Radical Wahine of Honolulu, 1945

On International Women’s Day, March 8, 2023, meet Kimi Matsuda, one of nine women featured in the solo exhibition Radical Wahine of Honolulu, 1945, by Mari Matsuda.

Kimi Matsuda (1925-2020) was born to immigrant plantation workers on the Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi. Girls were not supposed to go to college, but she scraped her way through the University of Hawaiʻi, working as a live-in maid for room and board, and in the library and the pineapple cannery for tuition.

She never forgot life on the Dole cannery line, where she worked until her fingers bled. And, as a student, she documented conditions in the sugar-cane fields. Kimi went on to get a masters from Columbia University in New York, where she signed up for the war on poverty as a Headstart trainer. A life-long participant in movements for labor, peace and civil rights, she was still marching in her 90s.

Her story and the stories of eight other women are told in the installation by Mari Matsuda, Kimi's daughter. Mari, through her mother, grew up knowing powerful, radical Asian and Hawaiian women.

Mari describes herself as a found object sculptor, alternative instrument maker, and printmaker. While on the faculties of William S. Richardson School of Law (at the UH), UCLA, and Georgetown, she helped found critical race theory and intersectional feminism, which means that different forms of discrimination (sexism, racism, classism) can overlap.