Join San Francisco Ballet’s first Asian American dancer Wei Wang, magician David Hirata and Brenda in a roundtable discussion and mini-performance about racism in the performing arts. The event is free and produced by the MarshStream a free performance platform accessed online and created by The Marsh.

Dear Friends,

I grew up the eldest of six kids in a working class neighborhood next to the oil refinery on the Westside of Long Beach. Our family’s claim to fame is that Snoop Dogg used to play basketball with my little brother in our backyard when he was a skinny little kid. It wasn’t until I moved up north in the 1970’s that I discovered my family’s roots are here in San Francisco. My grandfather, Chojiro Aoki, was a founder of Japantown in the 1800’s (the first Japanese settlement in the country), my grandmother Alice Wong, was a leader of the first Chinatown garment union. My mother remembered wearing her “I am Chinese” button during WWII so she wouldn’t be hauled off to a prison camp like Mark’s mother who was incarcerated at Poston. Mark’s father was drafted and fought in Europe with the segregated all Japanese 442nd while his family members in Japan were bombed in Hiroshima.

“This is Squeaky Brown and the Panthers have liberated this high school!”

Shortly after the Watts riot, I was sitting in my homeroom waiting for the vice-principal to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Instead, Squeaky’s voice came over the intercom. The teachers fled, 3,000 students rushed outside, and a race riot ensued. Later, I was suspended for organizing what would now be called a BIPOC coalition; the administration preferred a police presence on campus.

Getting suspended was a badge of honor: I was invited to join the Black Muslims, becoming part of the rainbow coalition Malcolm X and Dr. King called on to transform America. I’ve lived through the L.A. Insurrection (the Rodney King riots); I was at I-hotel fighting against the displacement of elder Filipino bachelors who at the end of their lives had only each other because of laws that prevented them from marrying; I fought Redevelopment, the forced removal of 38,000 Black and Japanese families in the Fillmore.

In the late 70’s I was part of the struggle for “voice.” I worked at the School of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State, teaching the first Asian American Woman’s class. On weekends, in the basement flat I shared with Robert Kikuchi and Kenny Endo, we held jam sessions with budding artists like Phillip Kan Gotanda, David Henry Hwang, Rupert Garcia, Ntozake Shange and of course Mark held it all down walkin’ with his big double bass. I was a founding member of the Asian American Theater Company, the Asian American Dance Collective, and Theater of Yugen.

I was blessed to study Nohgaku with Nomura Mansaku who is a Japanese Living Treasure. I studied seven years, six days a week, seven hours a day and still wasn’t very good. Looking at Mt. Fuji, he once told me all mountains are sisters holding hands under the sea. I’m not even really Japanese. I’m a hybrid: Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, and Scottish. But Mansaku-Sensei would remind me, “Aoki-san, true, you are not Japanese, you are an American, a new people! How exciting!! You will have new stories, new artforms. You must take the things I teach you and make them yours.”

Mark and I have always created original work: to us that is how we give voice to our lived experience, push back against cultural extinction, and advance the cultural continuum of people of color in this country. It’s been challenging. Voices of color are still seldom centered in the mainstream.

But the challenges of the past feel minor now. I am writing this under siege. I, who have performed all over the world, am now afraid to step outside my flat. I miss my Samoan nephews in Long Beach, who would protect me in a heartbeat. For miles in Golden Gate Park, Mark and I were stalked by a man calling us “The Virus.” The Thai grandpa viciously murdered while on his morning walk, lived a few blocks from here. At night, Mark and I barricade ourselves inside our room with pepper spray and bats next to our bed. Our son wants us to buy a gun.

I’m no stranger to racism. I was once abandoned after a performance - left alone in the dark with no way to get back to the hotel. Audience members who happened to be Asian came to greet me. The presenter wrongly assumed they were my family, locked up the theater and went home. I was chased through three states by carloads of the Religious Right, who thought the Japanese folk song I sang was a demonic incantation cast on their children. At the Kennedy Center, the Secret Service prevented me from going onstage because President Reagan was in the lobby and they thought I might be a “ninja assassin.”

And today, we’re being hunted.

But I can’t stop, won’t stop because our stories must be told. I am an American citizen. My family has been in this country for 123 years. We stand in solidarity with the victims of the Atlanta Spa shooting, our elders & women being assaulted and killed in cities across the country, and our children who are bullied as they go back to school. We stand in solidarity with all people of color in this nation.

We must open up the wound and carefully pull out the shards of embedded pain caused by geneocide, slavery, and racism so they do not continue to hurt our children. Then together we must be allowed to heal.

Hate is the virus. It must be stopped. We will inoculate ourselves with empathy, kindness and unflinching resolve to stay the course.

Keep the Faith!

Brenda & Mark

Stronger Together!

Thank you to our
funders and partners!

Marsh Stream Roundtable Bay Area AAPI Artists

Stronger Together!

Thank you to ourfunders and partners!

Thank you to our
funders and partners!