by Yuri Yamamoto

Growing up in Japan surrounded by bamboo, I admired their beauty, strength, and flexibility. In the winter, they bend down under the weight of snow but do not break. During the typhoon season, they sway wildly in high winds but hold steadily to the ground. This unique flexibility made bamboo one of the most revered plants in Japan.

Flexibility is also a useful human trait. It allows us to adapt to a changing environment and cope with difficult situations. It also helps us learn and grow. As a new immigrant, I was eager to flex myself to materialize my “American Dream.”

When I followed my husband to the U.S. in 1984, I wanted to become a “real” American and become a successful academic scientist, a rare opportunity for women in Japan. I wanted to stay here. I worked hard to speak, think, and act like my white professors and peer graduate students who I considered real Americans.

Though I could not speak much English, I strictly followed my professor’s “English only” rule in his laboratory. I tried to become assertive and ask “smart” questions to impress others. I tried to embody their competitive body language, too. But something was amiss. I often felt invisible in conversations with friends or colleagues. “Am I just too short to be seen?” I wondered. When random people complimented my English or asked where I was from, it only exacerbated my feeling that I wasn’t American enough.

I desperately wanted to blend in. My academic success seemed to depend on it. Our visas depended on my success. If I failed, we had to go back to Japan. What would our American-born children do in the country they didn’t know?

I did not become a professor but managed to get permanent residency for my husband and me by the turn of the century. Instead, I became a musician in a predominantly white church. I continued my quest to become a real American by learning white peoples’ favorite music to cater to their needs.

In March of 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake with a massive tsunami and nuclear accident violently awoke the Japanese identity I had pushed aside. I quickly planned to go back to volunteer and reconnect with my people. Before my trip to Japan, I attended a denominational general assembly. As I watched a successful Taiwanese American woman cry about her experiences of racism in her church, my eyes suddenly opened to the ugly American truth: I would never be seen as a real American because I am not white. The woman’s story set me free from the weight of racism, but my purpose was destroyed. I found myself surrounded by the sea of thousands of white participants whom I could never identify with. In my disoriented state, I began looking for others who looked like me.

Just as the bamboo once burdened by the heavy snow no longer stands up straight, I have been marked by the internalized white supremacy culture. Picking up the shattered pieces to rebuild myself has been a long, arduous process. My flexibility has been an essential part of constructing authentic me, along with theological education in a historically black seminary, Progressive Asian American Christian Fellowship, and Clinical Pastoral Education.

My self-imposed flexibility to the extreme was not flexibility but a torture. Even bamboo would break under the harshest conditions. Flexibility in human relationships should be a part of mutual learning and growth toward collective liberation, rather than one-sided expectation of the dominant culture.

Yuri Yamamoto (they/she) is a board-certified chaplain ordained and endorsed by the Federation of Christian Ministries. After coming from Japan to the U.S., Yuri was a scientist (molecular biology/plant biology) and a church musician in a Unitarian Universalist congregation. Their theological education is from Shaw University Divinity School, and after two CPE residencies, Yuri is serving as a contract chaplain in local hospitals while discerning their future. Yuri is a minister of Liberation Station, Home of Underground Church, a start-up ministry. Yuri and their husband have six kids, four kids-in-law, four grand kids, and one dog.