Writing

I write genre-bending non-fiction that sits between memoir, ethnography, and biography.

My first book is JAPANTHEM: Counter-Cultural Experiences, Cross-Cultural Remixes (Three Rooms Press, 2022). As a collection of vignettes (many of which were featured in my doctoral thesis on contemporary Japanese music) that explore the analytical possibilities of storytelling, this is the only book out there to juxtapose traditional, J-pop, and underground Japanese music at once– and the only book on Japanese underground written by a woman.

Click here (and scroll to the bottom) to see some reviews 🙂

Other publications:

• A few articles for Unseen Japan (2022)
• Tonari no Piano: On Music, Cross-Cultural Communication, and All That Jazz (2021)
• Contributing Japanese-to-English translations in Lee Chonghwa, ed., Still Hear the Wound: Toward an Asia, Politics, and Art to Come (Cornell University Press, 2015)
• A music blog for MTV and the Fulbright Foundation (2015)

Forthcoming Projects:

I have three new books in the works. The first — PhD Waitress: New York Dreams at a Brooklyn Italian Joint — is another pop-anthropological memoir, this time about leaving academia and starting over as a waitress at an older-than-old school Italian restaurant in New York City. The next is a biography/theoretical primer that catalogues the metaphysical and mathematical theories espoused by a well-known cult hero Brooklyn bartender. The third is a Japanese language textbook for Westerners interested in Japan’s language and music.