Strawberry Social
2023, Dessert and Storytelling at Ikoi No Kai Senior Lunch Center
According to the Japanese American National Museum, pre WWII Japanese Americans farmed 90% of strawberries in Oregon. As children, my parents would board a bus during the summers and pick strawberries for local farms. It is a shared experience for many local Asian Ams of that generation. This experience, and more broadly API agricultural history in the Pacific NW, is a much underrepresented history that is echoed today across many ethnic communities.
Strawberry Social was a celebration of early summer strawberry season and an activation of strawberry memory. Taking place at Ikoi No Kai Senior Lunch Program, participants exchanged stories about their relationship with strawberries while sharing strawberry desserts and screen printing tenugui (summer multipurpose towels).
Strawberry Social was a collaboration between Amisa Chiu, Jaclyn Nakashima, and Jeannine Shinoda.
