Thank you.
Born on June 17, 1952 in Chicago, Illinois,
David Mura is a poet, a creative nonfiction writer, critic,
playwright, performance artist, and a third generation
Japanese-American.
In 1974, he graduated with a BA in English literature
from Grinnell College in Iowa, and in 1981 he obtained his MFA
from Vermont College.
He has served with many art organizations
in Minnesota, where he now resides with his wife, Susan
Sencer, and three children.
And he has also taught at a number of universities
across the country, including The University of Oregon
and The University of San Francisco.
David Mura broke onto the literary scene
with his first collection of poems,
After We Lost Our Way, which won the 1989 National Poetry Series
Contest.
His second volume of poetry, The Color of Desire,
published in 1995, was the winner of the Carl Sandburg
Literary Award from The Friends of the Chicago Public Library.
Besides these two collections, David Mura
has authored four award-winning books of memoir and criticism,
written three plays, made a film,
and created several critically acclaimed multimedia
performances.
David Mura belongs to that rare breed
of artists who can do many things at the same time
and be very good at it.
His versatile talents are evident in the many hats
he wears, but in terms of personal identity, none
he is as important as the hat of being
a sansei, or third generation Japanese-American.
Painfully aware of his parents' life in internment camps
during World War II, David Mura grew up
ambivalent about his Japanese ethnicity
to the point of denial and believed the exercise
of that denial to be a condition of becoming American,
as defined by its whiteness.
The haunting memories of the shame of being who he was
and the desire to be somebody else
became a driving force in David Mura's writings.
As he said in an interview, "my whole life as a writer
has been stripping away that desire in myself."
The past ghost he confronts in his poetry and other writings
are as much personal as they are communal
to all Asian-Americans.
Through his characteristic use of dramatic monologues,
David Mura gives voices to different individual
perspectives and experiences that
constitute a historical reality mediated by race, gender,
ideology, and cultural forces.
This is a contested reality representing the core values
of the multicultural, diverse society
that America has always strived to become.
We are all blessed that David Mura has committed himself
and his writing to this process of becoming,
and that along the way he has discovered
his affection for this world and his place in it.
Ladies and gentlemen, please join me
in welcoming David Mura.
[APPLAUSE]