Views from Beyond Metropolis: Reimagine the American Way and learn how to bridge multicultural divides in an ever-changing world

What can a Japanese American Baby Boomer learn from an illegal alien from the planet Krypton?

In Views from Beyond Heart Mountain, Alan O'Hashi reimagines Superman's American Way through the experiences of his Japanese American family living in Wyoming during and after World War II. Blending memoir, history, and cultural commentary, O'Hashi explores what it means to belong in a nation that has often struggled to live up to its ideals of freedom, equality, and opportunity.

Growing up in Cheyenne's once-vibrant Japanese neighborhood on West 17th Street, O'Hashi came of age in the long shadow of war and discrimination. Although most of his family avoided incarceration, they were not untouched by the anti-Japanese hysteria that followed Pearl Harbor.

Two family members were swept up in the first wave of wartime detentions in California and sent to the Tulare Assembly Center before relatives secured their return to Wyoming. Like many Japanese Americans outside the barbed wire, his family faced both overt racism and the subtle barriers that persisted long after the War ended.

Throughout his memoir, O'Hashi traces the evolution of Superman from a hidden immigrant whose adoptive parents concealed his origins to a symbol of Truth, Justice, and the American Way. As Superman changed with the times, so too did America and O'Hashi's understanding of identity, citizenship, race, and belonging.

Set against the backdrop of Cheyenne's Japanese American community and the enduring legacy of Heart Mountain, O'Hashi examines the history of legalized oppression in America, from slavery and Native American displacement to the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans. Through a cultural competency lens, he challenges readers to confront the biases, fears, and assumptions that continue to shape American society.

Part memoir, part history, and part guide to cultural competency, Views from Beyond Heart Mountain asks readers to reconsider the American Way. O'Hashi suggests that America's future lies not in assimilation and exclusion, but in collaboration, inclusion, and the recognition that our differences make us stronger. In doing so, he reimagines Superman's American Way as one that embraces diversity, belonging, and shared humanity.