Janice Mirikitani

Janice Hachiko Mirikitani was born in Stockton, California on February 5, 1941 to Nisei farmers Ted Yoshimasa and Belle Anne Shigemi (Matsuda) Mirikitani, who raised poultry and grew vegetables on their property. She was only a one year old infant when Executive Order 9066 was put into effect, her parents and paternal grandparents were incarcerated in the Rohwer concentration camp in Arkansas for the duration of World War II. Following their release from camp, her father moved to Chicago, while Janice, and her mother first moved to Kansas City, Missouri on September 7, 1945 but then moved to Chicago, where her parents soon divorced. To survive, Janice's mother worked several jobs and eventually met and married her second husband, Horace Yonehiro. After a few rough years in Chicago, where Mirikitani endured racist bullying from neighborhood kids, they moved back to Petaluma, California and briefly lived with her maternal grandparents. Until a house could be constructed for them, the family lived in a chicken house in extreme poverty. In February 1949, her brother Layne was born. ^[1]

In 1958, her mother, stepfather, and younger brother moved to Los Angeles. By that time, Mirikitani had graduated from high school and was accepted at the University of California, Los Angeles on full scholarship. She graduated from UCLA in 1962 with a bachelor’s degree in English and a minor in modern dance. While at UCLA, she helped found the University's Asian sorority, Theta Kappa Phi. She went on to pursue a teaching degree from UC Berkeley, then taught in the Contra Costa School District for a year before pursuing a graduate degree in creative writing at San Francisco State University. ^[2]

In 1965, she came to work at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco as an administrative assistant and quickly took on the role of activist and leader for the anti-war movement and fight against poverty and racism. In 1966 she married Ralph Miller and gave birth to daughter Tianne Tsukiko in 1967, although the marriage ended in divorce. She was became the program director at GLIDE in 1969, shaping their outreach and support for women and families facing challenges of substance abuse, domestic violence, single parenting, childcare, health and wellness, education, and access to employment, and in 1982 she was promoted to founding Executive Director and President of the GLIDE Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to combating systemic inequities and creating pathways for people experiencing poverty. ^[3]

Through the support of the church, including the creation of support groups for victims of incest and abuse, Mirikitani began acknowledging that from the time that she was a young child, she had endured over a decade of emotional isolation and the trauma of physical and sexual abuse by her stepfather and numerous other men. These repressed emotions, both personal and those of the Japanese American community as a result of their wartime suffering, later became the basis of her poetry in coming years and helped fuel her radical work in community healing.

In 1970, while pursuing her degree in creative writing at San Francisco State College, she participated in the Third World Liberation Front, joined the artist collective Third World Communications, and became the editor of Aion (1970—71), one of the earliest Asian American literary publications. In the late 1970s, she began working with artists and writers to edit AYUMI, A Japanese American Anthology (1980), a major bilingual anthology featuring four generations of Japanese American writers, poets, and graphic artists. Her first book of prose and poetry, Awake in the River , was published in 1978.

In 1982, she married Glide Memorial Church's Reverend Cecil Williams. In partnership with her husband, she developed more than eighty programs for San Francisco's poor and homeless, advocating for LGBTQ and non-binary rights, creating and supporting substance abuse and incest support groups and championing job development programs. In 1999, she founded the Janice Mirikitani Family, Youth and Childcare Center (FYCC) to address the challenges faced by the children of very low-income households, and served as its executive director.

Her dedication to community activism and advocacy received worldwide recognition; she was the recipient of more than forty awards and honors, including the Governor and First Lady's Conference on Women and Families' “Minerva Award,” San Francisco State University's “Distinguished Alumnae Award,” the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce's “Lifetime Achievement Ebbie Award,” the prestigious American Book “Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature,” and the University of California at San Francisco Chancellor's “Medal of Honor Award.” In 1988, the California State Assembly named Mirikitani “Woman of the Year” in the 17th Assembly District. In 2000, Mirikitani was appointed San Francisco’s second Poet Laureate, a position she held for two years.

She was a distant cousin of artist Tsutomu "Jimmy" Mirikitani (daughter of his cousin, Ted), who was the subject of an award-winning documentary film, The Cats of Mirikitani (2006).

Janice Mirikitani's published books include: Awake in the River (1978); Shedding Silence (1987); We, the Dangerous (1995); and Love Works (2002). In 2014, she released a fifth collection of poems entitled Out of the Dust: New and Selected Poems through the University of Hawai'i Press. In 2013, Mirikitani and Williams collaborated on a book documenting the evolution of GLIDE titled “Beyond the Possible: 50 Years of Creating Radical Change in a Community Called GLIDE”.

Mirikitani died of cancer in San Francisco, California on July 29, 2021 at age 80.

“Glide Church Co-Founder, Poet and San Francisco Activist Janice Mirikitani Dies at Age 80”. KPIX-TV. July 29, 2021. Retrieved July 30,2021.

“Breaking Silence: Janice Mirikitani, San Francisco's New Poet Laureate”, Poetry Flash, 2000.

Carabi, Angels. “Janice Mirikitani”. In Truthtellers of the Times: Interviews with Contemporary Women Poets , edited by Janet Palmer Mullaney. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998.

Cheung, King-kok, ed. “Janice Mirikitani, interviewed by Grace Kyungwon Hong.” Words Matter: Conversations with Asian American Writers . Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000.

“Janice Mirikitani: In Memorium” 2021, Glide. Accessed April 16, 2026.

“Janice Mirikitani Interview” January 16, 2016, Densho Digital Repository. Accessed April 16, 2026.

———. “Rebirth: Janice's Story."” In No Hiding Place , edited by Cecil Williams. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993.

———. Out of the Dust: New and Selected Poems . University of Hawai'i Press, 2014.