1991

My connection to the sociological profession was always tenuous at best. When I spoke with Theda Skocpol at Harvard, she told me that Habermas really wasn't an important sociologist, so I decided to study at Berkeley instead. I also had the good fortune to marry Elizabeth, another sociology graduate student at Berkeley, whose commitment to the discipline could not be shaken. It was therefore inevitable that, once I finished, the dilemma of securing two appointments in the same location would compel me to jump ship.

Since graduating, I taught Sociology at Foothill College for two years. I am now an Asst. Professor in the Asian American Studies Dept. of San Francisco State University My dissertation research, New Asian American Churches: The Religious Construction of Race, will be published by Rutgers University Press.

Since graduating in 1998, Dr. Motoyoshi has worked in and around the field of education. She briefly held a position as writer/editor for Toucan Valley Publications, where she wrote and published books on ethnic groups in California. She has also worked as a private tutor and as a freelance writer, providing content for educational websites.

I went directly into graduate school after undergraduate years spent in creative writing; microbiology; activism in antiracist, Asian American, feminist, and queer causes; and ultimately, women's studies. Frankly, I came to Berkeley more for its geography than the department seeking distance from an awkward immigrant youth in an elite, conservative part of Tennessee. Ironically, I found an institutional experience in which I increasingly chose to prioritize graduate school over political participation.