Archive Author
Contributing writer, Anti-Racism Daily. Jami Nakamura Lin is the author of the illustrated speculative memoir The Night Parade (Mariner Books, 2023), winner of the 2024 Chicago Review of Books Award for Nonfiction. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times and Sewanee Review, and she teaches at StoryStudio Chicago.
Issues written by Jami Nakamura Lin for Anti-Racism Daily, newest first.
20 issues · 2020–2023
Conversations about authentic food and dining often center white people's version of authenticity.
Often miscategorized as internment, the incarceration of Japanese Americans in 1942 is yet another instance of American cruelty in action.
Trust in this year’s midterms is low, and far-right organizations are trying to influence the vote by intimidating poll workers and voters.
Climate justice centers on marginalized communities most affected by climate change yet have been historically ignored by environmentalism.
The current climate crisis has led to a rise in climate migration globally, as millions of people are forced from their homes due to devasting weather disasters.
Due to current U.S. tax policies, tax inequity is one of the driving factors in wealth inequality in America.
On April 12th, 2020, Cassandra Greer-Lee discovered that her husband, Nickolas Lee, had died after contracting coronavirus in Chicago’s Cook County Jail (CCJ). At the time, the jail was the nation’s “largest-known source of coronavirus infections” (NY Times). Like many of CCJ’s detainees, Lee was awaiting trial. Today, Cassandra is sharing her personal experience with us. In this interview, she tells us about her beloved husband, her ongoing activism, and what she thinks achieving true justice for her husband would look like.
Until recently, I worked for a public library. Part of my department’s job was recommending books to patrons who wanted suggestions of what to read next. Unfortunately, our staff often only recommended books by writers of color if the patron asked for it specifically— if they asked for books about racism or for Black History Month or about “the immigrant experience.”
Throughout 2020, more of us have heard about mutual aid than ever before. After COVID-19 started affecting people’s livelihoods, mutual aid networks popped up like never before—with new networks likely in the thousands (Sustainable Economies Law Center). The uprisings after George Floyd’s death also accelerated mutual aid; groups quickly came together to feed protesters (Eater), post bail (Chicago Community Bond Fund), and provide support in many other ways. But the concept of mutual aid is much more deeply rooted than the simple act of Venmo-ing $15 to a stranger on Twitter.
On October 13th, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, announced that they were donating another $100 million to support local election offices and polling places ahead of the presidential election (Washington Post). This money followed their earlier $300 million donation towards the same cause (Vox).
The Texas Rangers law enforcement agency is mythologized in popular media as moral defenders of the law, ignoring a long history of violence.
Many of us are still reeling from the grand jury decision that brought no charges against the police officer that killed Breonna Taylor, as we covered in a previous newsletter. And yet, of course, many of us were not surprised. We’ve seen this before. We’ve seen how the grand jury cleared the officer that killed Michael Brown in Ferguson (NYTimes), and how things haven’t changed since then. We’ve seen how rarely officers are convicted even if they do get charged (FiveThirtyEight). We have learned not to expect justice from our legal system.
Like many other Asian Americans, when I first heard about the novel coronavirus ravaging Wuhan, China, I was afraid. Our fear was not just of the potential reach of the disease, but of what being Asian American, particularly Chinese American, would mean in a country prone to xenophobia, racism, and hysteria.