Tuesday Night Café, Little Tokyo, Los Angeles
Jenni
Kuida with Tony Osumi & Maiya Kuida-Osumi
10/6/15
My husband Tony and I met Grace Lee Boggs in 1998, the year her
autobiography “Living for Change” was published. Grace stayed at our house when she came for
the “Serve the People” conference at UCLA organized by Scott Kurashige. I had never heard of Grace, but Tony had read
Grace and Jimmy Boggs’ 1974 groundbreaking book, “Revolution and Evolution in
the 20th Century.”
I remember Grace, then 83 years old, so full of life and
interest in everything; sleeping on our futon couch, rummaging through the
bookshelves in our den, showing us VHS tape of her husband Jimmy speaking,
reconnecting with Nobuko Miyamoto after 30 years (and who will dedicate her
performance to Grace later tonight), and having dinner with Grace and Yuri
Kochiyama. Yes.
After seeing the Aloha Grocery mural that Tony and I collaborated
on in the Venice Culver community in LA, Grace invited Tony and I to Detroit to
help envision a mural with Detroit Summer, whose passion it was to rebuild and
re-spirit Detroit, from the ground up.
That’s what she does, she offers invitations, and challenges. We had no funding, and no agenda; we just
went, and it changed our lives.
We found ourselves baling hay from an abandoned crack house into the
trunk of our rental car with Farmer Paul, sweating and hauling logs down city
streets with Detroit Summer teenagers for a new community garden, and a crash
course in Detroit’s history. Since I had
never been to Detroit, I knew nothing of its post-industrial decay, 10,000
empty houses or 60,000 abandoned lots.
At the time, I was working for Nobuko at Great Leap, and we had
been engaging communities in performance residences in Watts, Boyle Heights and
Phoenix, so with Grace’s invitation to explore ideas for Great Leap, we went back
to Detroit.
Grace introduced us to Gerald Hairston, who created over 200 urban
gardens on vacant lots with youth and elders. In 2001, Gerald passed away
unexpectedly, and Nobuko was inspired to write “I Dream a Garden,” a Japanese
American Obon circle dance, Detroit-style, incorporating multi-ethnic rhythms and
movements. The Fandango Obon, which will
take place at the JACCC on October 25th, was born out of the “I
Dream a Garden” project.
On our many visits, we stayed at the Boggs Center, upstairs from
Grace’s home. Each morning and night, we
would stop in to see her, and she would ask us how our day was, and give us
more names of people in the community to meet and connect with.
Tony and I went back to do another mural in Detroit’s Chinatown
Association building in 2003. The
success of these projects would not have been dreamable without Grace’s
guidance, the spark, energy and soul behind everything.
Grace continued to be part of our life after our daughter Maiya
Grace was born in 2005. Named after
Grace, we continued visiting Grace every year or two. In the last 5 years, filmmaker
Grace Lee’s documentary “American Revolutionary” and Grace’s book with Scott
Kurashige, “The Next American Revolution” brought her more attention from the
API and film communities, progressive, ethnic and mainstream media, and
although she slowed down a bit, she seemed to gain energy from the good vibes
of everyone she came in contact with.
Grace encouraged us all to think deeper, more creatively and more
critically, thinking of ways to meet new demands and consider new
approaches. Grace’s circle of positive
change is filled with murals, urban gardens, renovating vacant buildings,
intergenerational book clubs, freedom schooling, teens and elders, neighbor to
neighbor, with “visions for what Detroit can be and what America ought to be,”
as she would say.
For all of you tonight, as activists, creators and producers of
community arts, spoken word, music, and comedy, we should draw from Grace’s influence
by listening, watching, and interacting with each other.
Grace lived 100 years. You
can read all of the amazing quotes that were trending all over Facebook, Instagram
and Twitter yesterday, and even what Obama said about her.
I know that if she were here, and she is, with rockets on her
wheelchair soaring high, she would love what happens in this space, on this
stage in Little Tokyo on the 1st and 3rd Tuesday from Spring
to Fall, and she would challenge us to continue to struggle and keep the
conversations going. We love you Grace.
