Erin Aoyama

Erin Aoyama is a researcher, public historian, and writer, whose work is invested in justice-informed storytelling about Japanese American community and history. During World War II, Aoyama’s grandmother was incarcerated at Heart Mountain, a prison camp in northwest Wyoming, and her grandfather served with the 442nd, the all-Japanese American segregated unit in the Army. Many of Aoyama’s academic and historical interests emerge from the silences of her grandparents. As a PhD candidate in American Studies at Brown University, her research is rooted in relational ethnic studies, movement history, memory studies, oral history, and transformative justice. Aoyama writes about moments of intersection and the possibility of coalitional solidarity-building through listening to and storytelling across community lines. In addition to her work with Seeing Memory, Aoyama is a curatorial assistant at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, CA.