Amy Uyematsu

Poet Amy Uyematsu, a third-generation Japanese American, was raised in Southern California by parents who were interned at Manzanar and Gila concentration camps during World War II.  

Uyematsu is the author of several poetry collections: That Blue Trickster Time (2022), Basic Vocabulary (2016), The Yellow Door (2015), Stone Bow Prayer (2005), Nights of Fire, Nights of Rain (1997), and 30 Miles from J-Town (1992), which won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. Uyematsu’s poems consider the intersection of politics, mathematics, spirituality, and the natural world. Her work has been published in many journals and anthologies, including The Open Boat: Poems from Asian America (1993), Twentieth-Century American Poetry (2004), What Book: Buddha Poems from Beat to Hiphop (1998), On a Bed of Rice: An Asian American Erotic Feast (1995), Sister Stew (1991), and Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond (2015).

In 2012, Uyematsu was recognized by Friends of the Little Tokyo Branch Library for her writing contributions to the Japanese American community. Uyematsu coedited the seminal anthology Roots: An Asian American Reader (1971). Her essay, “The Emergence of Yellow Power in America,” continues to be used in many Asian American studies classes. Other essays include “Five Decades Later: Reflections of a Yellow Power Advocate Turned Poet” (Flashpoints for Asian American Studies, 2017) and “Back in 1969” (Mountain Movers: Student Activism and the Emergence of Asian American Studies, 2019). 

Uyematsu earned a BA in mathematics at the University of California at Los Angeles. She taught math for Los Angeles Unified Schools for more than 30 years before retiring. She lives in Culver City, California.