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Mari Yoshihara's critically acclaimed Dearest Lenny: Letters from Japan and the Making of the World Maestro is based on personal letters penned by and to world-renowned musician Leonard Bernstein.
On a February morning in 1988, in a large, dingy chamber of the federal District Court House in Manhattan, a clerk handed me my Certificate of Naturalization listing my height, weight, color of eyes ("brown"), hair ("black") and complexion ("medium"), then a judge led me and more than 150 other petitioners (most of whom seemed to be of "medium" or "dark" complexion) through the pledge of allegiance and pronounced us legitimate Americans.
The field is reckoning with a long legacy of racial exclusion, despite its universalist claims.
Mari Yoshihara is professor of American studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She is the author of "Musicians from a Different Shore: Asians a