Janice Mirikitani

Janice Mirikitani (February 5, 1941 – July 29, 2021) was an American poet and activist who resided in the San Francisco Bay Area for most of her adult life. She managed the Glide Memorial Church with her husband, Cecil Williams. She was noted for serving as San Francisco's poet laureate from 2000 until 2002.

Early life Mirikitani was born in Stockton, California, on February 5, 1941, and was Sansei (third-generation Japanese American). In 1942, during the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans, she and her family were sent to the Rohwer War Relocation Center in Arkansas.

After her parents divorced, Janice was brought back to a chicken farm at Petaluma, California, with her mother, where they would be near the remainder of their family. During the time that followed, Janice became the victim of sexual molestation by her step-father up to the age of sixteen, and was saved from suicide only by the love and care of her grandmother. She would later speak of the pain of her incestuous abuse through her poetry. She edited two anthologies for Third World Communications: Third World Women (1972) and Time to Greez! Incantations from the Third World (1975). Mirikitani then became project director for Ayumi: A Japanese American Anthology (1980). One of her cousins was the painter Jimmy Mirikitani.

Mirikitani died on the morning of July 29, 2021, at the age of 80. The cause of death was cancer.