Performed by Julian Saporiti, doctoral candidate in Ethnomusicology and director of the Arts Initiative Songwriters Workshop at Brown University; and Erin Aoyama, doctoral candidate in American Studies at Brown University

Sponsored by Penn State College of Education, Department of Asian Studies, Center for Pedagogy in Arts and Design (C-PAD), and the Arts and Design Research Incubator (ADRI)

Taking inspiration from interviews with World War II Japanese incarceration camp survivors, his own family’s history living through the Vietnam War, and many other stories of Asian American experience, Saporiti has transformed his doctoral research at Brown University into folk songs in an effort to bring these stories to a broader audience. Alongside Aoyama, a fellow Ph.D. student whose family was incarcerated at one of the ten Japanese American concentration camps, No-No Boy aims to shine a light on experiences that have remained largely hidden in the American consciousness.​ Using music to process their research and family legacies, Saporiti and Aoyama work to illuminate an understudied past and, in doing so, generate conversations about the present.

More information is available at https://www.nonoboyproject.com/.