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Tribute to Chris Iijima (2 of 5)
The first time I saw Chris, he was speaking at a meeting of the East Coast Asian Student Union, a semi-political but largely social gathering of college kids. I have learned over the years that law schools are adept at finding faculty of color who are smart, and ineffectual. So, frankly, I was not expecting much when this Professor Iijima got up to talk.
I was concentrating on preparing my own remarks, when I was hit by the whirlwind that is the public Chris Iijima. He got up and assumed the posture of pugilistic grizzly bear. He actually held his fist in the air at one point. He leaned into the microphone, then backed up, as if winding up for a punch, then came booming forward again, pacing rapidly to the front of the stage. He exhorted and orated and scolded the roomful of earnest pre-professionals. Get out there and DO something for the people who sacrificed so you could get your precious college education. He talked about power. He talked about oppression. He talked about racism. And when he sat down I looked at him and said, “where did YOU come from?”
“Harlem,” he said.
And then I got it. This was one of those Malcolm Asians. Like Yuri Kochiyama, like the Issei communists who drank whiskey and read Lenin, like the NY artists collective that took the Japanese woodblock style and made prints of workers and demonstrators and evictions.
And Chris said to me “You're Mari Matsuda? You're married to Chuck Lawrence, whose sisters are Paula Wehmiller and Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot? Gee, isn't that kind of intimidating?” Chris knew Paula because they had both taught at the Manhattan Country Day School, a successful experiment in utopian, progressive education – a place where teachers and students are all learners, involved in the joint project of education, where education has as its end justice, peace, and humanity. I put the pieces of the story together. This was the Grain of Sand guy, the one who wrote the song sung by those young ethnic studies professors. He talks like Malcolm and teaches like Paula. In that moment, I was inducted into the Chris Iijima fan club.
