AMY UYEMATSU PAPERS

Announcing Amy Uyematsu Papers at UCLA

 

The UCLA Asian American Studies Center is proud to announce the recent donation of papers from UCLA alumnus, math teacher, and American poet Amy Uyematsu.

 

While serving as an LAUSD high school math teacher for more than three decades, Amy Uyematsu published six collections of poetry and hundreds of poems in anthologies and journals. Her first collection of poetry 30 Miles from J-Town won the 1992 Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. Throughout her career she maintained a strong publishing relationship with Bamboo Ridge Press. A Sansei third generation Japanese-Californian, much of Amy's poetry speaks to themes of identity, social justice, the Asian American experience, and intersectional activism. Amy has also been supportive of inspiring and aspiring writers through teaching writers' workshops at the Far East Lounge in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo.

 

Known best for her writing of "The emergence of Yellow Power in America" (initially a college student paper), she established what has for the last 50 years become a core reading in Asian American Studies courses (see Roots: an Asian American reader, 9-13).

 

Amy Uyematsu brings voice and conviction in her own words within every inscribed poem. She read several of her more recent ones in 2019 at FSN (First Street North) in Little Tokyo to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Asian American Studies and book launching of Mountain Movers. Amy read several empowering pieces as shown in the following video. Featured with her is long-time collaborator Taiji Miyagawa pairing moving accompaniment on bass.

 

 

The following copyrighted © program is the property of the University of California, Los Angeles, Asian American Studies Center. ® All rights reserved. It may be used freely for educational and not-for-profit activities. Any use of content, images, and materials must be properly cited. No modification or editing allowed. For other uses or inquiries, please contact the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA.

 


 

 

Amy Uyematsu: a Literary Legacy
"What is this fire I feel, this fire which breathes freely inside...?"
(Source: "Ten million flames of Los Angeles," 1994)

 

Published Collections

AU, 30 Miles from J-Town, Brownsville, OR: Story Line Press,1992.
AU, Nights of Fire, Nights of Rain, Brownsville, OR: Story Line Press, 1998.
AU, Stone Bow Prayer, Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2005.
AU, The Yellow Door, Pasadena, CA: Red Hen Press, 2015.
AU, Basic Vocabulary, Pasadena, CA: Red Hen Press, 2016.
AU, That Blue Trickster Time, Los Angeles: What Books Press, 2022.
Tachiki, Amy, Eddie Wong, Franklin Odo, and Buck Wong, eds. Roots: An Asian American reader, Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 1971.

 

Sampling of Published Poems and Essays (note: AU refers to Amy Uyematsu)

AU, "The emergence of Yellow Power in America," Gidra 1:7 (1969): 8-11.

AU, "The emergence of Yellow Power in America (an excerpt)," in Roots: an Asian American reader. Amy Tachiki, et al, eds. Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 1971, 9-13.

AU, "At Obachan's funeral," Poetry/LA 17 (Fall/Winter 1988-1989): 95.

AU, "To all us Sansei who wanted to be Westside," Sculpture Gardens Review 1:2 (1989): 12-13.

AU, "To women who sleep alone," West Word 3 (Winter 1990-1991): 44-45.

AU, "Lexicon," Bamboo Ridge 50 & 51 (Spring/Summer 1991): 131-132.

AU, "Unpronounceable," In the Grove 7 (1999): 6-7.

AU "The ten million flames of Los Angeles: a New Year's poem, 1994" in The Geography of Home: California's poetry of place, Christopher Buckley and Gary Young, eds. Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1999, 375-379.

AU, "Listen," Kyoto Journal: Perspectives from Asia 62 (2006): 15.

AU, "The meaning of zero: a love poem," in Strange Attractors: poems of love and mathematics, Sarah Glaz and JoAnne Growney, eds. Wellesley: A.K. Peters, 2008, 60.

AU, "Women's lib, Asian American style," in The Yellow Door, Pasadena, CA: Red Hen Press, 2015, 60.

AU, "Three synonyms for weapons of mass destruction," in Nuclear Impact: broken atoms in our hands, Teresa Mei Chuc, ed. Pasadena, CA: Shabda Press, 2017, 493.

AU, "Yellow Power, circa 1969", in Flashpoints for Asian American Studies, Cathy Schlund-Vials, ed. New York: Fordham University Press, 2017, 21.

AU, "Five decades later: reflections of a Yellow Power advocate turned poet," in Flashpoints for Asian American Studies, Cathy Schlund-Vials, ed. New York: Fordham University Press, 2017, 21-35.

AU, "Chinese snowballs at Huntington Gardens," in Altadena Poetry Review, Teresa Mei Chuc and Hazel Clayton Harrison, eds. Pasadena, CA: Shabda Press, 2019, 51.

AU, "Back in 1969: protests, Yellow Power, and the emergence of Asian American Studies," in Mountain Movers: student activism and the emergence of Asian American Studies, Russell Jeung et al, eds. Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 2019, 186-208.

AU, "Little Tokyo haiku, 2019," Bamboo Ridge 118 (2020): 264.

AU, "Pilgrimage to Jokhang Temple," in The World I Leave You: Asian American poets on faith and spirit, Leah Silvieus and Lee Herrick eds. Asheville, NC: Orion Books, 2020, 108-109.

AU, "The Panthers," in That Blue Trickster Time, Los Angeles: What Books Press, 2022, 76.

AU, "This is," in Beat Not Beat: an anthology of California poets screwing on the beat and post-beat tradition, Rich Ferguson, et al, eds. Whittier: Moon Tide Press, 2022, 31-32.

AU, "The meaning of zero: a love poem," in A House Called Tomorrow: fifty years of poetry from Copper Canyon Press, Michael Wiegers, ed. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2023, 169.

 

 

Photo courtesy of UCLA Centennial Launch, Lighting the Way Projection Show.
Reference: https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/lighting-the-way-ucla-centennial

 

 

Photos courtesy of Amy Uyematsu Family. All rights reserved. ®
Images may not be used, redistributed, or altered in form without written consent from the Uyematsu family.

 

 

Acknowledgements

The UCLA Asian American Studies Center is grateful to Amy Uyematsu and her family for this donation of rare papers and records of literary and historic significance. Amy is gifting the next generation with more than 50 years of her knowledge, art, and inspiration. Photographs of the Amy Uyematsu family utilized in website Announcement are provided courtesy of her family.

This video announcement was derived from the Center's previously recorded Southern California book launch, Mountain Movers: student activism and the emergence of Asian American Studies (UCLA AASC: 2019) held on Saturday, May 25, 2019, at 341 First Street North, 341 E. First Street, in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo.

 

Many thanks to HyunJu Chappell, Magna Citizen Studio, for permission to use design elements based on the Mountain Movers book cover in both website and video Announcements. Attribution for photograph of students at UCLA Dickson Quad illustrated in the video Announcement recognizes the UCLA Asian American Studies Center Movement Photo Files.