• Age: 18
• Grade: 12

In TheGreat Unknown, award-winning historian and journalist Greg Robinson offers a fascinating and compulsively readable collection of biographical portraits of extraordinary but unheralded figures in Japanese American history: men and women who made remarkable contributions in the arts, literature, law, sports, and other fields. Recovering and celebrating the stories of noteworthy Issei and Nisei and of their supporters, TheGreat Unknown provides powerful evidence of the diverse experiences and substantial cultural, political, and intellectual contributions of Nikkei throughout the country and over multiple decades.

What is more, The Great Unknown reshapes our understanding of the Asian American experience. By focusing attention on exceptional figures who deviated from social norms, Robinson subverts stereotypes of ethnic Japanese and other Asians as conformist or colorless. The collection also highlights a set of recurring themes absent from conventional histories—including the lives of Japanese Americans outside the West Coast, the role of women in shaping community life, encounters between Japanese American and African American communities during the struggle for civil rights, and the evolving status of queer community members.

Greg Robinson is a professor of history at the Université du Québec À Montréal and the author of several books, including The Unsung Great: Stories of Extraordinary Japanese Americans (University of Washington Press, 2020), After Camp: Portraits in Midcentury Japanese American Life and Politics (University of California Press, 2012), and The Unknown Great: Japanese American Sketches (University Press of Colorado, 2016). He also co-edited (with Frank Abe and Floyd Cheung) John Okada: The Life and Rediscovered Work of the Author of No-No Boy (University of Washington Press, 2018), which won the 2019 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation.

Greg Robinson's profile page