Listen to the audiobook for The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration and I guarantee you will come away with an entirely fresh experience of the writings we’ve presented in our new Penguin Classics anthology. Order it here or ask your local public library to order it for you.
And register here for tickets to come hear three of the readers on October 12 at the Japanese American National Museum for our LA book launch.
When we were gathering permissions for the anthology, our editor Elda Rotor instructed us to secure both print and audio rights. I was skeptical at first how an audiobook could possibly work with one person reading 65 different writers across so many different genres.
So I was thrilled when producer Denise Lee of Penguin Random House Audio outlined her plan to employ not one, not two, but four voice performers, two male and two female, to cover the range of tones and personalities of the authors. She envisioned it as a true audio experience, with soundscapes for the excerpts from graphic novels.
We also had the same actors in mind, and she recruited an A-list dream team of Japanese American voice talent that breathe life into the texts and deliver on the vision of our sequencing. In their readings I hear ideas and colors that I’d never noticed before. Just hearing the Japanese names and words read with such precise intonation is a revelation. Over the course of the unabridged, nine-hour program they brilliantly wring every ounce of feeling and emotion from the page.
To direct the studio sessions we were lucky to have the insightful Reena Dutt, herself a top stage and film director of South Asian descent, who told us how happy she was to shape this project. “Being able to work with you all and learn all the stories on the side was such a gift. To have an anthology written by the community, from the perspective of the community, and FOR the community and beyond, means the world to me.” The sessions she directed were edited by John Marshall Media of New York City, evidently one of the premier producers of audiobooks in the industry.
Audio below excerpted courtesy Penguin Random House Audio from THE LITERATURE OF JAPANESE AMERICAN INCARCERATION. Edited with an introduction by Frank Abe and Floyd Cheung. Read by Ren Hanami, traci kato-kiriyama, Greg Watanabe, and Keone Young, with Frank Abe.
Reading selections written by Issei and Kibei Nisei writers, many of them in translation from the Japanese, we have Asian American theater and Hollywood veteran Keone Young, “Mr. Wu” of Deadwood fame and a protege of both Mako and Frank Chin. “Don’t usually do books but this is special,” he says. “We have had a long struggle to develop Asian American voices and keep our history intact and available for coming generations. This was a project I have been waiting and working for. I cried when I read Joji Nozawa’s ‘Father of Volunteers.’ And was angered reading the Seattle JACL address. I remember it. We rejoiced when they broke away from the National JACL. It was a historic moment.”
The lyrics for the “Song of Cheyenne” were on a scrap of paper that Heart Mountain draft resister Jame Kado pulled out of his wallet while Frank Chin and I were interviewing him. We asked Mako to read it at a tribute for Michi Weglyn; he took one look at it and told us the lyrics matched the melody of the Hawaiian plantation work song, the Hole Hole Bushi, and sang it for us. I asked Keone to read it for the audiobook, and the Honolulu-born actor deadpanned, “I taught Mako the Hole Hole Bushi.” He wasn’t kidding. Just listen to what he does with it.
Keone Young performs Eddie Yanigisako and Kenroku Sumida’s “Song of Cheyenne”
traci kato-kiriyama is a multidisciplinary poet, artist, and audiobook narrator, who also has a poem in the anthology. She says, “It was a profound, sort of full circle and first-time experience to voice the words of some of the heroes I’d grown up reading or reading about, including Janice Mirikitani and Amy Uyematsu — I was so emotional in the recording booth! And when it was at the end of my session and I was about to do a take for my own piece, “No Redress,” the director asked me to bring Amy into the room with me. It felt as though as soon as she said that I could feel Amy right there, two feet away from me on the other side of the mic, telling me she was there, and we were there for my grandpa and all of our people. The ‘performance’ became a calling in of our ancestors right into the booth … like we did this as a team, a community, a family. I’ll always remember this.”
traci reads from her poem, “No Redress”
Casting a consummate professional like Greg Watanabe was a no-brainer for me. After all, we feature selections from Gordon Hirabayashi and Mike Masaoka, and he’s played both of them on stage! Greg read more of the younger Nisei voices and most of the government and JACL documents.
“I feel so connected to this part of Japanese American history in a visceral way from having worked on so many plays set in this period. It was such a pleasure to read some of Gordon Hirabayashi and Mike Masaoka’s letters after playing fictionalized versions of them! It definitely helped having spent time exploring their experiences and points of view. I hope the narration enhances the material, and helps the listener imagine the emotions the writers were feeling as they lived through these experiences.”
Greg reads from Fujiwo Tanisaki’s short story, “Our Father Was Taken Too”
Ren Hanami is an award-winning actress, writer, and filmmaker who has appeared in numerous primetime TV shows, independent and big budget films as well as regional stage productions. Her voice is featured in games, animated films, streaming series, and audio books. She brings her Aloha spirit to everything she does, she says. “I loved getting to know each person individually. Their bios helped me feel their personalities and experiences. This is the most important process for me. After that I read the text and look for other clues into the Human Being behind the words.”
Ren reads Toyo Suyemoto’s poem, “Barracks Home”
Thanks to Brisa Robinson for making the audio clips. And here’s a bonus clip. In our phone conversations, Denise said she liked the sound of my voice and suggested I read the Preface, Introductions, and Acknowledgements that we wrote. I took a deep breath and drew on my training as an actor and radio newsman, but it still took me two sessions at Bad Animals Studio in Seattle to get the job done.
As I say, join Floyd Cheung and me with moderator Brian Niiya at the Japanese American National Museum on Saturday, October12, at 2:00 pm, where we will be joined by Keone, traci, and Ren, who will read some of these selections from the anthology.
