Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama (Critical American Studies)

On February 12, 1965, in the Audubon Ballroom, Yuri Kochiyama cradled Malcolm X in her arms as he died, but her role as a public servant and activist began much earlier than this pivotal public moment.Heartbeat of Struggle is the first biography of this courageous woman, the most prominent Asian American activist to emerge during the 1960s.Based on extensive archival research and interviews with Kochiyama's family, friends, and the subject herself, Diane C.Fujino traces Kochiyama's life from an "all-American" childhood to her achievements as a tireless defender of - and fighter for - human rights.Raised by a Japanese immigrant family in California during the 1920s and 1930s, Kochiyama was active in sports, school, and church.She was both unquestioningly patriotic and largely unconscious of race and racism in the United States.After Pearl Harbor, however, Kochiyama's family was among the thousands of Japanese Americans forcibly removed to internment camps for the duration of the war, a