Mariko Fujimoto Rooks
Mariko Fujimoto Rooks (they/she) is a community public health practitioner who explores how art and community storytelling function as forms of healing in the face of oppression and trauma. Her poetry has appeared in The Water Behind Us (Porchwater Press, 2023), Letters to Home: Art & Writing by LGBTQ+ Nikkei and Allies (Okaeri, 2024), Discover Nikkei (2021), and Mixed Life Magazine (2020). She is also an alumnus of Yale's Asian American spoken word group JookSongs. When not writing, Mariko practices traditional Japanese folk dance with FandangObon and the Nippon Minyo Kenkyukai School, drums with Kinnara Taiko, and serves on the board of the Little Tokyo Towers and Little Tokyo Towers Community Foundation.
Updated June 2024
Stories from This Author
Burning
June 20, 2024 • Mariko Fujimoto Rooks , traci kato-kiriyama
We hope this finds everyone well and able to find rest and rejuvenation amidst all of daily grinds and strife that too easily abounds. I’m always grateful to provide some poetry, as a balm and as hopeful fire for our greater work in the world. This month is of course no exception—from the wondrous Mariko Rooks, community health practitioner and creative, we share their poem on the “carcinogenic caverns” of time, on “...war and cigarettes...”—taking us on a search through …
Wonder
Dec. 17, 2020 • Curtiss Takada Rooks , Mariko Fujimoto Rooks , traci kato-kiriyama
To close out 2020 and recognize it as a time of challenge, reckoning and coming together, we are excited to end on a strong and beautiful note with this month's feature. We are happy to host the return to Nikkei Uncovered by Mariko Fujimoto Rooks and, this time, feature Mariko alongside her father, Dr. Curtiss Takada Rooks (while it's his first time in this poetry column, he is certainly no stranger to Discover Nikkei). You'll want to check out essays …
What is it to be a Black Japanese American? What should I tell you? What should you know?
Sept. 3, 2020 • Mariko Fujimoto Rooks
Every story has a point, a narrative, and a conclusion, but when I sat down to write this I couldn’t come up with any of those things. In part, I think it’s an occupational hazard of being mixed. Everyone’s understanding of self changes over time, but being mixed is often the lens through which I see this change and complexity in my own life. Blackness gives me access to a community, a history, and a world that is beautiful, joyful, …
Open
Jan. 18, 2018 • Mariko Fujimoto Rooks , Pogo Saito , traci kato-kiriyama
Happy 2018, folks! Upon entering a new year, we put forth the theme of “open” to writers Mariko Rooks, a Culver City native who is currently studying at Yale, and Pogo Saito, now based in Nyssa, Oregon. Their pieces here explore critical openings between self and the things we want to let go of or draw nearer - there is challenge and reflection felt throughout...enjoy. —traci kato-kiriyama * * * * * Mariko Fujimoto Rooks is a mixed race Japanese …
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