The Politics Of Life

Velina Hasu Houston

Velina Hasu Houston I GREW UP IN JUNCTION CITY, KANSAS, a small town that survives on agriculture and the military, next door to Fort Riley, a U.S. Army base. I lived In a community of Japanese American families and Amerasian offspring. The mothers are natives of Japan, and the fathers are American men of various racial extractions who served in World War II and met their international brides during the U.S. occupation of Japan. Junction City also has a large number of European , Korean, Vietnamese, and Thai international brides. My mother, Setsuko Takechi, was born in Matsuyama, Japan, and grew up in Imabari. Her provincial Kansai upbringing and unique steel chrysanthemum strength and grace afforded me a childhood rich in culture that shaped my behavior, customs, politics, philosophy, ethics, cultural identity, culinary skills and tastes, and spiritual outlook. My father, Lemo, was born in Linden, Alabama. His parents were dead before he was twelve, thus forcing him into manhood at an early age. He moved to New York and eventually volunteered to serve in World War II. I am a child of war, as are most Amerasians. Without war, my existence may have been an impossibility . My father's gentle spirit was eroded by combat and the racism to which soldiers of color were exposed. My mother suffered the loss of economic stability, dignity, national pride, and family in combat , as well as the suicide of her father, and the premature death of her mother. And she watched as America tested the atomic bomb on the Japanese. These events, in part catalyzed by World War II, helped to conceive me. My father died when I was eleven. I helped my mother arrange for the funeral because she felt uncomfortable dealing with the many Americans with whom we had to interact in order to put him to rest. We chose a lilac-colored casket. I still remember staring vividly at my father's corpse buffeted against ivory satin in that shiny lilac box. I remember how the ground sank under my feet at the cemetery and how the flowers seemed so dull and pointless drifting over his casket as it lowered into the ground. My childhood was over. As my political battles as an Amerasian wage on, I often think of a line from my play Tea: "I was born in a storm ... and it's never stopped raining." But I have learned to manage the rain to bear the fruit of survival, the fruit of a beautiful child, and the fruit of art. Encouraged by my mother, I began writing haiku at the age of 207 VELINA HASU HOUSTON six. When I was twelve, a teacher said my poetry was very visual and urged me to write a play. It was then that I fell in love for the first time in my life. I fell in love with dramatic literature. I wrote my first play at the age of thirteen. I turned to dramatic literature full force and wrote many plays in order to learn by doing. I was exercising muscles that I had never exercised before. I was learning how to tone and refine them and then maintain the balance. It is a lifelong process for the serious playwright. I went to Kansas State University, where I was an honors student in journalism, mass communications , theater, and philosophy. I stayed in Kansas to be with my widowed mother because the rules of my culture expect nothing less. When she remarried, I left the Midwest. Iwent to the University of California at Los Angeles, where I studied with Richard Walter and Theodore Apstein and earned a master of fine arts in theater and playwriting. I am an assistant professor at the University of Southern California School of Theater. I teach playwriting and modern dramatic literature, including the study and analysis of Asian American plays. I am cofounder and president of The Amerasian League, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educational awareness of Amerasian culture . I present poetry readings and lectures in the United States and japan on various aspects of theater; Amerasian, japanese, or japanese American culture; and African American-Asian American relations. All of my work is dedicated to my mother, Setsuko, and my son, Kiyoshi, whom I rear on my own in my favorite American city-Santa Monica. Kiyoshi is a gifted child who attends a private school, Wildwood Elementary, and a japanese school...