Light from Uncommon Stars

Ryka Aoki is a Japanese American novelist, poet, teacher and composer. As a transgender woman of color, she brings a unique perspective to her writing while simultaneously striving to capture the universal experiences of all people. Aoki grew up in the San Gabriel Valley of Southern California, which is where the novel is set; however, she explained in an interview that she purposefully portrayed the topography and features of her hometown as slightly wrong. Her aim was to give the region a slight otherworldliness and to protect the real people and businesses there (Aoki, Ryka. “We Do What We Can: A Conversation with Ryka Aoki.” The Rumpus, 2021). Although Aoki’s parents discouraged her from being a writer when she was young, Aoki was always drawn to the craft and eventually earned a master of fine arts in creative writing from Cornell University. Her first novel, He Mele a Hilo (2014), is set in Hawaii and focuses on the art of hula dancing and Hawaiian identity. She has also published two volumes of poetry, Seasonal Velocities (2012) and Why Dust Shall Never Settle Upon This Soul (2015). She currently teaches English at Santa Monica College in California and gender studies at Antioch University.

Although Aoki’s writings are born from her personal experiences as an Asian American trans woman, she strives to capture experiences that are universal to all people. When discussing her reasons for writing, she spoke of the need to affirm the humanity of queer stories in a time when LGBTQ+ people are too often dehumanized by society. She writes:

If a trans musician can make the audience cry by playing Chopin, how else, but as a human, can she be regarded? And if a book written by a queer trans Asian American can make you think of your own beaches, your own sunsets […] then what more powerful statement of our common humanity can there be? (Aoki, Ryka. “Why I Write.” Publishers Weekly, 2015).