburn I acquired a couple of weeks ago after entering, you guessed it, my nonki persona, and laying in the 90-degree-hot sunlight too long.

More often than not, however, I find myself playing with the hair ...

Hidden Histories Trailer from Full Spectrum Features on Vimeo.

As the years have passed, the importance of the Japanese American story as a part of the larger American historical tradition has become more commonly taught, shared, and known. However, what is lost in the changing contextualization of a peoples’ history is the personal, more individual aspect that is so vital to our understanding of groups at a certain time, and at a certain place. Concerning the Japanese American incarceration experience, people today often find themselves in danger of alienating themselves from injustices, and possibly even forgetting its impact on the ...

I can remember those thickly hot Kobe days, when my brothers and I sat for hours on tatami mats, sluggishly scratching and slapping at the hot, swollen welts covering our legs. We would trace the patchwork fields indented on our knees and our thighs from the pressure of sitting on bamboo mats for too long, all the while dragging the page of a book to read on, numbly pawing at our Nintendo DS, or maybe even sinking into the couch cushions to stare at the television screen as it frustratingly highlighted Japanese Olympic athletes when all we wanted to see ...