Date/Time
Date(s) - 09/26/2017
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Bouncing Back: An Evening with Isao Fujimoto
6:00pm (PT)
September 26, 2017
Starr King School for the Ministry
2441 Le Conte Ave, Berkeley, CA 94709
With introduction by Rev. Dr. Gabriella Lettini, SKSM Dean of Faculty.
Light reception to follow.
Free and open to the public.
Livestream: https://zoom.us/j/3298972345
Facebook group: http://bit.ly/2x1WgWp (invite a friend!)
“If one needs hope in a period of collective anxiety about our present and near term future, I advise reading a remarkable memoir by rural sociologist and community organizer, Isao Fujimoto. Bouncing Back is not only the journey of a very special human being. It is the story of turning despair into hope.”
— Christopher Breiseth, Director, Frances Perkins Center, NY“From his early days growing up as the son of immigrants on the Yakima Valley Indian Reservation in Washington, through WWII incarceration, starting Asian American Studies, working with rural migrant communities, up to present day issues for immigrants, Muslims, African Americans and others, Isao draws vital lessons about responding to injustice, hatred and anti-immigrant fervor.” – Andy Noguchi, Japanese American Citizens League
According to Helene Dillard, Dean of the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences at U.C. Davis, Isao Fujimoto is “one of our campus treasures who has inspired and challenged students and faculty alike for decades.”
ISAO FUJIMOTO is a rural sociologist by training, a retired professor of Community Development at UC Davis, and a long-time community activist. He received his PhD from Cornell University, at the age of 76, fifty years after starting it. Isao has worked with marginalized, multi-ethnic immigrant communities in California’s Central Valley for fifty years. He has also been involved with the Rural Development Leadership Network, American Friends Service Committee, and other grassroots activists in the U.S. and Japan. Isao is described by Helene Dillard, Dean of the College of Agriculture and Environmental Studies at UCD as “one of our campus treasures who has inspired and challenged students and faculty alike for decades.
His recently published memoir – Bouncing Back: Community, Resilience & Curiosity – traces the life of his family and his work, beginning with his father’s coming to America from a small fishing village in Japan. Isao was born on the Yakima reservation in Wapato, Washington where his parents farmed. At the age of 8, Isao and his family were forcibly removed from their home to the Heart Mountain and Tule Lake internment camps.
Like a Japanese daruma doll, Isao and his family keep “bouncing back” from a series of injustices and hardships. They embody the saying that accompanies the beloved red papier-mache figure: “Nanakorobi Yaoki” or “Fall down seven times, get up on the eighth.” Isao points to his parents’ everyday Buddhist practices, strong ethnic community, and his own curiosity about the world as factors which allowed his family – including 12 siblings – to thrive.
Order Dr. Fujimoto’s Bouncing Back: Community, Reslience, & Curiosity on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1546914250
