Title: Samurai among panthers : Richard Aoki on race, resistance, and a paradoxical life /
Authors: Fujino, Diane Carol
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press,
Year: 2012
Subjects: Aoki, Richard,; Black Panther Party Biography.; Asian American Political Alliance (Berkeley, Calif.) Biography.; Civil rights movements United States History; Asian Americans Civil rights History; African Americans Civil rights History; Political activists California Biography.; Japanese Americans California Biography.; United States Race relations
Abstract: An iconic figure of the Asian American movement, Richard Aoki, 1938 to 2009, was also, as the most prominent non-Black member of the Black Panther Party, a key architect of Afro-Asian solidarity in the 1960s and 70s. His life story exposes the personal side of political activism as it illuminates the history of ethnic nationalism and radical internationalism in America. Weaves together two narratives: Aoki's dramatic first-person chronicle and an interpretive history by a leading scholar of the Asian American movement, Diane C. Fujino. Aoki's candid account of himself takes us from his early years in Japanese American internment camps to his political education on the streets of Oakland, to his emergence in the Black Panther Party. As his story unfolds, we see how his parents separation inside the camps and his father's illegal activities shaped the development of Aoki's politics. Fujino situates his life within the context of twentieth-century history, World War II, the Cold War, and the protests of the 1960s. Both demonstrates how activism is both an accidental and an intentional endeavor and how a militant activist practice can also promote participatory democracy and social service. From publisher description.
Contents: "My happy childhood that I don't remember" : disrupting the deviant-noble binary -- "Protecting the Japanese" : the ungrieved trauma of internment -- "Learning to do the West Oakland dip" : masculinity, race, and citizenship in postwar Oakland -- "I was a man by the standards of the 'hood" : military misadventures and Cold War masculinity -- "My identification went with the aspirations of the masses" : the old left, Third World radicalism, and Vietnam -- "The greatest political opportunity of my life" : joining the Black Panther Party -- "Support all oppressed peoples" : founding the Asian American Political Alliance -- "It was about taking care of the collective" : the revolutionary potential of the Third World Strike -- "A community-oriented academic unit" : the birth of Asian American studies -- "An advocate for the students" : counselor, instructor, administrator -- "At least I was there" : a rebirth in activism.