"Chili Over Rice With Pickled Ginger": A Coastsider's Story

I asked Yumi Wilson to tell me more about “Cablinasian”, an essay she wrote exploring the shifting meaning of multiracial identity.

“I’ve spent my life working on my identity," she said. "Most African Americans are mixed. They have mixed roots and histories with a lot of stories to tell. They may not have the certificate or the paper or even the acknowledgement, but they really do have rich multi-racial or multi-ethnic stories."

The multi-racial, bi-cultural experience cannot be wholly encompassed by one essay or one phrase, however. It is because of this that Wilson continues to explore the topic further as she writes a book about her family history and how it has shaped her life.

"For me, I have not felt home in one particular culture, race or ethnicity because of how I was raised," she said. "I was raised by a Japanese mother and an African American father so my day-to-day life was coming home and having a big bowl of chili on top of rice with a little bit of pickled ginger.” 

Wilson said she is getting to a point where she is acknowledging and allowing herself to accept who she really is, which is bi-cultural, multi-racial. 

“I don’t know all the Japanese holidays nor do I the African American, but as children, we can only be what our parents give us and then we go on to discover," she said. "More importantly, I can honor what I was given as a child. I was given a world where a black man married a Japanese woman at a time when it wasn’t acceptable.”

Love in the midst of conflict 

Wilson's father was a soldier in the U.S. Army when he married her Japanese mother whom he had met in a brothel. To say the least, the union sparked controversy. 

“Here was a soldier marrying a Japanese woman and his company commander tore up the marriage certificate," she said. "I didn’t want to think of it as a racial thing. It was just a rich story told by my father who was a really good storyteller. Now, as I look back on it, it was another sign of the times. You not only have the racial issue but the war issue.”

The challenge for Wilson in telling her story is that there are a lot of children who have no connection to the historical story of the military bride who married a soldier despite boundaries. She finds that a lot of multiracial people definitely want that narrative changed. They want to be identified as people who grew up with two parents that just fell in love after meeting at a local restaurant. 

"My story is that my mother was working at a brothel. After her death, my father told me a little more about their history," she said. "And what became important was not how they met but that they met and fell in love in a real way. They stayed together for almost 30 years."

Yumi Wilson's Arrival 

Wilson was born in Frankfurt, Germany while her father was still in the army. Her father met her mom in Tokyo. From there, they moved from Germany to Okinawa, Japan where they lived until she was 8 years old.  They moved to the United States and lived three years in Kentucky, four years in Virginia, and three years in Hawaii and finally, ended up in Los Angeles, California.

After that “we ended up in the Bay Area because my dad had to pick up his last Army check at the Presidio, when it was still a military installment" Wilson said. "We started looking for a place to live and found a retired officer who let us rent his home in Vacaville.”

It is because of all the moving about that Wilson said she doesn’t “really feel originally from anywhere. “ 

While Japanese was her first language, she doesn’t speak it anymore. They were living on a military base where her older sister was told by a teacher that she had a learning disability because she spoke Japanese. As children, they were forbidden from speaking Japanese to have the best chance at being good Americans.

“The 1970s were a different period and it was a sign of the times," she said. "My parents were trying to give me the best opportunity and I do thank my parents for what they were trying to do because I’ve benefited.”

There was a time when she didn’t quite understand that, though. It took examining her family history and becoming a parent herself before she developed a deeper appreciation of what her parents did. 

This knowledge of her family and its roots did not necessarily come first hand, however. 

“I wasn’t close to relatives on either side. I never met my grandmothers," Wilson said. "I suspect that there was ambivalence towards the mixed race couple. It’s very possible that the African American family was as shocked as the Japanese side.”

Wilson's father had worries about her dating a black man when she was in high school. She believes it was because parents never want their children to go through the suffering they’ve gone through. If they can do anything they can to make the child avoid it, they will, and often won’t explain why.

“Because I’m a parent now, I guess I can see more of the rationale behind what they were trying to do, the humanity of why they suggested or said things," she said. "It could be construed as racist or discriminatory but it helps knowing that they did this to protect you, even if it’s for the wrong reasons.”

Wilson has been in a mixed marriage herself. Her son’s father, Glenn, is white. They met while working at the San Francisco Chronicle.

"Before marrying me, he had no idea of the subtle forms of racism," she said. "We were at a restaurant once and we were put at the back of the restaurant very near the kitchen.  He was mortified.  'I cannot believe that they have put us here,' he said. I replied, “Welcome to my world.”  So there were little moments like that for him where he could finally see that even in a supposedly progressive, tolerant environment that people could still show ways that say, 'I’m better than you. You don’t deserve the kind of treatment I would get.' It’s very subtle and I think that is very hard because unless you live it or marry it, you have no idea.”

Yumi Wilson now

In addition to writing for SFGate’s City Brights, Yumi balances her career as a professor in the Journalism Department at San Francisco State University and her role as a parent of a teenage boy in the Jefferson Union School District.

Although divorced, both parents are very involved in raising their son, Kimo. When Kimo was first born, he was very light but now he’s changing, Wilson said. He’s becoming more tan and his hair is becoming more like hers, “frizzy and wavy and wonderful.”

But what is most wonderful to Wilson is that he went from saying, “I’m white,” and wanting to be part of the dominant culture, to embracing who he is. He knows that he is not just part of the dominant culture.

“His father is also seeing that and willing to talk about what that means and what opportunities will be available for his son and what he needs to do,” Wilson said. 

She echoes a sentiment that she said many people of color share: When you are not part of the dominant culture, and “it could be race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation [that sets you apart]," you have to work so much harder if you want make it. You have to make those in the dominant culture comfortable even though there is no reason for them to be uncomfortable in the first place.

Wilson's blog about race and culture on City Brights has been a labor of love.  

"There’s a value in people who are perhaps not part of the mainstream," she said. "When we do stories about people who are like us or not likes us...when we get our voices in the mix, I think it makes things better for community."

Recently, Wilson wrote about a fellow Pacifica local, Soraya Schuster, and her fight against thyroid cancer. Wilson not only paints a story of triumph and an appreciation for the little things we take for granted but weaves it together with the gritty details of cancer all in less than 1,500 words.

Having lived in Pacifica off and on for 11 years, Wilson returns to Pacifica because she finds it to be a place where she can live comfortably and write in relative peace. She enjoys being able to take her dogs, one a Chihuaha mix and the other a Yorkie mix, on long walks along the beach. The meditative, gentle waves seemed familiar even when she first arrived.

"I love the beach, the ocean, and even though I never lived with my mother when she was young, I’ve discovered that she lived in a small beachside community in Japan called Hokkaido," she said. "I have a connection with the ocean because when I’m here on a good day like today, I feel peaceful and things seem good in the world. There’s really no other place that I have felt this at home." 

Watch the video in the gallery to the right for more about Wilson. 

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