The Great Unknown: Japanese American Sketches

Greg Robinson

Sep. 2016 · University Press of Colorado

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In TheGreat Unknown, award-winning historian and journalist Greg Robinson offers a fascinating and compulsively readable collection of biographical portraits of extraordinary but unheralded figures in Japanese American history: men and women who made remarkable contributions in the arts, literature, law, sports, and other fields. Recovering and celebrating the stories of noteworthy Issei and Nisei and of their supporters, TheGreat Unknown provides powerful evidence of the diverse experiences and substantial cultural, political, and intellectual contributions of Nikkei throughout the country and over multiple decades.

What is more, The Great Unknown reshapes our understanding of the Asian American experience. By focusing attention on exceptional figures who deviated from social norms, Robinson subverts stereotypes of ethnic Japanese and other Asians as conformist or colorless. The collection also highlights a set of recurring themes absent from conventional histories—including the lives of Japanese Americans outside the West Coast, the role of women in shaping community life, encounters between Japanese American and African American communities during the struggle for civil rights, and the evolving status of queer community members.

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Greg Robinson is professor of history at Université du Québec À Montréal. He is the author or editor of several notable books on Japanese Americans, including A Tragedy of Democracy, which was awarded the history book prize of the Association for Asian American Studies; After Camp, winner of the Caroline Bancroft History Prize in Western US History, and By Order of the President. He writes a regular column, “The Great Unknown and the Unknown Great,” for the Nichi Bei Weekly in San Francisco and is an active speaker and writer in the public arena and the blogsphere.