David Mura, author of “The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself: Racial Myths and Our American Narratives,” challenges us to think more critically about what we typically consider to be American history, as well as the history being made today and every day. He concludes his talk with “Poem for Abdi,” which shares the story of the killing of his son’s Somali-American best friend.
David is a writer and a Sansei, a third generation Japanese American. His most recent book is A Stranger’s Journey: Race, Identity & Narrative Craft in Writing. He’s written two memoirs, Where the Body Meets Memory, and Turning Japanese, which won the Oakland PEN Josephine Miles Book Award and was a New York Times Notable Book. His novel, Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire, was a finalist for the MN Book Award, the John Gardner Fiction Prize and the Virginia Commonwealth Cabell First Novelist Award. His four books of poetry include the National Poetry Contest winner After We Lost Our Way, The Colors of Desire, which won a Carl Sandburg Literary Award, Angels for the Burning, and The Last Incantations.
Among his awards, Mura has received a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers’ Award, a US/Japan Creative Artist Fellowship, two NEA Literature Fellowships, two Bush Foundation Fellowships, five Loft-McKnight Awards, Minnesota State Arts Board grants, and a Discovery/The Nation Award. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx