Obituary
Writer, 54, ‘Understood What it Meant To Not Fit In’

Chiori Santiago, a Berkeley performance arts writer remembered for her passion for music and dance, died April 14 at the age of 54.

Santiago passed away at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Berkeley from complications from kidney cancer, said her son Roberto Santiago.

The daughter of two journalists, Santiago contributed to publications including The San Francisco Chronicle and Latina Magazine. She edited The Museum of California, the membership magazine for the Oakland Museum of California and the Nikkei Heritage, the National Japanese American History Society quarterly.

“My mom was always able to show how you can be someone very talented and accomplished and very humble,” Roberto Santiago said.

Santiago traveled around the world with her mother and father, who met while they were both working as journalists for The Stars and Stripes, a U.S. military paper, during the U.S. occupation of Japan. She also spent two years in Pakistan while she was growing up.

Santiago moved to the United States when she was seven or eight years old, where she had to adjust to life as a biracial citizen with an international background, said Mari Marques, 52, Santiago’s long-time friend.

“She had the experience of being an outsider,” Marques said. “With a Japanese mother and a white father, she understood what it meant to not fit in.”

She had friends from many backgrounds and was married twice, both times to Puerto Ricans, Marques said.

She was well-connected to Bay Area artists, musicians, the Japanese community and the Hispanic community, Marques said.

Growing up, Santiago was often mistaken for a Hispanic girl, Marques said, an experience that led her to write an essay, “How I Became a Mexican,” about her experience growing up biracial in America.

She also wrote a children's book, “Home to Medicine Mountain.”

Santiago worked and got scholarships to get through college, said her mother, Yoshiko Tajiri.

“Nothing was handed to her ever, in her whole life, and she worked and fought for everything that she had,” Roberto Santiago said.

Every year, Santiago would host September parties at her house. What started out as a gathering of Santiago's friends who all had September birthdays became a community party.

The parties grew every year; sometimes 300 people crammed into a West Berkeley house, Roberto Santiago said.

“It was incredible the way she would open her house up every year to come together and to affirm our community,” Marques said. “It was something that really exemplifies the diversity and richness of the Bay Area.”

There will be a public memorial for Santiago on July 14 at the Oakland Museum of California.

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