Faculty of Art
Carolyn Nakagawa is graduating with a degree in Honours English literature and a minor in Asian Canadian Asian Migration Studies. In addition to her work with the Aoki Legacy Fund researching the life and legacy of musician and community figure Harry Aoki, Carolyn co-coordinated a student directed seminar on the writings of poet and visual artist Roy Kiyooka. Her honours thesis looked at racialization and aesthetics in Kiyooka’s Pear Tree Pomes alongside other poetry set in Vancouver. She is also a poet, with poems forthcoming in Ricepaper magazine, and a playwright: her play “Trig Variations” was featured in Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre’s MSG lab staged reading and workshop series, and her most recent play “The Letter A” appeared as part of the 2015 Brave New Play Rites festival.
ACAM 10: Our Alumni in 2025
What have you been up to since graduation?
I’m currently a freelance writer/curator/researcher working on my own projects and with a few different museums and heritage sites. I have two plays in development: The New Canadians, a musical about a group of young Japanese Canadians, many of them recent UBC alumni, who founded a grassroots Japanese Canadian newspaper in Vancouver in 1938; and Anne’s Cradle, a commission from the Confederation Centre of the Arts in Prince Edward Island adapting Eri Muraoka’s biography of her grandmother, Hanako Muraoka, the first person to translate Canadian literary classic Anne of Green Gables into Japanese. I am also in negotiations to publish a children’s non-fiction book about the Vancouver Asahi, and am seeking a publisher for my poetry manuscript, Only Present.
Beyond writing projects, I’m developing an updated Japanese Canadian heritage exhibit for the Langham Cultural Centre in Kaslo, and researching Japanese Canadian boat builders for the City of Richmond, among other things. After graduating I worked at Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre for the better part of eight years, where I learned a lot, and it’s been exciting to have the capacity to take on more projects since leaving there in 2023.
What have you learned from your ACAM experience that you still carry today?
ACAM was my introduction to community-based research, via Chris Lee’s mentorship and my AURA-funded research project with the Aoki Legacy Group. I majored in English Literature and didn’t at all think of myself as a researcher before then. Now I would say that community-based research is a significant component of everything I do, literary or otherwise. It’s a huge privilege to learn in this way with guidance and support from community members who have lived and shaped history.
How has your ACAM experience equipped you for the challenges and opportunities you’ve encountered in exploring and developing your career?
ACAM affirmed by personal passions and interests that continue to guide both my learning and teaching. My experiences in ACAM helped me to explore my own family’s migration history as well as the histories of other marginalized communities, while also understanding all that in relationship to settler colonialism and Indigenous peoples. This has become my cornerstone in how I go out into the world, and my time with ACAM has given me the stories and language to further that exploration and sharing I do with students.
