Mari Yoshihara is a professor of American Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and specializes in U.S. cultural history, U.S.-East Asian relations, Asian American studies, and gender studies. She is the author of Musicians from a Different Shore: Asians and Asian Americans in Classical Music (Temple, 2007) and Dearest Lenny: Letters from Japan and the Making of the World Maestro (Oxford, 2019).