Growing up, I didn't think much about my mixed-race heritage. I grew up in the suburbs of New York City with a white mother from a large Irish-Catholic family and a Japanese father who emigrated to America in the late 70s. My childhood was, simply put, very American. I was obsessed with Sesame Street 's Grover, Cookie Crisp cereal, and Waldo, that red-striped-sweater-wearing nerd of Where's Waldo fame. I had annual photo shoots at our local Sears Portrait Studio. I got creeped out when Cherie got locked inside that refrigerator on Punky Brewster . And I, too, wondered what being "like a virgin" meant whenever Madonna's song came on the radio in between bites of my Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. But as I got older, I became more cognizant of my "other half," the part of me that remembered Japanese nursery rhymes my father narrated for me at bedtime ( something about an elderly couple adopting a baby they find hidden inside a giant peach on their farm
e-memoirs of a pop culture junkie