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AU: Now there's a big jump... well, there's a lot of jumps in there. '98 to 2005, that was seven years. And then from 2005 to 2015, a ten year jump, but then I had two books published consecutively by Red Hand Press. So my fourth book is The Yellow Door. Oh, let me back up. I never showed Nights of Fire, Nights of Rain, that's the second book. I considered The Yellow Door sort of an update and extension of 30 Miles From J-Town, because the themes really are three quarters Asian American, and the other quarter maybe references to Asia and Japan. It's kind of my own version of Yellow Power. I wrote my Yellow Power paper as a college senior while I was trying to put kind of the feeling of Yellow Power in this book. And the first poem is called "Riding the Yellow Dragon," and it includes talking about Gidra and some of my favorite Asian American writers. I'm trying to think what else is in here. Oh, one thing I don't think I'd mentioned to you about some of the poems that seemed to be rooted in some knowledge of Japan, like the last section of The Yellow Door really has a lot more references to Japan. And I've only been to Japan four times, each either a one- or two-week vacation spread out over many years. So you know, that's really not knowing Japan that well, and, of course, I didn't go to Japanese school, I didn't speak the language, and I only had the one grandpa who spoke English to us about Japan. Well, he didn't even talk about Japan. So I sometimes wonder where am I getting the sense that I've been there, and this is what I know about rock or stone or pine tree, as if I'd been there. And this, I don't know if other people believe in this kind of thing, but I've heard the concept "racial memory" and if such a thing exists, I thought that I'm still basically generations and generations of someone from Japan, and if there is something called racial memory, then yeah, that's in here, even though I'm a third generation in America, there's still that racial memory. Because sometimes I look at a poem I've written that sort of has that Japanese feeling, and I'm thinking, "Where did this come from?" And the other thing I think I've noticed is these types of poems I think also were set loose when I worked with Peter in the workshops, because Peter's workshops weren't just poetry per se. Peter's a zen poet/priest, but he'd been with Zen Buddhism since his twenties. So our weekly meetings would always include opening talks by Peter. It might be a poetry subject, but he would expand it to something spiritual, or something Buddhist in nature. And I'm sure my hearing years of these kinds of talks had some impact on me.

BN: Before you leave The Yellow Door, I wanted to ask you about a number of... there's kind of a section of poems seemly inspired by Roger Shimomura paintings, and I wanted to ask you about that, how you discovered those paintings and what led to those pieces.

AU: I didn't know Roger Shimomura, but a number of years ago, I guess he knew Russell Leong, who's also an L.A. poet. Shimomura was looking for Asian American poets who could write... I'm trying to remember if it was haiku or short lines to go with some little constructed pieces he'd made. Like one of them was a big banana with slanted eyes, you know, the stereotype pieces. And so Russell asked if I would like to contribute to that, and I said sure. So I did whatever I did with them, and Roger liked, I guess, my writing. And so when he came out with one of his gallery exhibits in Seattle, it was a lot of his pieces from Minidoka. Well, I think he was at Minidoka. I wish I had the book here. But you know, you get those books when you go to an exhibit, they give you the books that describe the painter and this and that. He actually asked me to write the intro in that book. So Roger and I have a friendship, and I always enjoy looking at his artwork, and he sent me a lot of his stuff. It's so just right there. It's in your face, you can't deny it, there's a lot of humor, but it's cutting, it's very cutting, and he's protesting the stereotypes. So that's my connection with Roger, never met in person.

BN: And then that book also has some poems, I think, inspired by woodblock prints, Hokusai prints, and I also wanted to ask you about that, if that's... are you a fan of the woodblock prints?

AU: Yeah, I love woodblock prints. I've seen the process and I'm just amazed that people could even put these things out. I think my attraction sometimes to looking at things visually and then writing a poem does go back to my childhood. Because as a young girl, I would sketch constantly and wanted to be a fashion designer. So I would sketch the woman and then do the outfit on her and then another outfit. At that time, I think they had paper dolls. I don't know if they still did, Valerie, when you were growing up, but there were paper doll sets where you'd have the main model, but then you have different outfits you put on there, and you kind of clip it down with paper, anyway. But I used to do a lot of that. So I never became a fashion designer, but there's something in me that I think is coming from the same place. I like to collect Japanese paper or other specialty papers, and I take those and I like to make custom cards that I send to my friends. And I find that's a really relaxing activity for me. I lose track of time, and it's visual, it's just visual. So I think in some way that's tied, too, maybe. My interest in Hokusai or Shimomura's work or even other painters.

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