‘Am I Colored or am I White?’: Unsettling ‘the’ Japanese American Experience through Sarah Ogawa's Life Story

Abstract

This article seeks to open up a dialogue among interdisciplinary scholars situated at the crossroads of Asian, Asian and Pacific American, and indigenous studies examining displacement and dispossession, as well as performance. My research aims to interrogate the internment camp narrative naturalising certain representations of Japanese Americans, and in particular the second generation known collectively as ‘nisei’. I undertake this task through the method of life story, which demonstrates how positionality operates among (non-)whites. The striking account of a nisei named Sarah Ogawa, born and raised in Texas, demonstrates her interactions with multiple racialised groups. On the other hand, the formerly-interned nisei, her friends whom I also interviewed, perceived my project to be an oral history interview and therefore focused on discussing the internment camps. By expanding beyond the boundaries of the non-white/white binary, Sarah's performance narrative illustrates the power dynamics in the Asian diaspora implicating the Japanese as settlers, who are also subjected to the West's tourist gaze. That is to say, Sarah created several diasporic subjectivities based on her friendships with the nisei, as well as with EuroAmericans and the indigenous located at three sites affiliated with ‘home’ in California, Texas, and the Tewa pueblos of the American southwest, respectively.