On Japanese-American Art & Activism with Devon Tsuno

In this episode of The Dream Deferred, we speak with artist Devon Tsuno, Associate Professor of Art and co-director of the Praxis art engagement program at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Tsuno’s work explores his own family history within the Japanese-American internment experience, drawing his research for his photography and art practice from the physical soil of the land, memory traces, and embodied histories of California. We also hear from Dan Kubo, a fourth generation Japanese-American farmer from Turlock, California, who tells his family's incarceration experience and how his father regained his agency after imprisonment.

Special thanks to the Mellon Foundation’s Sawyer Seminars for supporting this podcast.

Produced, edited, and sound designed by Molly McAnany.

Edited by Adam Burston.

Co-produced by Lisa Parks, France Winddance Twine, and Kim Yasuda.

All music in this episode courtesy of Soundstripe.

Cover art by Dani Kwan.

Sources referenced on this episode:

• Elizabeth Ito’s City of Ghosts
• Gidra newspaper
• Rocky Rivera
• Beat Rock Music Collective

For more on our guest, Devon Tsuno:

• Art Professor Devon Tsuno Leads Community Network in Creating, Distributing Face Shields
• Praxis Studio

For more on our host, Kim Yasuda:

• UC Santa Barbara Department of Art

This podcast was funded by a 2021-22 Andrew Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar grant in support of “Race, Precarity and Privilege: Migration in a Global Context" at UC Santa Barbara. For more information on this interdisciplinary collaboration and Co- PIs see: https://raceandmigrationucsb.org.