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Episode 491: How Tracy Slater Broke Her Book into Steps
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"Writing a book is so overwhelming. I need to have a book that's like so many steps in between. So what I do to manage my own anxiety and overwhelm about that is I'm really, really obsessed with breaking everything into little steps so that all I need to do is the next step and then I don't get overwhelmed," says Tracy Slater, author of Together in Manzanar.
It’s another Super Size Me CNFin’ Double Feature, Ep. 491 with Tracy Slater. She is the author of Together in Manzanar: The True Story of a Japanese Jewish Family in an American Concentration Camp. It’s published by Chicago Review Press.
As Tracy and I talk about in this podcast, this book is sadly of the moment. It happened 80-some years ago, this vile incarceration of Japanese immigrants and Japanese AMERICANS, 2/3rds of them were American citizens, rounded up and shipped to American concentration camps. Disgusting and disgraceful, but these are the histories we need to look dead in the eye, these are the histories THIS administration aims to erase so it's the work of historians, and journalists, and storytellers like Tracy to keep these stories alive.
She’s an American writer from Boston living for a bit in Toronto. Her essays and articles have been published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, Lit Hub, among other places. She’s also the author of the memoir The Good Shufu. In this conversation we talk about:
- How she broke up with her first agent
- How sadly of the moment Together in Manzanar is
- Being a white person writing this story and worrying of blind spots
- How she handled the overwhelm of it all
- And how the story chooses her
She also thanked me and the podcast in her acknowledgements, which is really sweet and made me feel good. As you know, CNFers, this podcast often feels pretty uni-directional, so to know it’s “working,” that it’s of use and helpful, that’s validating. You can learn more about tracy at tracyslater.com and follow her on Bluesky at tracyslater.bsky.social or on IG at at good_shufu. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for this.
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Upcoming Events and Submissions
00:00:00
Speaker
I just got joined by producer Kevin. She's doing okay. She's doing okay. I won't say great, but she's doing okay. Hey, CNFers.
00:00:12
Speaker
The frontrunner strides into fall, and I've got three events in September. I mean, well, geez. Depending on when you listen to this, tomorrow and Sunday. September 20th, I'll be at the Coos Bay Public Library for an author talk at 2 p.m.
00:00:25
Speaker
I think it goes to 4 o'clock. Ooh, boy. so September 21st, the Sunday, I'll be in Portland in conversation at the Oregon Historical Society at 2 p.m. And on September 27th, I'll be a featured author alongside Ruby McConnell for the Florence Festival of Books in Florence, Oregon, on the Oregon coast, on the beautiful Oregon coast.
00:00:46
Speaker
It's all day, but the conversation's at 4.30 p.m. I have a total of four lined up in Idaho the first week of October, but I'll clue you in as we get closer to those days.
00:00:58
Speaker
Starting next week, I'll let you know. So stay plugged in to this place, my newsletters, and brendanamara.com. Secondarily, on Instagram, at Creative Nonfiction Podcast. And we got a call for submissions.
00:01:11
Speaker
The audio magazine is back and the theme is codes. Codes of conduct. Man. The Mandalorian and his kind. Live by a simple code. Always punctuated by saying, this is the way.
00:01:24
Speaker
What codes do you live by? What codes were you at one time or another told to live by? Has a code led you down the right path or down the wrong? Essays should be no longer than 2,000 words.
00:01:36
Speaker
I word count right off the top. Don't fuck with that word count. 15-minute read. Bear in mind that in the end, these are audio essays. Write accordingly. Email submissions with codes in the subject line to creative nonfiction podcast or gmail.com.
00:01:51
Speaker
Original previous Lee Lee unpublished work only. Por favor.
Supporting the Podcast and Introducing Tracy Slater
00:01:59
Speaker
Deadline is October 31st, 2025.
00:02:03
Speaker
There is cash on the line. So give me your best. The Omera grant. is funding this thing give me your best fully formed pieces man and if you want to help put money in the pockets of writers and help the podcast you can go to patreon.com slash cnfpod because we all need that burrito money which would i rather do kind of go down with the ship of this story or kind of jump ship and go to like a different story and i didn't want to do that i didn't want to go to a different story and i had to i just had to trust it
00:02:41
Speaker
Oh, hey, C-N-E-F-H-E-S, this is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where i speak to primarily writers about the art and craft of telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Meara. Let's try and keep our chins up, okay?
00:02:53
Speaker
Okay. another super-sized me seeing an effing double feature. Friday. Episode 491 with Tracy Slater. She is the author of Together in Manzanar, the true story of a Japanese Jewish family in an American concentration camp.
00:03:09
Speaker
It's published by Chicago Review Press. As Tracy and I talk about in this podcast, this book is sadly of the moment. It happened 80 some years ago during the height of World War II. You know, this vile incarceration of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans, two thirds of them.
00:03:28
Speaker
who are rounded up and incarcerated, were American citizens. Rounded up and shipped to American concentration camps. Can you believe it? Disgusting and disgraceful, but these are the histories we need to look dead in the eye.
00:03:42
Speaker
These are the histories this administration aims to erase, so it's the work of historians and journalists and storytellers like Tracy to keep these stories alive. And we must applaud them, and we must support them, and spread the word, and put these books in people's hands.
00:03:59
Speaker
Yes, feel the shame. Let it wash all over us. But learn from
Historical Narratives and Writing Challenges
00:04:04
Speaker
it. Shame metabolized into progress. But these are very, very trying times, CNFers. Show notes to this episode and more at brendanomero.com. Hey, hey, there you can peruse for hot blogs, tasteful nudes.
00:04:16
Speaker
And sign up for my two very important newsletter, the flagship Rage Against the Algorithm and Pitch Club. Would love for Pitch Club to catch fire. Let's keep doing it. Maybe book pitches, agent pitches, radio pitches, doc film pitches. Maybe my pre-Fontaine book proposal.
00:04:31
Speaker
Maybe the next book proposal, which I'm in the throes of if and when it sells. It'll sell. It's got to sell. Yeah. Pitch Club will never cost a dime. I have a long form journalist primarily share a pitch with me and they audio annotate it. So yeah you read a little, you listen a little, and you learn a lot.
00:04:50
Speaker
Never cost a dime. All I ask is for your permission because platform is currency. That I can leverage into dollar bills, y'all. Both are first in the month, no spam, so far as I can tell. You can't beat them.
00:05:02
Speaker
Also, if you care to support the podcast with a few dollar bills, you can visit patreon.com slash cnfpod. There are some rad perks. But for the most part, people are just happy throwing a few bucks into my guitar case.
00:05:17
Speaker
you know And to that I say thank you. So Tracy's here. She's an American writer from Boston. You remember the horrible Sam Adams commercials as if this is your cousin from Boston as if that's a Boston accent. Fuck that guy.
00:05:32
Speaker
Seriously, fuck Sam Adams. I'm sorry. I drank a lot of Sam Adams my time. you But you know what? therere Fuck Sam Adams. ah Where was I? She's an American writer from Boston living for a bit in Toronto and even for a time in Japan.
00:05:48
Speaker
ah Her husband's native Native land. Her essays and articles have been published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, Lit Hub, among other places.
00:05:59
Speaker
She's also the author of the memoir, The Good Shufu. In this conversation, we talk about how she broke up with
Research and Personal Connections
00:06:05
Speaker
her first agent, how sadly of the moment together in Manzanar is, being a white person writing the story and worrying about blind spots, how she handled the overwhelm of the book writing, and how the stories often choose her.
00:06:21
Speaker
She also thanked me and the podcast and her acknowledgments of this book, which is really sweet and made me feel good. As you know, CNEvers, this podcast often feels pretty unidirectional.
00:06:33
Speaker
So to know that it's working or that it's of use and helpful, that's awfully validating. You can learn more about Tracy at tracyslater.com. Follow her on bluesky at tracyslater.bsky.social or on Instagram at good underscore shufu.
00:06:52
Speaker
I don't know about you, but I'm ready for this. Parting shot on Squishy Time. And now here's Tracy Slater. Riff. Is
00:07:08
Speaker
this a podcast where i can swear? That's the dumbest fucking shit. Total ego goblin. Just kind of a sloppy person. So true. I actually would not mind just growing people's flowers for them.
00:07:19
Speaker
but This is going to have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
00:07:33
Speaker
Once we get our heads out of our asses about book sales and stuff like that, like the real victory is just to be able to keep doing this again and again and to be able to, yeah, to just chain smoke these things. Yeah, I don't even aim to chain smoke.
00:07:46
Speaker
I just aim to get, i mean, I had 10 years before between my first book and my second book and I'm only on my second book. so Yeah, I got 14 between my first published one and this one. So yeah. Yeah, I'm okay with that. I mean, you know, i I am a totally um addicted listener to your to your podcast.
00:08:05
Speaker
um And what i one of the things I really value about the things that you've talked about with your guests and that people have been really honest about is you know, the ways in which we support our writing financially, not from book deals.
00:08:19
Speaker
So I, you know, i have a husband who earns enough of an income that I don't have to support our family financially from my writing. So I'm aware that that is a huge privilege and a huge benefit. And that um that's a major reason why I'm not worried about like chain smoking one project to the next, because I have the luxury of of not, you know, being worried about my family's livelihood in between books.
00:08:47
Speaker
i and I do just think of it as I just want to be able to get another book contract. um And I know, part ah partly I feel like that's lucky and a privilege, and partly I feel like that's just totally realistic.
00:08:58
Speaker
I don't really think that there's kind of a another way to, there's no other way to strategize, I feel like, in this industry. There are certainly some people, especially in like some genre fiction or um something who who can make a living from their writing. But I don't even think you can strategize that. i think you just get lucky.
00:09:15
Speaker
um And I think in like narrative nonfiction, but it's very, very few people who could do that. um yeah So I love the process of researching a book. I love the process of you know going through the archives. I love the process of just having this sense almost like in my lizard brain, like almost a pre-verbal sense that there's something about a specific story that I have fallen in love with and that grabs me.
00:09:42
Speaker
And i love the experience of trying to kind of chip away at that until I can put it into words and hopefully have someone else become kind of enraptured by the story in the same way.
00:09:54
Speaker
Yeah, that's what i that's kind of what I'm aiming for is to be able to to keep doing it. Yeah. And what are some of the the lessons that you took in maybe the those interstitial years from your first book to to your second one?
00:10:10
Speaker
Do you mean about the lessons about like hanging in there? Yeah. Hanging in there. ah What the experience of having written one, you what things translated to the second book, yeah how maybe it was easier or maybe it was harder, just yeah those differences between the two.
00:10:28
Speaker
Yeah, well, the second book was actually harder. in not The first book it was one of those crazy lucky experiences where I had just written piece that ended that was published in the New York Times. like the on parent i don't even It doesn't exist anymore. I think it was called On Parenting, um about um why my husband and i coming from different um cultural backgrounds, had decided that we were not going to adopt um when I thought that I was not going to be able to have a child.
00:10:58
Speaker
And an editor
Relevance to Current Issues and Identity
00:11:00
Speaker
at ah an imprint of Penguin Random House read it and contacted me and said, you know, would you be interested in submitting a memoir proposal? Like I'll walk you through the whole process. So that was like a hitting gold.
00:11:11
Speaker
And I got an offer and then I had to find an agent and whatever. So that was the first book. The second book, I did not want to write a memoir again. um You know, I ended up getting pregnant naturally at 45 and I had to like change the entire ending of the book because I thought it was going to be about like building this kind of fertile marriage without children and how do you do that in this world? And then ended up like this crazy lucky thing where I got pregnant naturally at 45, gave birth to a healthy baby at 46.
00:11:41
Speaker
But then I realized I do not want to write a memoir, another memoir, because now I have a little one who can't say like, I'm okay with you writing about our family. Like my husband is like, you know, whatever he does. the first language isn't even English. So he's like, he can kind of pretend it doesn't exist, but for the little one, you know, you can't do that. So anyway, um, so I came up with this, I found the story of the United family that I wrote about in my second book.
00:12:05
Speaker
And, um, I really wanted to write about it. And my agent at the time said, we're I'm not, you're not going to be able to sell this. Like, it's just not, no, one's going to be interested. Well, she didn't say no one's going to be interested. She said you're not. She was kind about it, but she was like this. We're not going to be able to sell this.
00:12:21
Speaker
If you want to write another memoir, I'd be interested in, you know, talking about that. But I can't work with you on this book. And so I thought about it and I thought. This is the story that I I want to research. This is a story that I want to tell.
00:12:36
Speaker
And so I took the leap and severed my relationship with that agent. She was very generous and let me out of like a year long. pause that I was supposed to take between one agent and another.
00:12:47
Speaker
And I luckily found another agent I just pitched and um ah we ended up selling the book. So I guess the things that I learned um in between, and don't know if this is relevant for everybody, but for me, ah kind of learned, I kind of had confirmation of something I had sensed with the first book. And then with my dissertation, which I did when I was in graduate school, which is that the story kind of chooses me.
00:13:13
Speaker
Like I don't, I can't, it's kind of some kind of alchemy that I can't reproduce myself, but there's, I'll come across a story and it will grab me and I will fall in love with it. And I can't make that happen. Just kind of like you can't make yourself fall love with a person maybe like, and then it's okay to say, I'm not giving up on it.
00:13:32
Speaker
Like I'm even gonna not have an agent and try to find another. um And just, you know, sort of know that it's gonna be hard and it's gonna take a long time. And, you know, the contract for this book, my first book came out from one of the big five publishers.
00:13:48
Speaker
The contract for this book was with a, it was with a
Role of a White Writer in Diverse Narratives
00:13:51
Speaker
midsize, not one of the big five. It was still a, um still commercial press, but um with a midsize, my advance was smaller. um i knew that the, you know, that the marketing, and I actually thought the marketing and publicity support was going to be ah much smaller because the advance was smaller. It ended up actually not being smaller. It ended up being great because I was,
00:14:10
Speaker
I was like the bottom of the barrel at the big five and in the midsize, I was less the bottom of the barrel. So, ah but anyway, I just, um I, it reconfirmed for me and also sort of helped enforce for me one, I can't necessarily choose the stories. I sort of have to be patient and, and accept that they're sort of going to choose me and two, that it will take hard work and it will be,
00:14:39
Speaker
It will definitely feel like jumping off a cliff into nothing sometimes. And we just got to keep going. And I just have to remember how lucky I am that like a story has chosen me. And also that I have the kind of financial security and family support that I can, you know, work on this without having financial pressure from it.
00:15:01
Speaker
Yeah, there's a yeah lot of lot of great threads to pull on there, Tracy. But I also want to get a sense of overall writing, you know, just as maybe when you were like a baby writer and you were and some advice that you leaned on from maybe a cherished mentor or ah maybe just hard-won advice that if people asked you – how you how you keep going in the face of uncertainty and doubt and ah these forces at play. So just for you, what is something you like to lean on?
00:15:31
Speaker
Something that someone might've given you or something you just earned on your own? I guess what I lean on when I feel like I'm not sure either that I can go on or that I should go on um because I'm not getting the progress or I'm not getting, you know, the outside um validation.
00:15:52
Speaker
I lean on two strategies. One is i read other usually non narrative nonfiction books, but sometimes just fiction books like I read and i remember why i have fallen in love with stories and with writing and with the way people can take just a story or a concept or even words and make something amazing out of it.
00:16:18
Speaker
And then I also listen to podcasts and it helps me, it really helps me hear other people talk about their work publicly because it reminds me of like, that there's my private experience of the story. And then there's the challenge of making that story matter to other people.
00:16:38
Speaker
Hearing how other people do that then makes me think, Oh, here's how I may be able to like take my story. You know, it's the difference between the situation and the story, right? Like here's how I might be able to take the situation and really make it into the, really emphasize what's kind of the global story that matters to other people.
Recommendations and Productivity Tips
00:16:58
Speaker
And just seeing other people doing that and then thinking about how I might do that usually gives me that little push I need to kind of get back to work. There's actually a quote that I always think about that's in the beginning of your of your, I don't know what it's called, but like your lead into the podcast. It's like the thing you play every time.
00:17:16
Speaker
And I don't know, i don't know which guests said it. I've listened to many of them, but I haven't, I didn't start listening in the very beginning, like years ago. So I don't know know which gets that, but something like it's a man's voice. And he says something like this is going to have to matter to someone.
00:17:30
Speaker
somewhere at some point it's not that's not verbatim perfect but yeah yeah that was dinty moore from yeah and i love putting him as the final quote of every fresh montage i put together because it's gonna have to matter to someone else other than me or or something like that and it's like i think a good that That is definitely just a good North star. Maybe early on in the process, it is mattering just to you.
00:17:56
Speaker
But then you as you put on those reader goggles, you'd like, okay, what is the universal? How can this serve a reader? Yes. And I guess part of that is also what I rely, that reminds me of one other the thing I rely on, which is to just have some small measure of faith that if this story has grabbed me, even if I can't explain why it matters,
00:18:16
Speaker
To have some faith that it that there's something in here that matters about sort of the human condition or the you know the struggles that we kind of face in the modern world or or something. there's that there's you know that Just to have faith that we're not going to be grabbed by a meaningless story.
00:18:33
Speaker
Yeah, and something you said a moment ago you know in in dealing with ah your're your old agent and having that that breakup. like So many people like who listen to this show and some if i if the few times that I've spoken, and say, like with MFA students, like everyone is like desperate for representation. It's like, how do you get an agent? this then I totally get it.
00:18:55
Speaker
But here, like you had to have a tough conversation where you were actually having like having that breakup. And it's just like, oh, my God, here's this thing that everyone covets. And like you had that in this, like you had to have that conversation because it wasn't this particular book wasn't going to be ah good fit. Just how hard was that for you to to have that conversation and to move on and try to find a different representation?
00:19:19
Speaker
Yeah, it was hard. I mean, the conversation itself wasn't that hard just because. you know, she was lovely and it wasn't like we had a fight about it. um And I respected that she was honest.
00:19:29
Speaker
And so, but the, but the leap that I took, ah you know, particularly being, you know, an independent writer, it's not like a, you came from an academic background, so it's not like I'm in an academic community where, you know, there's like tons of support and people who are in the same situation, like, you know, kind of just,
00:19:52
Speaker
um sort of out here on my own working um and to in this day and age to kind of have an agent and then to say let's end our you know business relationship is definitely scary especially because my first book it you know came out from one of the big five but it's not like it you know like shattered any records that's putting it kindly so it's not like I knew that you know that there were going to be like agents banging down my door kind of thing but I just went back to having, it's not even necessarily having faith in myself. It's kind of having faith in the story, like that there's something here that has really like sunk its claws into me. And I have to respect that.
00:20:36
Speaker
And I have to say like, which would I rather do kind of go down with the ship of this story or kind of jump ship and go to like a different story. And I didn't want to do that. i didn't want to go to a different story. And I had to,
00:20:49
Speaker
I just had to trust it. Yeah. Well, I know. but but So I've written four books and two are published. And one the big lessons that I had from my MFA program from a mentor, as I was beating my head against the wall to sell that first one, was like, he was just like, like Brendan, sometimes books don't sell. And you just got to like move on to the next one. And And that was a really hard pill to swallow that sometimes we do, even if you believe in it it's just not going to happen.
00:21:17
Speaker
So instead of getting so frustrated and bitter and annoyed, just you know maybe move on to something else. You know, yeah it takes book practice to get good at writing books.
00:21:28
Speaker
And there's never really a wasted word. So there becomes this... this odd, incredible tension between the delusion it takes to believe in a story to sell it.
00:21:40
Speaker
And then on the other hand, we'll be like, well, maybe it's not. And I should move on. It's such a fine balance because you don't want to jump ship too early, but if you stay on too long, you just, you run the risk of just wasting, wasting time and maybe yeah ah ruining another opportunity. It's it, I don't know. How did you wrestle with that balance?
00:21:57
Speaker
I mean, one thing I did was, I wrote an article on a topic related to the book. so So my book is about the only Japanese Jewish family on record in any of the um concentration camps in the United States during World War II for Japanese Americans.
00:22:15
Speaker
I thought, um let me see if I can try to get something published that's even tangentially related to the story. The the family that I wrote about it, their name is the Yonadas. And, oh, first of all, I found a family. I found a descendant.
00:22:29
Speaker
So that helped. And then I also ah pitched a article on a related topic, which was the mixed marriage policy in and around the camps for Japanese Americans. Like what happens? The official name was the mixed marriage or mixed blood policy. The government used both names for the policy, but it was basically the policy that kind of defined and then policed and categorized families that were mixed race who had ah members of Japanese descent and the decisions that the government struggled to make about ah these families.
00:23:06
Speaker
And um so I published a piece for Densho, which is this amazing organization of Japanese American history. um I published a piece for them about it.
00:23:17
Speaker
That sort of helped me figure out kind of what aspect of the Yoneida story was going to interest people who might be interested in the book, that in sort of the the broader story about the this family that I wanted to tell.
00:23:36
Speaker
So that helped. That was sort of just sort of a pragmatic step that I took. And it also helped me get the book contract. So I knew, like, it wasn't going to be wasted time. Yeah, that's a good point. It's a good way to and not to get too mercenary about it, but it's a good way to test.
00:23:52
Speaker
Well, whether there's enough material to sustain a book, if you can just do an article, you might write the article, my guy, I can only squeeze 1500 words out of this. I thought it was a book, but my God, it's only 1500 words. Cool.
00:24:03
Speaker
Wash your hands of that and move on. ah But it's ah but then you get a sense of what maybe how the audience is reacting to it. and ah the way it's out there interfacing in the world. Be okay, now there's there's a bit of appetite for this now.
00:24:17
Speaker
Yeah. Yes, definitely. and it doesn't have to be an article version of your book. Like my, there's only, ah you know, a bit of my book that's actually about the mixed marriage policy. You know, the experiences that the Unitas had in Manzanar, you know, only some of those experiences were relevant to the fact that they were um that they were a mixed family.
00:24:37
Speaker
um They were also prominent leftists and that had much ah greater impact, their their sort of political view and the decisions that they made around their political view while they were Manzanar had much greater impact on their experiences there and the upheaval that they faced than their mixed race background.
00:24:53
Speaker
um It helped me figure out like one of the ways I am gonna have to talk about this story if I'm gonna get buy-in from different audience segments if I publish the book, like, you know, how are the, what are the different things that I'm going to talk about?
00:25:09
Speaker
It was definitely useful experience because, you know, and particularly the, job I've gotten a really lovely support from both the Jewish American and the Japanese American communities and the communities around mixed identity.
00:25:21
Speaker
But, you know, the Japanese American community, the, the, I've done more um presentations and stuff that have focused on, you know, the mixed marriage policy, whereas with the Jewish American,
00:25:33
Speaker
you know, museums or organizations that I have either talked with or I'm in the process of, that I have talked scheduled with I'm in the process of planning what I'm going to talk about. You know, it's been more about the tension for particularly Elaine Yoneda, who was the mother in the family as a white Jewish woman who was vehemently opposed, obviously, to, you know, the act the Axis powers who were, you know, murdering her relatives in Europe.
00:26:00
Speaker
How did she and her husband who had, they were 100% similar politics. How did they agitate um in support of the American government from inside an American concentration camp? So um so anyway, so they're two you know quite different aspects of the story.
00:26:17
Speaker
But figuring out what aspect of the story can I work on first as an article helped me figure out what are the different conversation threads that then I can talk about. And not necessarily I have to publish ah an article that perfectly encapsulates like the story Um, yeah that's a lot of pressure.
00:26:35
Speaker
Oh, 100%. And when you were, you know, you talked about your love of the, the research part, uh, of a project of this nature. So like, just take us to the, the early Genesis of, of this project and, you know, what that research looked like and how you were, you know, fine. As you know, I love talking about organization and stuff like that.
00:26:55
Speaker
You how were you curating all this material? So you had that sort of the, the mise en place of, uh, of a chef, but your writers, you had all those tools there for you. How did that look for you?
00:27:07
Speaker
Well, I'm not very technically sophisticated. So I basically just used Microsoft Word um and like the folder file system in terms of organization.
00:27:18
Speaker
But ah the research experience, I started working on the book proposal right before COVID hit. And I ended up having the breakup with my first agent, like right as COVID started.
00:27:29
Speaker
And our kiddo was in kindergarten um and we're in Toronto, temporarily based in Toronto. And Toronto had, I think, the longest school closures of anywhere in North America.
00:27:40
Speaker
So my kiddo was home, ah you know, doing Zoom school in kindergarten and then first grade. And so... um So, but I was super lucky in that so much material about the forced removal and incarceration of the the West Coast Japanese American community during World War II, so much of that material is actually online.
00:28:03
Speaker
um Partly the government has put a lot of their documents online and in great part, the Japanese American community has been amazing about um collecting oral testimony and documents and family experiences So I was really lucky in that um I was able to do a lot of that research online, like, you know, while my kiddo was quote in, in online school.
00:28:31
Speaker
yeah um And I also got super lucky in that there were archivists that, so the Yoneta family, the couple that I wrote about, they were incarcerated with their three-year-old son. So it wasn't just a couple, it was their son too, but they, Before the war, they had been very prominent leftist activists on the West Coast.
00:28:48
Speaker
And they were kind of well known in the media for their leftist activism. And ah they had art but both Carl and Elaine, the husband and wife, their archives.
00:28:58
Speaker
They have archives in different libraries in California. And the archivists were amazing in that they they copied and sent me for free you know a lot, a lot of documents. And part of that, I think, is because it was COVID. and There was no way I did. Libraries were closed.
00:29:17
Speaker
um But in great part, I think it's also just because archivists are like, you know, superheroes. Yeah. And they were amazingly generous. So so that was sort of the logistics of it. Mm hmm.
00:29:28
Speaker
Yeah. And then how are how do you, ah you know, file it at home? You see, you said folders and word and everything is that, you know, we all have our own systems for accessing this material. You know, what was the yeah that you know, how did that look like you know for you as you're sitting down the right?
00:29:44
Speaker
For me, the idea of like writing a book is so overwhelming, like to like to start and then to think like, and okay, so I'm at like A and it's in by Z, I need to have a book. Like that's like so many steps in between. So what I do to manage my own kind of anxiety and overwhelm about that is I'm really, really obsessed with breaking everything into little steps so that all I need to do is the next step and then I don't get overwhelmed.
00:30:12
Speaker
So my first step was basically to read the research that i came across and then to take notes on the research based, like I would just have a word document and I would say, like I would have a heading and it would say like Elaine's childhood.
00:30:28
Speaker
And um i there were ah two, two biographies of her focused mostly on her leftist activism. There'd been nothing that was extensively written about the family's time in Manzanar, which is why I had a hunch that I'm,
00:30:43
Speaker
you know, that I might be able to publish this because it was sort of filling a gap in the history, even though there were a couple of biographies of both the Unitas that had been published by, by small presses or academic presses. But, um, so, uh, you know, I would, I would take notes on that and I would just break it up into different, uh, sections, you know, Elaine's life before the war. And then like, you know, whatever documentation we have about Elaine and Manzanar and then, you know, their different, you know, arrests for their ah leftist activism ah before the war. They were both arrested repeatedly by the Red Guard, who I think is what it was called, the sort of anti-labor police force in in California, I think seems like it was particularly brutal.
00:31:28
Speaker
um And yeah, so I would just go through a lot of the research and I ended up going down a lot of rabbit holes, especially because there is so much information online.
00:31:38
Speaker
um So I really wanted to have a robust collection of research and information about Manzanar the conditions in Manzanar, because I also really wanted to be able to set the scene.
00:31:51
Speaker
And there's just so much documentation about each of the camps. So I would go, you know, I sort of went down a bunch of rabbit holes and and ah some of that material I never ended up using, but it still was good in that it it helped me get a sense for the environment.
00:32:06
Speaker
And then... I buy, you know, after sort of months of taking notes and separating those notes into different topics, I had a sense of like, okay, here are like the different topics that I found research about, you know, here's how I might be able to structure this into into a narrative.
00:32:28
Speaker
Yeah, the the way the shape of a thing reveals itself over time, can it's satisfying when it happens, but it can be very nerve-wracking when you don't feel the shape coming into greater clarity. I know I dealt with that quite a bit with Prefontaine recently.
00:32:45
Speaker
trying to find things that haven't been said before and trying to find the shape of it, what's important to, to highlight for sure. And, you know, when in this process for you did, you know, the, the shape of the story start to coalesce, you're like okay, here's the, here's the momentum now.
00:33:01
Speaker
Yeah. It was really when I was doing the research and I was, um you know, sort of clumping the information that I got by topic. And um I realized that there was, you know, this, this,
00:33:15
Speaker
seminal experience that they had in Manzanar, which was, they called it the Manzanar riot. um It's historians generally today call it the Manzanar uprising, um which is the term that I use.
00:33:26
Speaker
um But it was a you know, a very sort of violent event that happened in Manzanar towards the end of the time that, um that Elaine and her son were there.
00:33:37
Speaker
Her son was basically targeted, her her husband had left at that point, Carl had left to go fight in the war. um He was one of the first volunteers from the camps to sign up to fight for the US military.
00:33:51
Speaker
And he, Elaine and her son, he had just left and they were alone and and a riot or uprising erupted. Her son, by a very small group of agitators, ah was sort of targeted for death in the, in lieu of her husband who had been, who had been, who had, who had left the camp.
00:34:11
Speaker
um And had been in in sort of fierce political opposition with a number of different groups within the camp. And I knew then the more i researched the uprising, not just the information that I had about what the United's experience was, but the different people who were involved in it and the different ah sort of viewpoints, i the more I researched that, the more I realized, well this is like a climax. This can be a narrative high point.
00:34:36
Speaker
um So it was really just in um i you know I didn't know what the narrative high point would be when I started. um And I just, again, sort of had to say there's something pulling me here and I just have to follow it. And with enough research, I think, and also enough reading, like then I would go and I would read other books and I would see how other people, you know, created a narrative arc.
00:34:59
Speaker
and um And I, you know, there's many different ways to like, to build tension in a book. It doesn't always have to be something, ah you know, physically explosive. the whole concept of an internal struggle in some ways being the most powerful, even more powerful than external struggle. you know, you, I really saw that in your book, like the, you know, in the different internal struggles that, that's, you know, Steve Free Fontaine confronted, you know, those, ah seeing how other people sort of crafted that also helped me figure out, well, here's what I'm finding in the research and here's how I might be able to,
00:35:34
Speaker
ah craft a narrative arc, but I didn't just start writing. Like then I did an outline of the book and then, and I knew I wanted to try to you know, do a proposal um and get an agent and then, you know, then refine the proposal proposal and then write, hopefully get a contract and then write the book. And I was lucky that that's how it happened.
00:35:55
Speaker
um So again, but it was little steps. It was like easier for me to do if I just said, Right now, what I'm working on is kind of like a broad outline of the book and a sample chapter because that's what I need. you know Once I do a query, if I'm lucky enough to get an agent who's interested in seeing a proposal, I need to have something to give them.
00:36:13
Speaker
so Yeah. And with with this book, you know in what ways did this book you know become very personal for you? Oh, wow. That's such a good question. So the book is personal to me.
00:36:29
Speaker
from the get-go in that, you know, once I became pregnant and knew that we were going to have a, well, once we knew well we were going to have a healthy child, because I didn't think of I was pregnant at 45 after every doctor telling me, you're never going to get pregnant. of course, my husband was perfect. They were like, your husband's fine.
00:36:47
Speaker
You are the problem. um So, um so once I realized that we were, I was actually going to give birth to a healthy baby 46 and a half,
00:36:58
Speaker
um I realized, you know, so my husband's Japanese from Japan, not he's not Japanese Americans from Japan and I'm Jewish American. And I realized our kiddo was going to be the only Japanese American in our family.
00:37:11
Speaker
And I thought, you know, I wonder ah about the heritage, the sort of history. that our child is gonna inherit. I didn't know whether or not, you know, he was gonna grow up to be even identify like necessarily as Jewish or even be interested in Japanese American history or whatever, but I was interested in the history that he might inherit.
00:37:33
Speaker
And so so for me, finding the story of the only Jewish Japanese American family on record in any of these camps was automatically personal to me.
00:37:45
Speaker
um And then I also grew up because I grew up in a Jewish American family. i grew up in a Jewish American family on the East coast, on the West coast. And my parents were super obsessed with the Nazi Holocaust and with making sure that, you know, we were very exposed to what happened in, with the extermination camps, and the slave labor camps um in Nazi Germany.
00:38:09
Speaker
And I was kind of, fascinated on a personal level. i've I've all, yeah, I don't mean, I think it's, you can't really be human and learn about either the Holocaust or slavery or, you know, what's happening in the world today. I don't think you can be human and not be haunted by that basically.
00:38:26
Speaker
But so anyway, I was haunted by it as one is. And to know, just to learn the story of this Jewish American woman who was, ah you know, trying to agitate for allied victory from within a U.S. concentration camp,
00:38:41
Speaker
ah that also felt very captivating to me on a number of different levels. And just the fact that, you know, we in the US we had concentration camps. In Nazi Germany, they had extermination camps and slave labor camps. And I don't even think there's a point in equating or not equating them.
00:38:58
Speaker
I'm not saying they're the same thing, but we had our own race-based forced removal and incarceration in the US. um and ah And as an American, that feels deeply important to remember and to study and to think about.
00:39:14
Speaker
So for all those reasons, I felt real personal connection. Yeah, well, and this current administration is going out of its way to scrub this kind of history from the books, which makes a book like yours all the more valuable.
00:39:26
Speaker
And i I'm so glad you were able to get the research you were able to get done, because who knows to what extent this stuff is going to be on a funeral pyre of of information with this information. So just, you know, how do you see, you know, your book as it it was birthed into, you know, this culture that we're wrestling with now?
00:39:48
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's sadly way more relevant than I thought it was going to be. Yeah, 100%. You know, when I started working on it. And I think there's obviously so many parallels between, you know, targeting various communities in the United States, immigrant communities and the trans community, targeting various communities ah but with the trans community, particularly of citizens.
00:40:13
Speaker
um American citizens and trying to strip American citizens or American residents with the immigrant community of their civil rights and protections. I think the Japanese American community today, i feel like is doing such an important and good job of shining a light on the ways in which the forced removal and incarceration of the Japanese American community is mirroring what's happening, particularly with the immigrant community in the United States and how there are camps being set up.
00:40:43
Speaker
and people being ah without due process being incarcerated in kind of scary situations. and ah But I also think it's important to remember that with the Japanese American forced removal of incarceration, two thirds of those people were US citizens.
00:41:01
Speaker
So this was happening to citizens. and It's not okay that it was happening to non-citizens as well, but that's why I say the camps were concentration camps, not internment camps, because an internment camp is a camp for foreigners.
00:41:13
Speaker
and only a third of those 120,000 people who were incarcerated were immigrants or foreigners. Two thirds were US citizens who with no due process and no reliable um evidence at all of any danger were forced to give up everything and move and incarcerated in these camps.
00:41:33
Speaker
For that parallel, I see something similar happening to the trans community, not that the trans community is being incarcerated, although there are some bills that have come up that have suggested that, you know, making trans identity and punishable by jail.
00:41:47
Speaker
The move to paint certain communities as dangerous um when there's no evidence of danger um or no no significant evidence of danger whatsoever.
00:41:59
Speaker
um And to use this sort of false story about ah danger to our society to either incarcerate or strip existing rights from residents or citizens, that is all, it's scary that that that stuff is happening again today.
00:42:15
Speaker
Yeah. What was particularly chilling and haunting about reading your book was just hearing the echoes of the deep past today. you know, the, in the Johnson read act of 1924, just, you know, just early on in the book, you know, here are some things you cited and he's like, ah yeah Johnson, ah a passionate believer in eugenics, Johnson warned of an impending stream of alien blood, including a deluge of unassimilable and abnormally twisted ah Jews who he called filthy, un-American, and often dangerous in their habits.
00:42:49
Speaker
Reading stuff of that nature is just... It twists your stomach up because it's so gross. And the fact that it's we're still hearing echoes of that today is all the more and just yeah troubling is an understatement, but it's all the more troubling.
00:43:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's it just goes to show that truth is so much stranger than fiction. Like, it's just unbelievable that, you know, politicians are talking about, you know, poisoning the blood of the nation.
00:43:15
Speaker
Yeah, there's another moment too, is let's see who said this, according to um yeah Army Surgeon Major Charles Woodruff, you know, say you speaking of the Jewish community, but like the same law applies to the Jew as applies to bacillus or any other organism, which may be beneficial if few and in place, but deadly if numerous and out of place. And Yeah, just this the dehumanization of people is like, but it's the point with a lot of these people.
00:43:46
Speaker
Yeah, the dehumanization. The people in power, you know, that yeah that's the point. And also, that taking an entire community and saying, this community is all the same.
00:43:58
Speaker
Like, these are not humans. These are just evidence of danger or, you know, these are not complicated people. These are These are symbols of something.
00:44:10
Speaker
Yeah. Humans are a bummer. ah Yeah. The bottom line, humans are a bummer. There's the pull quote. Exactly. But yeah, but even in like, so now there's forced incarceration a at Manzanar and among other places too. um But like you write, by early March, calls in Congress began for stripping Japanese Americans of citizenship. ah Mississippi Congressman Josh Rankin ah read a letter on the House floor from a constituent proposing that after imprisoning Japanese Americans in concentration camps,
00:44:43
Speaker
Quote, we must insist on keeping the sexes separate or they will use this internment time as an incubating period. And just like I just roll like Jesus fucking Christ in the margin. I'm just like, this is ah the you just the humiliation, the racism, the dehumanization just escalated. So like throughout the war.
00:45:02
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. and And it's amazing that that really wasn't that long ago. No, 60, well, no, no, I'm sorry, like 80 years. It would have been like 80, yeah, 80 years ago.
00:45:13
Speaker
So, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and then the Idaho governor you know said, like, of the japanese ah the Japanese, they breed like rats and should be sent packing to Japan or tossed into the sea.
00:45:24
Speaker
It's like, oh my God. Like, this is just beyond gross and not, like you said, not that far yeah back in history. Well, and the impetus to just be unbelievably cruel for propping up one's own position or one's own power or one's own base.
00:45:45
Speaker
You know, we are seeing that again, and it is just really, it's beyond chilling, and there's just no words for it. Oh, for sure. And I think what also struck me about the the book is that, you know, a Carl, he was loyal to the United States to a fault. yeah Here's this country that was just trying to make him and ah just dehumanize. Well, you keep using that word. And yet he's just like he leaned into the loyalty as a as a as a means to prove he was a good American.
00:46:15
Speaker
It didn't matter to the United States government by and large, but it also created a tremendous amount of tension within Manzanar. So just talk about that tension among the incarcerees in Manzanar and like what the loyalty um you know was doing to certain people, Carl in particular.
00:46:32
Speaker
Yeah. So you know one thing the research really gave me a really fascinating window onto was the people who had a different approach to the incarceration than Carl and and Elaine.
00:46:48
Speaker
So Carl and Elaine felt very strongly that, first of all, they believed that there, they believed the lie that there was a potential for sabotage among the Japanese American community.
00:46:59
Speaker
um I, in the earlier chapters of the book, the chapters that I think you were just reading from, um shows how in the media there was this lie propagated that, you know, even among liberal, paul even among liberal ah thinkers and writers, you know, that the,
00:47:14
Speaker
that there was a threat from the Japanese American community. And the reason that we had seen no no strike on the United States from within the Japanese American community was not because the Japanese American community was not dangerous, but because they were trying to lull us into complacency.
00:47:29
Speaker
um So they did they believed that partly. They were you know long-term leftists. And the leftist community in the United States made very, very clear that the only goal that mattered was the fight against the Axis was supporting the Allies. And, you know, when the, when the Yoneidas were in Manzanar was 1942, the, actually the Axis was winning. It's hard to remember now because we know what happened after the war. It really seemed like the Allies were going to lose for a long time.
00:48:01
Speaker
The Japanese and the Germans were both totally ascendant in the battles in the beginning. And they were terrified. um as leftists, because, you know, both the Japanese and the, na the both the Imperial Japanese and the Nazis sort of began their rampages actually against communists.
00:48:20
Speaker
You know, for the Nazis, the Jews sort of came a little bit after. um But so as leftists, they were terrified of the Axis powers. And then as a Japanese Jewish family, they, you know, more and more evidence came out that they had intense reason to be you know, to fear that they just would not survive, you know, with the all if the allies would continue to lose.
00:48:43
Speaker
So anyway, the leftist community made it very clear, we can, there's nothing we can prioritize other than them supporting the allies. And if the American government chooses to incarcerate the Japanese American community, and it may be a civil rights violation, we can't address that right now. That has to take a back seat.
00:49:03
Speaker
um If and when the allies win the war, then we can address it. And that was the position that Carl and Elaine embraced. um And I believe they embraced it partly because they believed kind of the story that there was a threat from within the Japanese American community.
00:49:18
Speaker
And partly because it was very clear that if they were going to maintain their ties to the leftist community, first of all, they were kicked out of the Communist Party. They were members of the US Communist Party and all Japanese American members and their spouses were kicked out um very soon after butka in the days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
00:49:37
Speaker
um and But if they wanted to continue their ties to the leftist media and the leftist community that they had been forced to leave behind when they were incarcerated, they had to sort of parrot the line that nothing matters.
00:49:50
Speaker
It doesn't matter whether or not we're incarcerated and this entire community is incarcerated based on nothing but racism. it It doesn't matter right now. What matters is that we support the U.S. government in its fight against the Axis.
00:50:03
Speaker
So there was that, which was the UNEDA's position, and they were... They were not wildflowers. They were very loud and insistent in their opinions.
00:50:14
Speaker
um And then there was the group of incarcerees in Manzanar, a small group. Most of the incarcerees just wanted to get through. you know they just They had lost everything and they just wanted to get through. They didn't know they were going to be locked up forever.
00:50:28
Speaker
They didn't know if they were you know going to be you know injured or hurt or killed. They just wanted to get through. But there was a small group of incarcerees ah who who felt so betrayed by the U.S. government. they Many of them were veterans. They had fought and in the First World War.
00:50:47
Speaker
They were citizens. um And they felt like, many of them felt like, if we're going to be true Americans, we are going to say, this is not the American way. Like, this is not, it is not American to accept a totally unjust incarceration without due process.
00:51:05
Speaker
And we will not accept it quietly. And so there was this, you know, collision course between this, the Yonidas and the, there's a small other group of leftists in the camp and um the people who felt this was important to just support the administration and not complain about being in the camps and the people who felt like the exact opposite was needed.
00:51:28
Speaker
You know, from hindsight, I can't, but have compassion for both sides. Yeah. Well, and then there's... you know at at the At the heart of it as well is, goes well, well why why is Elaine in the camp in the first place? Well, yeah her son, three years old, you know Tommy is you of mixed heritage, and he they were going to put him in Manzanar by himself and as is as a toddler ah because he was he, just like everyone else, was just unilaterally blamed as a threat. he this kid So Elaine has to leave her teenager tween daughter behind. Joyce, is that right?
00:52:08
Speaker
Joyce, yeah, her white daughter from her first marriage. Yeah, so she has to you know leave that leave Joyce behind and then, you know of course, attend you know Tommy into the camp, which brings her ah you know into the into the camp. And the the poor kid just had such health issues and stress issues. and it's just ah And that's that gives you an idea of just what you know the circumstances under which you know they were operating as they were at Manzanar.
00:52:33
Speaker
Yeah, Manzanar was very close to lethal for Tommy, as it was for some other incarcerees who, I mean, first of all, some incarcerees were killed in the Manzanar uprising by the military police, by the U.S. military police. but But beyond that, the environmental conditions were horrible. you know, it was the desert.
00:52:50
Speaker
um There were, ah you know, violent dust storms. um And for a child with severe asthma and allergies like Tommy, he was, you know, came close to killing him.
00:53:01
Speaker
And it did The same with a couple of other incarcerees who, true um not just a couple, with incarcerees who had health issues, of which there were many. Because if you had one drop of Japanese blood, if you were six months old, if you were 90 years old, you were considered a threat.
00:53:19
Speaker
And you had to go and be and locked up in these you know desert camps. Yeah, so of course when they're they have to surrender to go to the these camps, they have to give up their property, everything, they' are and their businesses.
00:53:33
Speaker
And when they are essentially evicted from Manzanar, they're given $25 a bus ticket, a one-way bus ticket, and like, good luck. Yeah.
00:53:45
Speaker
And yeah it's like, to me, it's just all the more tragic for everything they endured is that the, the government didn't you know provide them you know restitution for this, this cruelty. It actually just compounded the cruelty.
00:54:02
Speaker
Yeah. mean, yeah, it was, you know, not until the 1980s that, ah that the redress movement succeeded in, in having some compensation. There was a little bit of compensation.
00:54:16
Speaker
i think in the 1950s, there were, you know, people were able to, if they could show that they had lost their property and weren't able to recover it, um they could get like a couple thousand dollars. You had to be Japanese or Japanese American for that. Like they did, like none of the, like Elaine was not eligible to receive compensation because even though she had been incarcerated um only people of Japanese descent were allowed to be compensated. And then in the redress movement in the 1980s, which Colin and Elaine joined, Japanese American community was able to to get some kind of, I think it was $20,000 per incarcerate.
00:54:57
Speaker
um But yeah, when people left the camps, they were evicted after having given up everything and given what you said, I think it was $20, $25 bus ticket, you know and Off you go into this country that's still incredibly hostile to you know the Japanese American community and after you've lost everything.
00:55:17
Speaker
Yeah, because even like late in the book, it's not like, oh, oh welcome back with open arms. like the The hostility remained. And so it's not like they were welcomed back into society. If anything, it was just society.
00:55:31
Speaker
They had to somehow integrate into a society that was almost as callous as Manzanar was itself. It's just, and so like that's that's the thanks you get. like Yeah, people were shot at when they came back. you know they Their houses were lit on fire when they were in it.
00:55:47
Speaker
um It was really quite amazing and incredibly distressing. Yeah, like, ah yeah, one attorney you said, like, this is a white man's country. Let's keep it so. It's like, good Lord. Yeah, and the other thing that i learned from the book, which I, from researching the book, which I never knew, you know, having grown up on the East Coast and in a Jewish American family, ah my concept of World War II was that it was basically a fight against the Germans, against the Nazis. Like, I knew that Japan was involved, but We didn't learn nearly as much about the Pacific War or about the Japanese American force of rule in incarceration.
00:56:23
Speaker
But when I was researching the book and reading these media reflections on the war as it was unfolding, um it was amazing to see so much commentary about how the fight with against the Japanese is a race war.
00:56:38
Speaker
the fight against the Germans is just a fight among family, among brothers. Like it was amazing to see how racially obsessed and split the country was, again, not that long ago. like to um and And that conception of people who were of Japanese descent being, because they had a different ethnicity, being somehow biologically distinct from white people, you know, that continued um as former incarcerees tried to resettle and they faced a lot of, you know, really traumatic experiences. It's like you said, it's unbelievable.
00:57:17
Speaker
And when you were writing the book, there are any number of, you know, hurdles and pitfalls and doubts along the way, you know, just when you would, you know, what was that experience like for you when you were in the heat of writing this?
00:57:30
Speaker
Well, there were so many, I don't even know how to start. I know. Pick a card, any card, pick a doubt, any doubt. All right, I'm going to pick a doubt that's like a little bit hard to talk about, but but I haven't talked about it yet in any talks or interviews. And that is that, you know, I was really aware of being a white person writing about the Japanese American incarceration that I was going to have like blind spots.
00:57:52
Speaker
um And on one hand, I felt like I had a personal connection to the story and that it was a story about it Jewish Japanese American family. um And my family is Jewish and Japanese, although not Jewish and Japanese American in terms of my marriage.
00:58:07
Speaker
um So I did feel like that was a real difference, an important difference to remember. I just had to, yeah, so I worried that I was gonna be like ah publicly say something offensive or ignorant.
00:58:24
Speaker
um I still worry about it. um But I just said to myself, like, the story and the period of history is more important and I just have to be humble and I just have to accept that like I may make, I may humiliate myself and say something that I'm like so embarrassed about later.
00:58:48
Speaker
um Part of it was just kind of accepting that like I couldn't be precious about, you know, my own blind spots. I had to kind of just accept that I might have them. And then also I sought out a lot of feedback and help from various people in the Japanese American community were unbelievably generous and kind with me, you know, helped me um steer clear, I think, of at least some ah blind spots or assumptions that I wanted to be careful not to make.
00:59:20
Speaker
yeah that's really Yeah, that's really wise to seek out the you know sensitivity readers in some capacity when you know you're starting to maybe encroach being the wrong word, but you're starting to inch into territory that feels a bit like, do I have a right to be here?
00:59:37
Speaker
Is this my story? Do I have a right to tell this story or should should I try to... Should somebody else be doing it? But yeah, in recruiting those readers is such a great hedge against handling things ah poorly.
00:59:51
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, ah people would say to me repeatedly, you definitely have a right to tell the story because, you know, because there's like there's not a lot of people who are in a Jewish-Japanese society. families yet, you know, there probably will be in, you know, 50 years, but like so in the very beginning, one of my friends said to me, why don't you fictionalize this? Like it would be easier because didn't know if I was going to be able to find enough material. It turned out that I definitely could find enough material, but, and I remember saying, absolutely not. Like ah as a white person, I am not going to fictionalize because that's like completely projecting my like world vision on a story and that I wasn't comfortable
01:00:32
Speaker
with doing Even if I felt like I might have the best intentions. I'm not saying someone else can't do it, but I just felt like, you know, the history of the forced removal and incarceration has been understood and interpreted so frequently through like, you know, white American eyes, just even the way in which it's their camps are still called internment camps.
01:00:55
Speaker
um It's still repeating the myth that this was something that happened to foreigners and in fact happened to citizens. So I just, um I wanted to be really careful, even though I had some confirmation or support about the fact that that this was, it wasn't completely not my story to tell, at least the Yoneida family, that I didn't want it to, I wanted to be very careful to just see what information I could find and follow that information and not project my own sort of value or interpretation on it.
01:01:28
Speaker
um And that also not just being white, but not having had anybody who ah was incarcerated in one of the camps. you know I also felt like I had to be really careful. In that way, you know it it actually felt like it in that part wasn't my story and I need to be very careful.
01:01:45
Speaker
ah very Very nice. Well, ah Tracy, it is masterfully told. like I think it's a very it's an important book for people to read, ah just to know about the history, because i think a country we can be proud of is one that can stare at itself warts and all and learn from that. And that's a country I want to live in. It's not the country that's being steered right now.
01:02:06
Speaker
But I think this is a necessary history, and I'm so um' so happy to have read it and to have a conversation about it. So it's just you masterfully done. I just hope a lot of people pick this book up and and and read it and and really metabolize it and take that good hard look ah and at that history.
01:02:23
Speaker
Thank you so much. This is such a treat to be able to talk to you about it, especially after listening to your to your episodes the entire time I was writing it. It really helped.
01:02:34
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, that's awesome, Tracy. As you know, as a longtime listener, I love bringing these conversations down for a landing by asking ah the guest, you in this case, for a recommendation of some kind, just anything you're excited about. so I do.
01:02:46
Speaker
Look, I even have it here where you told me that you might video it. have two things. Is it okay if I do two things? Of course. Yes. Okay. One is just general, and that is my espresso maker. Nice.
01:02:58
Speaker
my I don't even know how you pronounce it. I think it's Bialetti. Yeah. so and I'm a big fan of this and this this helped a lot. Your podcast and this helped me. Besides the research and being able to interview descendants of the Yoneta family, I can credit you and my espresso pot.
01:03:17
Speaker
so and And it's totally cheap. it's not like you don't have to It's not like one of these fancy things. So nice even if you get a small book contract, you could still afford it. um So that's one recommendation.
01:03:29
Speaker
And then my other the other one is actually more serious, and that is that for people who are interested in learning more about the The Japanese American Force for Movement Incarceration. This is a fantastic book. It came out after I started writing my book, um but it's called The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration. It's Penguin Classics, and it's edited by Frank Abe and Floyd Chung.
01:03:48
Speaker
And Frank is, I don't know a lot about Floyd Chung, but I know um Frank relatively well. And he is he has done so much important work about resistors in the camp. So the group of people who would have been kind of had ah opposite politics to Elaine and Carl, actually.
01:04:07
Speaker
um And he's a descendant of the camps and he um he and Floyd Chung just have collected this incredible volume of writing from the camps, from people who are in the camps and also from their descendants. um oh wow So um it's just a really good um way to start if you're interested in learning more about ah the forced removal and incarceration as a whole.
01:04:30
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, Tracy, this is so great. so glad we were able to have this conversation ah about about your book and how you approached it. So just thanks for carving out the time to do this. Me too. This is such a treat.
01:04:41
Speaker
Thanks,
01:04:48
Speaker
Awesome. Thanks to Tracy for coming on the show. She's been a longtime supporter of the podcast, and I'm glad that it was a good companion to the but book writing process.
01:05:01
Speaker
That's what I like the show to be. I like it to be kind of your wingman. I'm your wingman. Now, let's let's go out there. Let's go out there and crush it. Ah.
01:05:13
Speaker
For show notes and more, brendanomero.com, hey, hey. And you can also subscribe to the Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter and Pitch Club. Welcome to pitchclub.substack.com. Love to see that blow up, as the kids say.
01:05:26
Speaker
So of of late, um my days have been largely unsatisfying from a work perspective, you know such as being an independent and freelancer type. When you're not working, you're not getting paid.
01:05:39
Speaker
and The flexibility is ah perk, but it can feel like if you're not on the hustle, then... you you know, you're dying, which is, I had a conversation with another freelancer another day, and was just like, burned out and frustrated. and'm like, I can't take a break. She's like, I can't take a break.
01:05:58
Speaker
I felt sorry for asking the question, but that that's the nature of freelancing sometimes. Just like, if you take a break, then you're out of it. You know, unlike if you if you're got a barista gig, even if the cafe is empty, you're still earning your wage.
01:06:12
Speaker
Plus the employer handles all your withholdings. So, What's in your paycheck is actually yours to do what you want with. Anyway, ever since I put the front runner to bed, my time has been really squishy.
01:06:24
Speaker
you know Obviously, I churn out these podcasts it's a lot of work in that pitch club, which is in ah in and of itself a lot of work, though it's only once a month. ah But without the structure of the writing and the research of the front runner and that deadline,
01:06:39
Speaker
It's very easy for me to kind of get distracted by you bullshit and fritter my time away on house chores, walking, grazing in the kitchen, all manner of household appointments that fall to me because I have a flexible schedule. So vet appointments, car appointments, grocery shopping, cooking, mediocre house cleaning, yard work, etc.
01:07:00
Speaker
And what happens is many of these tasks, you speaking nothing of, say, chronic email checking and the all too frequent checking of Instagram, especially on days when I post something, because then you're looking for the dopamine hit.
01:07:13
Speaker
Like who liked it? Who didn't? Is the algorithm going to titrate a couple red hearts for me? Is that all these things like bleed together? Right. So instead of all these beautifully delineated colors on your palette, I end up having like this muddy brownish-green slop.
01:07:32
Speaker
And by thine by the time the day is over, I can't even tell you what I've done. Even if I catalog it in my bullet journal i' be like, you know what, just keep up And it's also, it my to-do list is there, but it's like sometimes you there you do other things that are not on your to-do list and you catalog the things you did.
01:07:51
Speaker
and even when I look at that, I'm like, that's it? what the fuck happened all the time? This is where three vital things came into play that helped me have one of my more satisfying days in the studio.
01:08:03
Speaker
This is just the other day. It's like I can count them one Ninja Turtle hand, how many really good days I've had. And the number is one. So anyway, this is what this is kind of what happened.
01:08:16
Speaker
So like, first thing, actually defining what a good day looks like. you know As freelancers, there's often a mix of contract work or creative work, a research, outreach, self-promotion, other promotion, exercise, reading, napping, book work maybe.
01:08:31
Speaker
If there's no subjective definition of what it means to have a good day, then nothing you do will ever measure up. You'll always head to bed with that gnawing feeling of not having done enough or worse questioning what the hell you even did.
01:08:49
Speaker
Two for me is putting my phone out of reach and even better out of eyesight. It's like, you know if it's beside me, it might as well be like a bowl of fucking M&Ms and saying, don't eat those.
01:09:01
Speaker
Don't eat those. B.O. Don't eat those. And listen, I know they're not vegan, but I don't eat M&Ms anymore. but But if they make plant-based M&Ms, Holy fuck. Watch out, world.
01:09:15
Speaker
Ideally on my best days. The phone is out of the room, but with the w ringer on, because if someone calls me, that's usually important. Or ah custom text ringtones, so I know whether I should get up or not. Like ah Melanie's ringtone.
01:09:28
Speaker
you know i know when it's her. Three... Time blocking, but but not a ah very strict time blocking. It's more fluid.
01:09:39
Speaker
And by that, I mean, you don't start your morning like Cal Newport might tell you and block out your entire eight hour day off the bat. You know, unless you have really concrete appointments that are easy to box off, by all means do that.
01:09:52
Speaker
Um, and you know, he, he has this thing, you time block the whole day and then, you know things change and then you create a new column and shuffle things around. But I always struggle to like have enough, you know, how much time at 7am should I be budgeting for task?
01:10:08
Speaker
So it's kind of like as I start nearing that goal line or that red the red zone or whatever, I have a better idea. I'm like, oh, yeah, I feel comfortable budgeting this hour, this 90 minutes so to this, and then I can block it off. And then it's a matter of forecasting those next three hours with certain tasks.
01:10:28
Speaker
and Say for me, and maybe editing and packaging a podcast. Done. I'll block it out for a few consecutive hours with maybe a 10-minute walk break or stretching breaks every hour. ah But that's the only focus of those blocks. you know That's all for those blocks. and yeah Nothing else. i have to fight my urge to like when I finish where I've sat there for 10 or 15 minutes to go like snack on peanut butter and get up. It's like, no. No.
01:10:52
Speaker
practically have to handcuff myself to to the chair, put like a time lock on my door or something. evan It hasn't come to that yet, but it might. And the other day, i blocked off an hour to catalog articles for newspapers.com about a particular era of my central figure's life in this new biography I'm working on.
01:11:10
Speaker
And it reminded me how much I love being in the archives, digital or real, and how you're your people come to life in new and exciting ways. And when that hour block was up, I was bummed it was over.
01:11:22
Speaker
And after this day, a very concrete task with very concrete time with actual focus, I was actually satisfied with what I finished. I find it no coincidence that I slept through the night for the first time in months.
01:11:35
Speaker
I don't expect this to happen all the time, but it was nice. Like I finally, I woke up and I looked at my watch and it was like 5 of 5 and I usually get up around 5.15. I was like, holy shit. Like either I woke up at the night and don't remember or I slept through the night, which is, it never happens.
01:11:53
Speaker
There's always book panics. But like I said at the top of this parting shot, time before that had been very squishy. yeah But when I firmed it up, you know defined it, budgeted it accordingly, I was left feeling good about the day and good about the way the time was spent and in a way that energized me for the next day.
01:12:13
Speaker
In a way I hadn't felt in quite some time, a long, long time. You know, none of this is revolutionary or new. Time blocking is nothing new. Putting your phone in other rooms is nothing new.
01:12:27
Speaker
Defining what a successful day looks like to you is nothing new. ah Really, the that triforce. helped me take back a bit of what I could control.
01:12:38
Speaker
And a lot of that control over the months and previous weeks, I had just been seeding to other forces, going with the flow a little too much in a very unsatisfactory way. Sometimes leaning into what's inconvenient is actually the best thing.
01:12:54
Speaker
You want to feel the effort, feel the rigor, and not just bounce along. Anyway, that's what I'm thinking about. maybe Maybe I can replicate that. If I had one or two of those days a week, I'd probably be pretty happy.
01:13:08
Speaker
and So stay wild, CNAFers. If you can't do interviews, see ya.