Past Forward

Gayle Carline is the author of 16 books, from mysteries to fantasies, with humor spread liberally among them. When she is not writing, she is leading workshops on writing, speaking at events, or riding her horse. Gayle enjoys creating fascinating characters whom she can involve in everything from chasing a killer to sailing a pirate ship. She lives happily with her husband and a sassy Corgi. In addition, she has a son and two horses whom she thoroughly enjoys even if they don’t live with her.

New Dragon Soaring: Dragon Shadows Book 3
Dancing Corgi Press, February, 2023

A World Without Books was created to help writers connect with readers. This Micro-Podcast provides authors a platform to share stories about writing, discuss current projects, and consider life without books. Listen to episodes on our website, Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.

Past Forward is a curiosity company dedicated to educational accessibility. We work with community leaders from academic institutions, nonprofit organizations, private corporations, and public agencies to document today, with context from our past, and learn moving forward.

Sylvia Chong is Associate Professor in English and American Studies and founding director of the Asian Pacific American Studies minor at the University of Virginia. She received her B.A. in English and Philosophy from Swarthmore College, her A.M. in Education from Stanford University, and her Ph.D. in Rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of The Oriental Obscene: Violence and Racial Fantasies in the Vietnam Era (Duke UP, 2012), co-editor of (Re)Collecting the Vietnam War (AALR, 2015), and has written articles and book chapters on American exceptionalism, hopelessness, orientalism, the Virginia Tech shootings, and Samuel Peckinpah. She is currently working on a history of cinematic yellowface and racial performance.

Medium History explores memories and moments through creativity and expression, capturing the cultural ethos of that time and place through storytelling and representation. Visual material culture, such as art, and other multimodal forms can elicit responses, emotions, and opinions—human expressions, tied to temporal and cultural aesthetics. This program explores how creative mediums provide context for history beyond dates, and names, and figures.

Partnering with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University, this series will explore how comics, comic books, and graphic novels from and about the Japanese American Incarceration following Executive Order 9066, humanize the tragic experience, allowing the stories to live long past the lives of those who experienced it, and ensuring this never happens again. Supported by the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library, this series is designed to be a companion to the interactive web project, Images and Imaginings of Internment: Comics and Illustrations of Camp.

Guest: Sylvia Chong
Hosts: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward

Greg Robinson, a native New Yorker, is Professor of History at l'Université du Québec À Montréal, a French-language institution in Montreal, Canada. He is the author of the books By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans (Harvard University Press, 2001), A Tragedy of Democracy; Japanese Confinement in North America (Columbia University Press, 2009), After Camp: Portraits in Postwar Japanese Life and Politics (University of California Press, 2012), Pacific Citizens: Larry and Guyo Tajiri and Japanese American Journalism in the World War II Era (University of Illinois Press, 2012), and The Great Unknown: Japanese American Sketches (University Press of Colorado, 2016), as well as coeditor of the anthology Miné Okubo: Following Her Own Road (University of Washington Press, 2008). Robinson is also coeditor of the volume John Okada - The Life & Rediscovered Work of the Author of No-No Boy (University of Washington Press, 2018).

His historical column “The Great Unknown and the Unknown Great,” is a well-known feature of the Nichi Bei Weekly newspaper. Robinson’s latest book is an anthology of his Nichi Bei columns and stories published on Discover Nikkei, The Unsung Great: Portraits of Extraordinary Japanese Americans (University of Washington Press, 2020). It was recognized with an Association for Asian American Studies Book Award for Outstanding Achievement in History Honorable Mention in 2022.

Medium History explores memories and moments through creativity and expression, capturing the cultural ethos of that time and place through storytelling and representation. Visual material culture, such as art, and other multimodal forms can elicit responses, emotions, and opinions—human expressions, tied to temporal and cultural aesthetics. This program explores how creative mediums provide context for history beyond dates, and names, and figures.

Partnering with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University, this series will explore how comics, comic books, and graphic novels from and about the Japanese American Incarceration following Executive Order 9066, humanize the tragic experience, allowing the stories to live long past the lives of those who experienced it, and ensuring this never happens again. Supported by the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library, this series is designed to be a companion to the interactive web project, Images and Imaginings of Internment: Comics and Illustrations of Camp.

Guest: Greg Robinson
Hosts: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward

Stephanie Hinnershitz is an author and historian with the Institute for the Study of War and Democracy at The National WWII Museum in New Orleans. She has previously taught at Valdosta State University and Cleveland State University. In addition to her professorships, her research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, the Office of Diversity at the United States Military Academy at West Point, the Library of Congress, and the American Council of Learned Societies.

She is the author of Race, Religion, and Civil Rights: Asian Students on the West Coast, 1900-1968, A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South, and Japanese American Incarceration: The Camps and Coerced Labor during World War II, which won the 2022 Philip Taft Labor History Award from the Labor and Working Class History Association and Cornell University Industrial Labor Relations School.

Medium History explores memories and moments through creativity and expression, capturing the cultural ethos of that time and place through storytelling and representation. Visual material culture, such as art, and other multimodal forms can elicit responses, emotions, and opinions—human expressions, tied to temporal and cultural aesthetics. This program explores how creative mediums provide context for history beyond dates, and names, and figures.

Partnering with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University, this series will explore how comics, comic books, and graphic novels from and about the Japanese American Incarceration following Executive Order 9066, humanize the tragic experience, allowing the stories to live long past the lives of those who experienced it, and ensuring this never happens again. Supported by the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library, this series is designed to be a companion to the interactive web project, Images and Imaginings of Internment: Comics and Illustrations of Camp.

Guest: Stephanie Hinnershitz
Hosts: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward

Maggie Tokuda-Hall is the author Also an Octopus, illustrated by Benji Davies, The Mermaid, The Witch and The Sea, Squad, illustrated by Lisa Sterle, and Love in the Library illustrated by Yas Imamura with more books forthcoming. She has a BA in Studio Art from Scripps College, and an MFA in Writing from University of San Francisco.

Yas Imamura is an illustrator of many picture books for children, including Winged Wonders by Meeg Pincus and The Very Oldest Pear Tree by Nancy I. Sanders. She's also a product designer for clients such as Anthropologie, Papyrus, and Sanrio. She currently lives and works in Portland, Oregon.

Medium History explores memories and moments through creativity and expression, capturing the cultural ethos of that time and place through storytelling and representation. Visual material culture, such as art, and other multimodal forms can elicit responses, emotions, and opinions—human expressions, tied to temporal and cultural aesthetics. This program explores how creative mediums provide context for history beyond dates, and names, and figures.

Partnering with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University, this series will explore how comics, comic books, and graphic novels from and about the Japanese American Incarceration following Executive Order 9066, humanize the tragic experience, allowing the stories to live long past the lives of those who experienced it, and ensuring this never happens again. Supported by the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library, this series is designed to be a companion to the interactive web project, Images and Imaginings of Internment: Comics and Illustrations of Camp.

Guests: Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Yas Imamura
Hosts: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward

Kiku Hughes is a cartoonist and illustrator based in the Seattle area. Her work has been featured in Beyond Anthology volumes 1 and 2, Short Box #6 and the Alloy Anthology. She creates stories about identity, queer romance and compassionate sci-fi. Displacement is her first graphic novel, and it is a story she's wanted to share for as long as she can remember.

Medium History explores memories and moments through creativity and expression, capturing the cultural ethos of that time and place through storytelling and representation. Visual material culture, such as art, and other multimodal forms can elicit responses, emotions, and opinions—human expressions, tied to temporal and cultural aesthetics. This program explores how creative mediums provide context for history beyond dates, and names, and figures.

Partnering with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University, this series will explore how comics, comic books, and graphic novels from and about the Japanese American Incarceration following Executive Order 9066, humanize the tragic experience, allowing the stories to live long past the lives of those who experienced it, and ensuring this never happens again. Supported by the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library, this series is designed to be a companion to the interactive web project, Images and Imaginings of Internment: Comics and Illustrations of Camp.

Guest: Kiku Hughes
Hosts: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward

Frank Abe is co-author of the new graphic novel on Japanese American resistance to wartime incarceration, We Hereby Refuse (Chin Music Press: A Wing Luke Museum Book). He won an American Book Award for John Okada: The Life & Rediscovered Work of the Author of No-No Boy (University of Washington Press), and made the award-winning PBS documentary, Conscience and the Constitution, on the largest organized camp resistance. He is currently co-editing an anthology for Penguin Classics on The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration.

Abe contributed the afterword to Nisei Naysayer: The Memoir of Militant Japanese American Journalist Jimmie Omura (Stanford University Press), contributed a chapter to Frontiers of Asian American Studies (Washington State University Press), and has written for Ishmael Reed’s Konch, The Bloomsbury Review, Case Western Reserve Law Review, Amerasia Journal, International Examiner, Nichi Bei Weekly, Rafu Shimpo, and Pacific Citizen, among others.

Medium History explores memories and moments through creativity and expression, capturing the cultural ethos of that time and place through storytelling and representation. Visual material culture, such as art, and other multimodal forms can elicit responses, emotions, and opinions—human expressions, tied to temporal and cultural aesthetics. This program explores how creative mediums provide context for history beyond dates, and names, and figures.

Partnering with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University, this series will explore how comics, comic books, and graphic novels from and about the Japanese American Incarceration following Executive Order 9066, humanize the tragic experience, allowing the stories to live long past the lives of those who experienced it, and ensuring this never happens again. Supported by the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library, this series is designed to be a companion to the interactive web project, Images and Imaginings of Internment: Comics and Illustrations of Camp.

Guest: Frank Abe
Hosts: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward

Angelica Salas joined CHIRLA in 1995 and became CHIRLA’s Executive Director in 1999.  In her role, she has transformed CHIRLA into a mass membership immigrant-led organization that empowers immigrants and their families to win local, state, and national policies that advance their human, civil, and labor rights.  She has grown CHIRLA into one of the nation’s largest and most effective immigrant rights organizations that organize, advocates, educates, and provides legal services to all immigrants.

Angelica is a state and national leader in the advocacy for immigration reform and immigrant justice.  She was instrumental in the formation of and serves on the Executive Committee of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM) and the National Partnership for New Americans (NPNA), two of the country’s largest immigrant rights coalitions.

She graduated from Occidental College with a B.A. in History and a B.A. in Sociology in 1993.  In 2007, Occidental College awarded her an Honorary Doctorate for her many contributions making her one of the youngest persons to earn such an honor in the college’s history.

Chapters is a multi-part series concerning the history and the lessons of civil rights violations or civil liberties injustices carried out against communities or populations—including civil rights violations or civil liberties injustices that are perpetrated on the basis of an individual’s race, national origin, immigration status, religion, gender, or sexual orientation.

This project was made possible with support from Chapman University and The California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library.

Guest: Angelica Salas
Hosts: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward

Rebecca Tortes (Cahuilla, Luiseño, and Assiniboine Sioux) has worked with California tribal populations for over 20 years and recently served as the executive director for the California Indian Basketweavers’ Association (CIBA), a statewide nonprofit working to preserve, promote, and perpetuate California Indian basketweaving traditions.

Before joining CIBA, she worked as a tribal administrator, development manager, grant writer, and community liaison for many California-based tribes and tribal nonprofits. In addition, Rebecca has worked as a private consultant to several California tribal communities in developing, funding, and evaluating programs that support California Indigenous control and protection of traditional food systems, water, languages, traditional ecological knowledge, and land.

Rebecca received her Bachelor of Arts in human development and psychology and her master’s degree in public administration from California State University, San Bernardino, and earned a certificate in professional advancement in philanthropy from La Sierra University.

Chapters is a multi-part series concerning the history and the lessons of civil rights violations or civil liberties injustices carried out against communities or populations—including civil rights violations or civil liberties injustices that are perpetrated on the basis of an individual’s race, national origin, immigration status, religion, gender, or sexual orientation.

This project was made possible with support from Chapman University and The California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library.

Guest: Rebecca Tortes
Hosts: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward

Tony Hoang is the Executive Director of Equality California and Silver State Equality and a veteran of the LGBTQ+ equality movement. The son of Vietnam War refugees and the first person in his family to attend college, Tony is a proud first-generation immigrant who grew up understanding the marginalized intersections of sexuality, gender, race and immigration status. Born and raised in Houston, Texas, Tony moved to Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California. During college, he interned with the Pacific Council on International Policy and Los Angeles County Federation of Labor before joining Equality California as a field intern in 2009, beginning his long career with the organization.

Tony went on to serve as Equality California's Database and Volunteer Manager, Director of Operations, Chief of Staff and Managing Director prior to his selection as Executive Director-designate in 2021. During that time, Tony played a pivotal role in the passage of groundbreaking civil rights legislation in California, Nevada and Washington, DC, implementation of statewide public education campaigns and the election of hundreds of openly LGBTQ+ and pro-equality candidates up and down the ballot. Tony helped usher in a dramatic expansion of Equality California’s budget, staff, programming — especially the organization’s political work and efforts to advance racial justice — and growth to over 900,000 pro-equality members across the country.

Tony serves the City of Los Angeles as a Commissioner on the Innovation and Performance Commission. He also sits on the boards of Equality Federation, the national movement builder and strategic partner to state-based organizations advocating for LGBTQ people, and DTLA Proud. He is a member of the Center for Asian Americans United For Self Empowerment (CAUSE) Leadership Network and the Pacific Council on International Policy and serves as a mentor for the USC Lambda LGBT Alumni Mentoring Program.

Chapters is a multi-part series concerning the history and the lessons of civil rights violations or civil liberties injustices carried out against communities or populations—including civil rights violations or civil liberties injustices that are perpetrated on the basis of an individual’s race, national origin, immigration status, religion, gender, or sexual orientation.

This project was made possible with support from Chapman University and The California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library.

Guest: Tony Hoang
Hosts: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward