"So, I turn inside": Overcome by the Unbearable, Seeing Myself in Michiyo Fukaya

Abstract

Abstract:Paying tribute to Michiyo Fukaya, a mixed-race Asian American lesbian poet and feminist activist who died by suicide in 1987, this essay experiments with a reading practice that merges queer and feminist thought with poetics and autotheory. Throughout, the author interweaves details of Fukaya's life with their own, wading through Fukaya's writings to force attention onto the topics of sexual violence, anger, mental health, and U.S. imperialism. Fukaya—a contemporary of those who grace the pages of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color and All The Women Are White, All The Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies—is largely absent in discussions of third world feminism, women of color feminism, and 1980s feminisms writ large. Attending to this absence, the essay models how one might touch and be touched by their dead, suggesting a turn inwards towards the feminist past as a prerequisite to survival.