Sonia C. Gomez
Sonia C. Gomez is a historian of the modern United States. She earned a BA from Berkeley and a PhD from the University of Chicago. She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University working on a book that examines the ways in which ideas about marriage, the nuclear family, and female domesticity shaped Japanese immigration and settlement.
Updated January 2019
Stories from This Author
The Sound of the Japanese Diaspora: An Interview with G Yamazawa
April 16, 2019 • Sonia C. Gomez
When you first hear G Yamazawa you instantly want to bob your head while carefully listening to his astute observations of the world he inhabits. Yamazawa is a talented poet and rapper of Japanese descent, born and raised in Durham, North Carolina. As the youngest child of Japanese immigrants in a predominantly Black and white city, Yamazawa developed a strong sense of selfat a young age. The track, North Cack, is an homage to the placed that raised him. After …
Jhené Aiko and the Problem of Multiracial Self-Representation
Jan. 29, 2019 • Sonia C. Gomez
At the 2018 VH1 Mother’s Day music tribute concert titled, Dear Mama: A Love Letter to Moms, Grammy nominated singer and songwriter Jhené Aiko recited this poem she wrote for her mother, Christina Yamamoto, a woman of African American and Japanese ancestry: “I found another grey hair today but I was not bothered at all. I feel like I earned it. I’m better, I’m wiser, I’m leveling up overall. I am becoming my mother, my beautiful mother, who taught me …
