About The Bridges Yuri Built: How Yuri Kochiyama Marched Across Movements

INTRODUCING THE NEXT GENERATION OF YOUNG READERS TO ONE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY'S MOST COURAGEOUS FREEDOM FIGHTERS, YURI KOCHIYAMA (1921 -- 2014).

Debut children's picture book author Kai Naima Williams -- great-granddaughter of Yuri Kochiyama -- intimately chronicles the experiences and lessons, hardships and victories, and people and places that shaped Yuri's life and influenced her activism. From Yuri's incarceration in a Japanese-American concentration camp during World War II to her participation in movements organizing for better schools in Harlem to her close friendship with Malcolm X, Yuri never wavered in her belief in the power of the people -- especially young people -- to bring about social change.

Through imaginative writing and vibrant illustrations by Anastasia Magloire Williams, THE BRIDGES YURI BUILT is sure to inspire young readers to embrace Yuri's unwavering belief that together we can build a bridge to a better world.

"The legacy I would like to leave is that people try to build bridges and not walls." -- Yuri Kochiyama

Kai Naima Williams is a multidisciplinary writer and performing artist based in Harlem, New York. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks He Tried To Drown The Ocean, I Waved (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2018) and Tomorrow Maps (The Hunger Press, 2023) and the children’s picture book The Bridges Yuri Built: How Yuri Kochiyama Marched Across Movements (Kaepernick Publishing, 2024). Her work has been featured in Louisiana Literature, Abolition Is, CRWN Magazine and the upcoming anthology Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities (Haymarket Press, 2025). She has performed in showcases for Sakhi For South Asian Women, Planned Parenthood, Densho and as part of the Freshman Class at Bowery Poetry Club. She is a 2023 Bandung Resident (MoCADA / Asian American Arts Alliance),  2019 Recipient of the Monroe Prize for Excellence in African American Studies, 2018 Recipient of the Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival Grand Prize in Fiction and her work has been honored by The New York Times. She is also a co-founder of Eat At The Table Theatre Company.