She received an MFA in poetry from The University of Houston, and a PhD in American Studies from The University of Texas at Austin. Her first book, An Absent Presence: Japanese Americans in Postwar American Culture, 1945-1960, questions the constitution and use of internment’s archives by exposing the largely unacknowledged connection between Japanese American Internment and broader postwar developments, including the occupation of Japan, the atomic bomb debates, McCarthyism, and the struggle for racial integration in the wake of the Brown decision. Her current teaching and writing interest continues to pursue the potential of unorthodox or emerging forms for representing historical experience, including, but not limited to, graffiti, documentary photography, graphic or visual novels, and auto-fiction.