It's May so it's time for the 6th Annual Mixed Experience History Month. As in past years, I will post a profile each weekday for the whole month. I kick off this year's series with a profile of poet, Yone Noguchi.
Noguchi was the first Japanese-born writer to publish poetry in English. After graduating from college in Japan, Noguchi moved to San Francisco in 1893. His first jobs were as a newspaper reporter and domestic servant.
Noguchi soon found himself part of the community of well-connected bohemian intellectuals in the Bay Area. It was through those connections he was able to publish his first verses in a magazine called The Lark.
In 1900, Noguchi relocated to the East Coast and wrote and published two novels between 1900 and 1904.
In 1903, Noguchi traveled to England where he found popular and critical success with new self-published works. He also developed new literary friendships with William Yeats and Thomas Hardy.
Upon his return to the United States, Noguchi secretly wed Leonie Gilmour, a white female educator. The union didn't last and in 1904, Noguchi returned to Japan to teach at a university. It was after their break-up Gilmour discovered she was pregnant with a son who would become the sculptor Isamu Noguchi. Noguchi and Gilmour briefly reunited when she moved with Isamu to Japan in 1907. But Noguchi already had a Japanese wife. Gilmour separated from Noguchi, but continued to live in Japan with their son.
Noguchi is best known for his collection of haiku, The Pilgrimage, which would influence the work of Ezra Pound and the Imagist movement in poetry.
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Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by writer Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience. Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to highlight the long history of folks involved in the Mixed experience. Please look for more profiles of people, places and events of the Mixed experience every weekday of May at Lightskinned-ed Girl, the blog! Thanks for reading. And check out some of the previous year's profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011.
