Lynda Lin Grigsby

Chief Roy Nakamura takes a moment to chat with community members at the April 28 event.
For Japanese Americans, there is a shared history with different viewpoints on policing and safety. Law enforcement and community leaders all seek to answer the question, ‘What should community safety look like?’ amid rising anti-Asian racism and violence.
By Lynda Lin Grigsby, Contributor
One life imprisoned can cause a ripple effect that spans generations. What happens when it is 120,000 people targeted ...

Before becoming a celebrated artist, Yumi Sakugawa cut her teeth in community work.

In a pandemic year marked by isolation and unrest, anti-Asian hate incidents soared. Most of the reported incidents, which can include slurs and physical attacks, took place in public spaces you and I move through frequently. A local park, a subway station, even a supermarket produce aisle became battlegrounds for Asian Americans in the time of hate and COVID-19. Accounts of the incidences often ignore the silent victims in these cases: the children.
Children have been present in these horrif...

In 1988, the U.S. government officially apologized and paid reparations for the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. It flipped the narrative on Japanese Americans as long-suffering victims to victors now with what many are calling a “moral obligation” to help others in need of racial healing.

It was the moment I have been waiting for all year: an e-mail confirming my kids' school reopening hit my inbox. Instantly, I squealed. I high-fived my husband. We linked arms and danced in gleeful little circles.
The news was like manna from heaven in a pandemic year that challenged, tested, and wrung out all of my virtues. In our home, remote learning with my young kids is best described as tempestuous and unpredictable. Some days, the kids are engaged and happily learning through screens. ...

The teacher crowned as a hero at the beginning of the pandemic and the teacher criticized for standing in the way of children’s education is the same person.
The teacher credited with the Herculean task of shifting an entire curriculum online and the teacher vilified today for being too lazy to return to work? Same person.
Hailed as heroes early in the pandemic, teachers are facing a turning point in public opinion a year later. The criticism sounds more like a street fight than a dialogue to...

A sexy Netflix series touted for bringing diversity to a lily-white British period drama genre made me feel invisible.
I binged the entire season of “Bridgerton” in one weekend because I was excited to see how a racially diverse cast of actors would translate onscreen in a genre that was exclusively white. It was history reimagined, and I wanted to be a part of it.
Each night, my darkened living room lit up with images of bucolic landscapes, sumptuous gowns, and corsets being masochistically ...

Something about the quarantine life unleashed a darkness in Helene Skantzikas. It insidiously snatched joy and plunged her into the depths of hopelessness. Nothing and everything has changed in her life in the last three months: she lives at home with her mother and her son. Same as before, but everything is different.
Even though the days blend together, there is one sure marker of time: before and after quarantine. Before, Helene (pronounced simply as Helen) ferried from one social scene to...

There is a dish from my childhood that sings my name when I feel sad. It wraps me up in its warmth when I fall sick. I have likely slurped hundreds of bowls of this magic elixir through seasonal sniffles, coughing fits, and heartbreak.
Have a fever? Here is a bowl. Failed a test? Put spoon to mouth. The wrong boy asked you to the dance? Drown your sorrows here.
It is a bowl of rice porridge with a beautiful name: Moi (pronounced muh-oy), ubiquitous in Asian cultures as the chicken soup of the...

I sat uneasily on the edge of a green couch with colorful pillows and talked about myself. I am a mom to two amazing kids ages 7 and 4. I have a wonderful husband. And, yes, motherhood is the most difficult job I have ever had. This includes my former life as a journalist that had me in many high-pressure situations.
I have interviewed presidents and celebrities, but nothing makes me sweat more than trying to defuse a toddler tantrum in public or trying to determine whether the brown mystery ...

In the middle of March, when the wound of broken routines was still fresh, a friend set up a folding chair in my front yard to drink a socially distant beer. The world had just turned upside down, so we drank slowly and talked about all the headlines: the run on toilet paper, the bare grocery store shelves, our newly homebound lives.
The stay-at-home orders were new and so were the waves of anxiety and uncertainty that crashed to the surface, so I joked about something that would reveal a sec...