Frank Abe
Writer at Resisters.com; co-editor, THE LITERATURE OF JAPANESE AMERICAN INCARCERATION; lead author, WE HEREBY REFUSE: JAPANESE AMERICAN RESISTANCE TO WARTIME INCARCERTION; co-editor, JOHN OKADA.
Seattle, Washington, United States
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FRANK ABE is co-editor with Floyd Cheung of a new anthology, THE LITERATURE OF JAPANESE AMERICAN INCARCERATION, (Penguin Classics). He is lead author of a graphic novel, WE HEREBY REFUSE: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration (Chin Music Press), and with collaborators Tamiko Nimura, Ross Ishikawa, and Matt Sasaki was named a Finalist in Creative Nonfiction for the Washington State Book Award. He won an American Book Award with Cheung and Greg Robinson as co-editor of JOHN OKADA: The Life & Rediscovered Work of the Author of No-No Boy (University of Washington Press), in which he authored the first-ever biography of Okada and traced the origins of his novel. He is currently developing a new stage adaptation of NO-NO BOY in partnership with Seattle Rep.
Abe wrote, produced, and directed the award-winning PBS documentary CONSCIENCE AND THE CONSTITUTION on the largest organized resistance in the camps, and with writer Frank Chin helped organize the first-ever “Day of Remembrance” in Seattle in 1978. He was an original member of Chin’s Asian American Theater Workshop in San Francisco and studied at the American Conservatory Theater.
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Democracy At Stake: What Asian American History Teaches Us About Racial Discrimination, the Law, and
With his election to a second term in office, President Donald Trump has moved swiftly to target immigrants, people of color, and the very idea of birthright citizenship. As a result, over the past year Americans have witnessed a dramatic erosion of civil liberties and the rule of law, both of which have particularly targeted vulnerable immigrant communities and communities of color.
This panel will address the parallels between rationales that served to justify historic discrimination against Asian Americans and present policies and practices of the Trump Administration that have resulted in racial profiling and the arrest, detention, incarceration, and deportation of new others. It will also discuss the Supreme Court’s frightening deference to the Trump Administration's ever-expanding claims of executive power, resulting in the failure of our constitutional system of checks and balances.
Our panel features scholars in legal and cultural studies who will share their expertise on the legacies of anti-Asian racism on the American legal system -- Lorraine Bannai, a member of the team that successfully reopened Fred Korematsu's wartime case and academic whose work has focused on the law and the Japanese American incarceration, will speak about the connection between the WWII and coram nobis cases and issues today; Gabriel Jack Chin, an expert on civil rights law and the history of anti-Asian racism, will offer clarity on the erosion of the rule of law and the attacks on universities under the Trump Regime; and Frank Abe, a cultural historian and writer, will connect the current abuses of governmental authority to the historical precedents documented in the graphic novel We Hereby Refuse, and the Penguin Classics anthology of The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration. Jonathan van Harmelen, a historian of American political history who writes about Japanese American history, will serve as moderator for this panel.
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