Remembering Janice Mirikitani

By Abraham Ferrer

We at Visual Communications are saddened by the news of renowned writer and activist Janice Mirikitani, who passed on July 29 at age 80, in her hometown of San Francisco.

Throughout the 1980s and '90s, our former Executive Director, Linda Mabalot, made it a point to always visit Janice and her husband, the Rev. Cecil Williams, at their GLIDE Memorial Church in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco. For our newer generation of VC supporters, here is why she mattered to us all.

Janice and children at GLIDE Memorial Church (Photo Credit: The GLIDE Foundation)

Janice came up during a time when the Asian American Movement acted on its recognition that the arts and culture were an integral part of community building — the 1975 anthology Time to Greez! Incantations from the Third World, which she co-edited, stands as a necessary primer of Asian Pacific American literary arts. She edited a number of other APA-centric anthologies, but found her own voice through her own writings. A gifted poet, she was recognized as San Francisco's poet laureate from 2000 through 2002, and was recognized as California's Woman of the Year by the California State Assembly. From 1982, she served as the President of the GLIDE Foundation, which oversaw the finances and operation of the GLIDE Memorial Church and its activities. Visual Communications received its first grant from the GLIDE Foundation because of Janice.

Janice has been memorialized for us through the documentary film WHY IS PREPARING FISH A POLITICAL ACT? (1990), directed by longtime VC supporter Russell Leong. The film has come to sit comfortably on VC's shelf, along with ...I TOLD YOU SO, Alan Kondo's 1974 documentary profile of poet, writer, and educator Lawson Inada, who was a contemporary of Janice. To us, Janice Mirikitani will always be significant as one of the strong women artists who broke through the "boys' club" and helped set the stage for a generation of equally groundbreaking APA women literary artists like Momoko Iko, Jude Narita, Amy Uyematsu, Velina Hasu Houston, and so many others. Russell's lovingly-rendered documentary has gone a long way to fill in some large gaps in our understanding of the relationship between activism, arts, and community. We are all the richer for having experienced it.

We join with the extended Visual Communications community in celebrating this influential and warmly remembered pioneer. You will be missed, Janice.

Abraham Ferrer is the Archives & Distribution Manager at Visual Communications. He has been with the organization since 1985.