Un-Autobiographical Autobiographies: Investigating the Life-Stories of Ten Elderly Nisei Christian Women at a Local Japanese American Church

Abstract

Traise Yamamoto, a professor of English and a scholar of biographical studies, made the following remark in her book Masking Selves, Making Subjects (1999). She wrote, “Nisei (second-generation Japanese American) women's autobiographies are frustratingly un-autobiographical” (103). Yamamoto, who is a Japanese-American woman herself, saw the lack of personal disclosures and intimate self-reflections in many such works. This grounded-theory research on a group of elderly Nisei Christian women uncovered five oppressive influences from their life journeys, which may have discouraged the Nisei women from expressing and addressing human being's most basic concerns such as one's self worth and one's central philosophy of life.