Among my favorite early memories of Yoki at Smith was her vigorous participation in the African-American drama course that I initiated upon my arrival on campus, first as an exploratory seminar and soon as a class of approximately 60 students each year. Two-thirds of the class were students of color thirsting for writers who reflected spheres of experience, complexities of values, language, perspective, locale and pain that these students saw too little articulated and dramatized in so much they had to read and found lauded as “universal.” Yoki generally sat in the midst of rising tiers of movable chairs, on the window side of what used to be Sage 2, the lower level of Sage Hall, an intimate proscenium theatre now converted into the Earle Recital Hall. The plays we read included a number that explicitly confronted the philosophies and reactions expressed by Yoki’s father as well as those expressed by Malcolm X and believed to challenge or oppose her dad’s approach.

The class was wonderfully volatile, but when we came to discussing Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X through their dramatic representations, the class momentarily stiffened. Eyes darted sideways toward Yoki’s face whenever any risky-seeming analysis or reaction was ventured. Yoki was visibly aware of this. Being Yoki, she was neither daunted nor eager to flaunt her lineage. I remember a particular moment when she (maybe five or 10 minutes into this stiffness) decided to speak. In a soft clear voice, she paid tribute to the Malcolm X character and to the “real life” person who had inspired it. Succinct and moving, she discussed the kinship of awareness and purpose that prevailed between Malcolm X and her dad, both within the scripts we discussed and in “the world.” I could hear an audible sigh of tension release as Yoki assessed strengths and weaknesses in the stances that each man took. Then she sat back and let the rest of the class take their turn. All that had been vibrant and volatile in the class resurfaced; and, thanks to Yoki, the free-for-all of conflicting ideas and goals found anew its disciplined yet irrepressible arena within the myriad script details with which each student had to contend.