<Begin Segment 22>

PW: All right. I think I'm going to have to choose one last question, because this has gone so long and there are so many great stories to pull out of you. How do you think the Sansei generation will be remembered? With the kind of experiences you have being Japanese American, the scene that you found yourself in?

PY: Well, I think our leading... and it's people like Penny and Neil, despite the great work they've done, just kind of have always been so self-effacing. And I think that's probably, the Sansei generation is not going to get the credit that it deserves. I clearly am not self-effacing. But I've devoted probably the last twenty-four years to kind of, one, making sure that City Lights is sustained, and then two, it's very slow progress that we've made about race and class in the book business. So just the last five years has been dramatically shifted because of younger activists, but I think I can take some measure of comfort that they think of me as this kind of, helping create a pathway for them. But it's their work that is really kind of pushed things forward much more rapidly. We're not anywhere close to where we want to be, but it's much better than it was before we started, and they've been very thoughtful, hardworking, and clear. And I think a really clear demonstration that if progressives worked with both hands instead of, like, one hand tied behind her back, where we don't speak to each other, or just kind of let our differences dominate what our mutual goals are. So I am very proud of the fact that, particularly out of the bookselling community, we're making progress and that thing. And we're nowhere close to where we want to be, but the level of ownership by people of color, coming from mixed economic backgrounds in communities that we haven't previously seen in bookstores, is something that we're seeing grow. And even during this incredible period that we've been living through, with Covid, that the level of advocacy and also the fact that the mainstream bookselling community is, has been responsive in a constructive way. They haven't fought this in the way that sometimes entrenched interests can do.

PW: Is there anything else that you wanted to share when you think about this interview in particular, the theme --

PY: Oh, as you can probably tell, I can go on for a long time.

PW: I could do a separate interview with you just about books.

PY: Well maybe we'll pick that up over a glass of wine at a lunch in the near future.

PW: This has been great, thank you so much.

PY: Well, thank you. It was really a pleasure to do this. I think Densho deserves a lot of credit. This is the foundations of what future historians will be able to use as a resource.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.