Description
A mold-breaking memoir of Asian American identity, political activism, community, and purpose.
Not Yo’ Butterfly is the intimate and unflinching life story of Nobuko Miyamoto—artist, activist, and mother. Beginning with the harrowing early years of her life as a Japanese American child navigating a fearful west coast during World War II, Miyamoto leads readers into the landscapes that defined the experiences of twentieth-century America and also foregrounds the struggles of people of color who reclaimed their histories, identities, and power through activism and art.
Miyamoto vividly describes her early life in the racialized atmosphere of Hollywood musicals and then her turn toward activism as an Asian American troubadour with the release of A Grain of Sand—considered to be the first Asian American folk album. Her narrative intersects with the stories of Yuri Kochiyama and Grace Lee Boggs, influential in both Asian and Black liberation movements. She tells how her experience of motherhood with an Afro-Asian son, as well as a marriage that intertwined Black and Japanese families and communities, placed her at the nexus of the 1992 Rodney King riots—and how she used art to create interracial solidarity and conciliation.
Through it all, Miyamoto has embraced her identity as an Asian American woman to create an antiracist body of work and a blueprint for empathy and praxis through community art. Her sometimes barbed, often provocative, and always steadfast story is now told.
Review
By Steve Louie (co-editor, Asian Americans: the Movement and the Moment)
Nobuko Miyamoto was JoAnne when I met her in New York City in 1969, and she clearly had led a different life than most of us. She often shared behind-the-scenes and funny stories about situations and people she’d met. We were part of a small circle of young activists who often hung out together in uptown New York, who had thrown ourselves heart and soul into the awakening of Asian American consciousness. Against the backdrop of the anti-war, Black power and women’s movements, it was a time of upheaval for Asian Americans as we sought to define for ourselves who we are in this country, not stick figures in the model minority myth.
I’ve just read Nobuko’s memoir, Not Yo' Butterfly – and I found out much about her passions, especially her deep love of dance. She writes in detail about being a professional dancer and singer, working on stage (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Broadway, including Flower Drum Song), in Hollywood films (including The King and I, West Side Story) and with respected and well-known figures (Gene Kelly, Jerome Robbins). And then, she embraced the burgeoning Asian American movement and she was, simply, one of us as we protested, organized and tried to figure out what needed to be done.
Often, when people write about themselves, it’s all about their accomplishments. But Nobuko also tells us the stories of the people closest to her even as she tells her own – and writes easily about what she absorbed from the people around her in how they also faced success and challenge. Her account of her collaboration with Chris Iijima to write and perform songs for Asian America perfectly captures the beginning and arc of their relationship – and how she found her own voice to talk about what they were doing.
There is drama in her stories. Partly, it comes with the territory of what, where and when she’s lived her life. Nobuko went to the concentration camps as a toddler. She learned firsthand to deal with racism in the entertainment industry at a time when Asians were Orientals and did not speak up. But she writes honestly about her feelings, and I could feel her emotions with crystal clarity when she writes about the love of her life – and the moment when she realizes she’s going to face head-on her mom’s prejudice about having a Black grandson.
Not Yo' Butterfly is a great account with wonderful stories about Nobuko’s life of movement. One thing does stand out, however: she’s never stopped trying to figure out what needs doing.