David Mura
David Mura is a prominent Japanese American author, poet, memoirist, and playwright, born on June 17, 1952, in Great Lakes, Illinois. As a third-generation Japanese American, Mura's work often grapples with themes of identity, cultural heritage, and the complexities of race in America. Growing up in a predominantly European-American environment, he initially distanced himself from his Japanese roots, an experience that contributed to personal struggles with addiction and self-image. Mura's literary journey reflects a profound reclamation of his ethnicity, as seen in his acclaimed memoir "Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei" and his poetry collections, such as "The Colors of Desire" and "Angels for the Burning."
His writings delve into the intersections of sexual orientation, racial identity, and the impact of historical trauma, particularly the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, as explored in his novel "Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire." Mura has received numerous accolades, including the Josephine Miles Book Award and the Carl Sandburg Literary Award. More recently, his works, such as "The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself," critically examine racial myths and their implications for contemporary society. Mura remains active in promoting diversity in education and continues to engage audiences through his literary and performance art.
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Subject Terms
David Mura
- Born: June 17, 1952
- Birthplace: Great Lakes, Illinois
Author Profile
In his writing, Mura processes a private and a public pain that Asian Americans can readily identify. A third-generation Japanese American, or Sansei, Mura grew up on baseball and apple pie in a Chicago suburb where he heard more Yiddish than Japanese. He avidly read White male writers, cheered for the John Wayne-led actor soldiers against the Japanese in war films, and identified with European culture at the expense of his Japanese heritage. His parents never mentioned their years in the Japanese relocation camps during World War II. Disregarding their ethnicity became a way of ensuring the American “good life” for themselves and their son.
In adulthood, Mura came to realize the devastation that such denial of identity had brought to his own life. He began an addictive cycle of drug abuse and sexual promiscuity. Nonetheless, following a difficult process of self-reflection, he began an oftentimes difficult passage to awareness and self-esteem. In A Male Grief: Notes on Pornography and Addiction (1987), Mura powerfully examines child abuse, addictive family systems, and the adult male’s consumption of pornography as a way of coming to terms with his own destructive sexual behavior. When he began to feel shame about racist images such as submissive houseboys and geishas, he realized that his shame was really of himself.
Mura’s embrace of his ethnicity is a major theme of his work. His Japanese ancestors play an important role in the poems in his early collection, After We Lost Our Way (1989). A part of his claiming Japan entailed a prolonged visit to the country, made possible for Mura when he was awarded a United States-Japan Creative Artist Exchange Fellowship for 1984–85. A book of memoirs, Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei (1991), followed. The book wrestles with the complexities of self, sexuality, politics, cultural mores, and literary criticism. His work won the Josephine Miles Book Award from Oakland PEN and was also a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His second memoir, Where the Body Meets Memory (1995), discusses the themes of racial identity, sexual orientation, and gender identity with regard to Japanese Americans. The Colors of Desire (1995) is his collection of poetry that lays bare his private infidelities and the more public wounds of racism. It won the Carl Sandburg Literary Award from the Friends of the Chicago Public Library. In Angels for the Burning (2004), another poetry collection, Mura again examines identity issues of first, second, and third-generation Asian Americans. A collection of poems, The Last Incantations, was published in 2014.
The novel Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire (2008) explores the internment of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II. It is the story of a Sansei coming to terms with his heritage and finding a past of which to be proud. Mura has also created several performance pieces and plays. Secret Colors is a multimedia project and was created with Black American writer Alexs Pate about their lives as men of color. Also with Pate, Mura wrote and starred in the film Slowly This (1995) for the Public Broadcasting Station. Mura also wrote and performed in the 1998 film Relocations. The play Internment Voices (1997), coauthored with Ester Suzuki, premiered in June 1998. Mura has received numerous awards including the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, several Loft-McKnight Awards, the Discovery/The Nation award, several fellowships from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the Bush Foundation, and a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. Mura was also given an honorary degree from his alma mater, Grinnell College, in 1997.
In 2018, Mura published a book of literary criticism titled A Stranger’s Journey: Race, Identity & Narrative Craft in Writing. In 2023, Mura published a new book entitled The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself: Racial Myths and Our American Narratives. This book explored racism from a historical perspective. Mura focused on the creation of myths and how these can take on the status of historical fact. These myths promote narratives that justify and seek to maintain the current status quo. They also have the effect of continuing a cycle of violence directed against marginalized communities.
Mura’s writing vigorously smashes stereotypes, honestly processes wrong behavior, and aggressively explores his Japanese American identity. Mura continued to write, attend speaking engagements, and work for increased recognition of diversity in education.
Bibliography
Berry, Lorraine. "Review: 'The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself,' by David Mura." StarTribune 27 Jan. 2023, www.startribune.com/review-the-stories-whiteness-tells-itself-by-david-mura/600247016. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.
Choy, Ken. "David Mura: A Portrait of …" ex*plan*asian, spring 1994, p. 3.
"David Mura." David Mura, davidmura.com/bio. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.
"David Mura." John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, www.gf.org/fellows/david-mura-2. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.
"David Mura." Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/david-mura. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.
Franklin, Cynthia. "Turning Japanese/Returning to America: Problems in Gender, Class, and Nation in David Mura's Use of Memoir." Literature Interpretation Theory, vol. 12, no. 3, 2001, pp. 235–65.
Gidmark, Jill B. "David Mura: Tearing down the Door." Asian America: Journal of Culture and the Arts, vol. 2, winter 1993, pp. 120–29.
Mura, David. Interview by Bill Moyers. In The Language of Life: A Festival of Poets. New York: Doubleday, 1995.
Mura, David. Interview by Lee Rossi. Onthebus, vol. 2, no. 2, summer/fall 1990, pp. 263–73.
Regan, Sheila. "Minnesota Author David Mura’s New Book Explores How Racism Infects the Past and Present." MinnPost, 7 Feb. 2023, www.minnpost.com/artscape/2023/02/minnesota-author-david-muras-new-book-explores-how-racism-infects-the-past-and-present. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.
Slowik, Mary. "Beyond Lot’s Wife: The Immigration Poems of Marilyn Chin, Garrett Hongo, Li-Young Lee, and David Mura." MELUS, vol. 25, fall/winter 2000, pp. 221–40.
Zhou, Xiaojing. "David Mura’s Poetics of Identity." MELUS, vol. 23, no. 3, fall 1998, pp. 145–66.
Zhou, Xiaojing. "Race, Sexuality, and Representation in David Mura’s The Colors of Desire." Journal of Asian American Studies, vol. 1, no. 3, Oct. 1998, pp. 245–67.