The San Francisco Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) will present a talk by author Greg Robinson about “Miné Okubo: Following Her Own Road” (University of Washington Press), which he co-edited, on Saturday, Oct. 11, at 1 p.m. at JACL National Headquarters, 1765 Sutter St. in San Francisco’s Japantown.

This is the first book-length critical examination of the life and work of Miné Okubo (1912-2001), a pioneering Nisei artist, writer, and social activist who repeatedly defied conventional role expectations for women and for Japanese Americans over her 70-year career.

Okubo’s landmark “Citizen 13660,” first published in 1946, is the first and arguably best-known autobiographical narrative of the wartime Japanese American relocation and confinement experience. An instant classic, the book has been in print for over 50 years and has been translated into numerous languages.

Born in Riverside, Okubo was incarcerated by the U.S. government during World War II, first at the Tanforan Assembly Center in San Bruno and later at the Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah. There she taught art and directed the production of a literary and art magazine.

While in camp, Okubo documented her confinement experience by making hundreds of paintings and pen-and-ink sketches. These provided the material for “Citizen 13660.” Word of her talent spread to Fortune magazine, which hired her as an illustrator. Under the magazine’s auspices, she was able to leave the camp and relocate to New York City, where she pursued her art over the next half century.

In addition to tracing the artist’s career, “Miné Okubo” expands the sparse critical literature on Asian American women, as well as that on the Asian American experience in the eastern U.S. It also serves as a companion to “Citizen 13660,” providing critical tools and background to place Okubo’s work in its historical and literary contexts.

Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event. For more information, e-mail sfjacl@yahoo.com.

Robinson is professor of history at the Université du Quebéc a Montréal. He is the author of “By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans” (2003).

His co-editor is Elena Tajima Creef, associate professor of women’s studies at Wellesley College. The two also co-edited “Holy Prayers in a Horse’s Ear: A Japanese American Memoir” (Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the Americas, 2008), a new edition of a 1934 memoir by Kathleen Tamagawa.

Other contributors to “Miné Okubo” are Laura Card, Fay Chiang, Vivian Fumiko Chin, Mary Curtin, Heather Fryer, Masumi Hayashi, Sohei Hohri, Lynne Horiuchi, Clemens Kalischer, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, James Masao Mitsui, Stella Oh, Kimberley L. Phillips, and Irene Poon.