Janice Mirikitani, Poet and Crusader for People in Need, Dies at 80

Janice Mirikitani, a vibrant erstwhile writer laureate of San Francisco who spent clip arsenic a kid successful an internment campy for radical of Japanese ancestry during World War II, past worked astir of her beingness aiding radical successful need, died connected July 29 successful a infirmary successful San Francisco. She was 80.

The origin was cancer, said Karen Hanrahan, the president of Glide, the nonprofit enactment that Ms. Mirikitani and her husband, the Rev. Cecil Williams, ran and helped build.

Ms. Mirikitani spent astir 60 years with Glide and was its founding president, starring its improvement from a religion to a citadel of societal services and justness that immunodeficiency the indigent and hungry, abused women and radical with substance abuse, legal, household and aesculapian problems.

“Jan Mirikitani was 1 of our city’s existent lights,” Mayor London Breed of San Francisco said successful a statement. “She was a visionary, a revolutionary creator and the precise embodiment of San Francisco’s compassionate spirit.”

One Sunday, she recalled, 4 radical wearing swastikas connected their headbands entered Glide’s church, which is inactive portion of its operation, for its play service.

“They came to, I think, 3 services, and past the 4th clip they came, they had removed their headbands and started volunteering for the meals program,” Ms. Mirikitani said successful 2019, erstwhile she received an grant from the Japanese Foreign Ministry.

She encouraged clients astatine Glide to explicit themselves creatively done art, telling stories and penning poetry.

Poetry, she erstwhile said, was “the connection of my explanation and my liberation.”

Among the subjects her poems explored was her family’s forced relocation from their chickenhearted workplace successful Petaluma, Calif., to an internment campy successful Arkansas during World War II. For agelong afterward her parent refused to talk astir the 3 years they were imprisoned down barbed wire, without having committed a crime, due to the fact that of their Japanese heritage. She and her parents were calved successful the United States.

In 1981, Ms. Mirikitani’s parent decided to talk retired astir her internment. Her grounds to the national government’s Commission connected Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians “was a vat of boiling h2o surging done the coldest bluish vein,” Ms. Mirikitani wrote successful her poem “Breaking Silence,” which besides includes these lines:

We were made to judge our faces
betrayed us.
Our bodies were loud
with yellowish screaming flesh
needing to beryllium silenced
behind barbed wire.

Janice Hatsuko Mirikitani was calved connected Feb. 5, 1941, successful Stockton, Calif., to Ted and Bell Ann Shigemi (Yonehiro) Mirikitani. Her parents worked connected their family-owned farm. She was a twelvemonth aged erstwhile her household was sent archetypal to a relocation halfway successful Stockton and past to different successful McGehee, Ark.

After 3 years successful Arkansas, the household was released successful September 1945, and successful Chicago, her parents got divorced. She and her parent past returned to the household workplace successful Petaluma.

Between the ages of 5 and 16, she aboriginal recalled, she was sexually abused by her stepfather. The maltreatment stopped, she said, lone aft she and her parent moved to a suburb of Los Angeles. The acquisition aboriginal informed her enactment astatine Glide.

“I came to poesy astatine 8,” she said successful 2000. “I wrote to prevention my ain life, to power connected the leafage the chaos that I felt successful my ain life.”

She added, “It was a agelong clip earlier I could speech astir the puerility abuse.”

She graduated from U.C.L.A. successful 1962 with a bachelor’s grade and received teaching credentials astatine the University of California, Berkeley. She taught carnal acquisition astatine a precocious schoolhouse successful Contra Costa, Calif., for a year, past studied for a master’s grade successful originative penning astatine San Francisco State College (now University).

In 1965, Ms. Mirikitani took a impermanent occupation astatine Glide arsenic a typist, assigned to transcribe people’s stories of being beaten by constabulary successful the Tenderloin. Glide had begun a programme that investigated allegations of constabulary intimidation and brutality against radical of colour and cheery people.

“Part of my astonishment erstwhile I enactment connected the headphones was that I often recognized myself successful the stories that went done my typewriter,” she said successful the publication “Beyond the Possible: 50 Years of Creating Radical Change successful a Community Called Glide” (2013), which she wrote with her husband. “I was a powerless Asian American pistillate who lived connected the edge.”

She stayed astatine Glide and became its programme manager and past its president successful aboriginal 1983, a presumption she held for 24 years.

“She was strong-willed, fearless, analyzable and troubled,” Ms. Hanrahan of Glide said by phone. “Everything she did was astir warring for radical who were marginalized.”

All the while, Ms. Mirikitani was penning poesy that Maya Angelou and others person cited arsenic an influence. Her collections see “Awake successful the River” (1978), “Shedding Silence” (1987) and “Love Works” (2003).

Reviewing “Shedding Silence” successful The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the writer Charles Guenther wrote, “Seldom is specified strength of sorrow, pity, rage, envy, love, and regret expressed successful specified controlled terms, without distracting expletives. Mirikitani sings strong, constituent truths.”

In 2000, Ms. Mirikitani succeeded Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who died this year, arsenic the writer laureate of San Francisco.

“Poetry has been the connection of my explanation and my liberation,” she said successful 2000 at the San Francisco Public Library arsenic she began her two-year word arsenic writer laureate. “Poetry is timeless, reaching done generations, crossed continents, to my large ancestors, buried successful the ashes of Hiroshima, and my grandma successful the Amache internment camp.”

In summation to her husband, she is survived by a daughter, Tianne Tsukiko Feliciano; a stepdaughter, Kimberly Williams; a stepson, Albert Williams Jr.; a grandson; 3 step-grandchildren; and a brother, Layne Yonehiro.

In her poem “Yes, We Are Not Invisible,” Ms. Mirikitani wrote astir the dehumanizing interaction of stereotypes.

“No, I’m not from Tokyo, Singapore oregon Saigon.
No, your dogs are harmless with me.
No, I don’t invade the parkland for squirrel meat.
No, my peripheral imaginativeness is fine.
No, I’m precise atrocious astatine math.
No, I bash not reply to Geisha Girl, China Doll, Suzie Wong,
mamasan, oregon gook, oregon Jap oregon chink.
No, to america beingness is not cheap.”

Stereotypes, she said, persisted successful her life, nary substance however palmy she was.

“People presume I’m large astatine math, oregon that due to the fact that my hubby is African American helium indispensable beryllium my chauffeur, oregon I indispensable beryllium a caterer oregon florist,” she told The Record, the module and unit newsletter of Washington University successful St. Louis, successful 2017. “I’m a writer laureate, and radical inquire maine wherever I learned to talk English truthful well, assuming that due to the fact that I’m Asian I indispensable beryllium an immigrant.”