A poet’s search for grace and justice amid historic and contemporary anti-Asian hate

In this installment of Shin Yu Pai’s Lyric World series, poet Brian Komei Dempster reads from his collections Topaz and Seize. His work considers what it is to be "othered" in America, historically and personally. The backdrops are the legacy of the Japanese internment camp era, the impact of anti-Asian bigotry, and the experience of raising a child with a disability.

Komei Dempster is the editor of From Our Side of the Fence: Growing Up in America’s Concentration Camps and Making Home from War: Stories of Japanese American Exile and Resettlement.

He is a professor of rhetoric and language at the University of San Francisco, where he serves as Director of Administration for the Master of Arts in Asia Pacific Studies program.