aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Friday, October 28, 2005

Engage

George Takei, Star Trek’s Sulu, on coming out:

“It’s not really coming out, which suggests opening a door and stepping through. It’s more like a long, long walk through what began as a narrow corridor that starts to widen.” In the interview, the 68-year-old actor also discusses his childhood in a Japanese-American internment camp, his 18-year relationship, his siblings’ inability to accept his homosexuality, and the upcoming Los Angeles production of Equus in which he stars.

On childhood in the camp:

I used to begin school every morning pledging allegiance to the flag, and I could see the barbed-wire fence out there, and the guard towers, saying, “With liberty and justice for all,” without being aware of the irony of those words. But when we came out of camp, that’s when I first realized that being in camp, that being Japanese-American, was something shameful.

Read the Frontiers interview.

Via Dean.