Painful Rejection: Coming Out and Finding Community
On a personal level, Sueyoshi faced painful rejection from her friends and family when she came out. “Every time I had to come out to a new colleague, another classmate, sometimes I would get sort of a weird reaction, like a cold kind of shock or something,” she remembered.
When Sueyoshi came out to her undergraduate friends, her friends excommunicated her. “My best friend from undergrad said, ‘Amy, I feel like we have nothing in common anymore,’ as if our heterosexuality was the only thing we had in common,” she recalled.
Sueyoshi’s family also was not supportive. “It took my mom about 10 years to come around,” Sueyoshi reflected. “My brothers were just in shock. And I still have one brother living and he’s very supportive now, but they were both sort of weirded out by the whole thing.” Sueyoshi’s father sadly passed away before he could accept her.
For Sueyoshi, she searched for her own community and support group. “I deliberately sought out other queers and also other queer Asians…to mitigate the trauma of coming out,” she said.
Sueyoshi also found support in the community at SFSU, where she now serves as Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs. “[SFSU] is also a super supportive environment for queer studies as well as Asian American Studies,” she said. “Being at San Francisco State gave me a unique opportunity to thrive, especially ‘cause there’s tons of queer Asians in the City.”
Giving Back at SFSU
As faculty at SFSU for 23 years, Sueyoshi was a leading figure in the Queer Ethnic Studies Initiative. In fact, she drafted the requirements to create a Queer and Trans Ethnic Studies minor.
“We had a critical mass of queer studies scholars in the College of Ethnic Studies,” she explained. The minor was approved, and Sueyoshi pushed to raise money for a scholarship that would help fund graduate students researching at the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality.
Now as Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs, Sueyoshi continues to foster spaces for LGBTQIA+ people of color. “I have faculty colleagues who just send students to my office hours cause they’re queer and trans folks of color,” she said. “I invite them in. I have tea. I usually have a cake that I baked.”
Sueyoshi also comments on SFSU demographics. “Our campus is hella queer and we also have a lot of folks of color both on staff and students,” she explained. In fact, according to SFSU, as many as 70 percent of SFSU students in 2024 Fall enrollment identify as an ethnicity that is not white.1
One initiative Sueyoshi is proud of is her work to receive a Mellon grant that funds a part-time director of a disability student resource center and hires two disability studies assistant professors for two years.
“I identify as a disabled person because of my heart condition. I have what’s called an invisible disability,” she said. “This is something that we all need to be thinking about: How do we make the world more accessible for everyone regardless of people’s ability levels?”
Dragon Fruit Oral History Project
Outside of SFSU, Sueyoshi is also heavily involved in the community. In fact, Sueyoshi seeded the Dragon Fruit Project, an online website that spans generations in capturing the oral histories of queer Asians and Pacific Islanders. It originated as an oral history project that Sueyoshi launched with the Asian Pacific Islander Queer Women & Transgender Community (APIQWTC) to preserve the stories of aging elders.
When API Equality – Northern California (APIENC), now known as Lavender Phoenix, contacted Sueyoshi about potential project ideas, Sueyoshi suggested her then-finished Dragon Fruit Project. After the project was adopted by Lavender Phoenix, it grew into a major initiative.
“[Monna Wong, the executive director,] and Tracy Nguyen, they really just took off with it,” Sueyoshi said.
From her experience with the project, Sueyoshi gives advice to academics and historians. “If you want [a project] to become part of the public…then you need to let go of all the things that you think define the discipline,” she said.
The GLBT Historical Society
Sueyoshi is also a founding co-curator of the GLBT Historical Society Museum, the earliest stand-alone museum dedicated to LGBTQ+ culture and history in the United States. After joining the GLBT Historical Society board with the help of Don Romesburg, Sueyoshi said she did not initially feel like she fit in.
“It was a lot of business types. Not very many nerds, not very many academics,” she said. However, when Romesburg and Gerard Koskovich approached Sueyoshi about co-curating the first exhibit for a pop-up museum in San Francisco’s Castro District, Sueyoshi agreed. “It was me, Gerard, and Don. Two white guys and me,” she said.
However, it was during a case on the pornography exhibit when Sueyoshi realized she wanted to continue working with the museum. The exhibit volunteers had collected photographed genitalia mainly belonging to only white men. Notably, Sueyoshi remembers she did not have to be the woman of color who pointed out the lack of diversity.
“Gerard was like, ‘This is not acceptable,’” Sueyoshi recalled. “I didn’t have to do it.” This moment encouraged Sueyoshi to continue working with the historical society and museum. “Their inclusion of me and also their commitment to not propagating whiteness even as they were including me was what invigorated me to stay,” she reflected.
Looking Forward
Currently, Sueyoshi is working with the GLBT Historical Society to bolster the queer and Asian archives, particularly Asian lesbian history from the 1970s to 90s. Sueyoshi encourages elders to donate to the museum now because families might still throw away items regardless of a living trust.
“[The families] may not think that that t-shirt that says ‘Lesbian Pride 1977’ is important when it is,” she said. Sueyoshi asks people who are Japanese American and lesbian to donate their items to the GLBT Historical Society by sending an email at sueyoshi@sfsu.edu.
Furthermore, Sueyoshi recently finished another manuscript, titled Sex, Politics, and Sticky Rise. “It’s a queer Asian Pacific American historical survey, and it’s supposed to serve as an introduction,” she explained. Currently in the review process, this is one of Sueyoshi’s biggest accomplishments this past summer.
Last but not least, Sueyoshi is starting a book project based on 13 oral histories she conducted as part of the Dragon Fruit Project. Titled Phoenix Rising in honor of possibly the first Asian American lesbian newsletter in San Francisco,2 the project joins Sueyoshi’s long list of contributions to filling the void that exists at the intersection of Asian American Studies and queer studies.
Community in Full Circle
At the heart of Sueyoshi’s work is community engagement.
“There’s something that everyone can do, just a little bit, to make a difference in the world,” she reflected. In fact, Sueyoshi promotes finding agency and empowerment in one’s actions.
“It’s important to not feel powerless, to be engaged, and to do something that feels comfortable to you, that feels authentic to you,” she said. “Stay plugged in to building community and seeking justice.”
For Sueyoshi, personally, she has cherished the lesson she learned many years ago folding wontons in the back kitchen at the Cherry Blossom Festival.
“You don’t have to be a big person to do something little that makes a difference,” she reflected.
Interviewee’s quotes have been edited for clarity.
Notes:
1. “SF State Facts,” San Francisco State University: Strategic Marketing and Communications, accessed September 23, 2025.
2. Amy Sueyoshi, “Remembering Asian Pacific American Activism in Queer History,” in Identities and Place: Changing Labels and Intersectional Communities of LGBTQ and Two-Spirit People in the United States, ed. Katherine Crawford-Lackey and Megan E. Springate (New York: Berghahn Books, 2020), 142.
© 2025 Kayla Kamei
