The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration hits bookstore shelves today. You will finally be able to walk into a shop and buy a copy to take home. With their iconic black-and-white-and-orange covers, everyone has read or seen a Penguin Classic at some point in their lifetime. Whenever a character carries one in a movie, it’s a visual shorthand to signal the character is a scholar or book nerd. Continue reading “The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration” published today as a Penguin Classic
Category Archives: Penguin anthology
Video livestream: Three short films on the Heart Mountain resisters
May 11, 2024 will be the 22nd anniversary of National JACL’s apology in 2002 to what Paul Tsuneishi liked to call the “resisters of conscience.” To mark the occasion, Kimiko Marr and Japanese American Memorial Pilgrimages are producing a video livestream this Tuesday, May 14th, at 5:00 pm PDT/ 8:00 pm EDT that I’ve agreed to host. Continue reading Video livestream: Three short films on the Heart Mountain resisters
Now online: the Fair Play Committee files from the National Archives
This year we observe the 80th anniversary of the trial of 63 members of the Fair Play Committee at Heart Mountain for draft resistance, and the subsequent trial of the FPC steering committee for conspiracy to counsel draft evasion. Now, thanks to six years of work by staff of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, we are able to view online the personal WRA files kept on those members of the largest organized resistance to incarceration, the story documented in our PBS film, Conscience and the Constitution. You can see the files by opening the box below:
Continue reading Now online: the Fair Play Committee files from the National Archives
Audiobook and table of contents for Penguin anthology
I could not believe there would be interest in an audiobook of our anthology of camp literature coming May 14, but as a Facebook friend pointed out, having a set of audio readings is not just entertainment for long road trips or jogging with earbuds, but an essential access for the visually impaired. Continue reading Audiobook and table of contents for Penguin anthology
Five Events for the 2024 Day of Remembrance
Who knew when we started the Day of Remembrance that I’d still be talking about it 45 years later. Nevertheless, here we are, hitting the road for five DOR events in 2024. For further updates as the month progresses, check the Events page.
Continue reading Five Events for the 2024 Day of Remembrance
Project to translate and republish the literary magazines of Tule Lake
Tule Lake is the final frontier for the study of Japanese American incarceration. After 80 years, the Segregation Center at Tule Lake remains the least-understood and most-avoided subject in polite Japanese American society. And the fiction and poetry written by the Issei and Kibei Nisei during this tumultuous period and published in the camp’s literary magazines has languished unread by those who can’t read Japanese. A new project launched last month at the University of California at Berkeley promises to change that. Continue reading Project to translate and republish the literary magazines of Tule Lake
Coming May 2024: The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration
Floyd Cheung and I are pleased to announce that our new anthology, The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration, will be published as a Penguin Classic on May 14, 2024. You can now pre-order the book from your neighborhood independent bookstore, or from one of these online sellers.
Continue reading Coming May 2024: The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration
Searching for families of these Issei writers
This is an appeal for anyone with leads on the families of Joji Nozawa, Kazuo Kawai, Hyakuissei Okamoto, Yoshio Abe, Iwao Kawakami, and other Issei writers whose work we plan to feature in a forthcoming anthology of camp literature [UPDATE: We’ve now heard from relatives of Nozawa and Kawakami].
Prof. Floyd Cheung and I have nearly completed the manuscript for The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration to be published by Penguin Classics in spring or fall 2024. The collection includes around 60 selections from Before Camp, The Camps, and After Camp. Continue reading Searching for families of these Issei writers
First preview of our forthcoming anthology of camp literature
For three years, Floyd Cheung of Smith College and I have been gathering pieces and building the outline for a new anthology of camp literature commissioned by the publisher of Penguin Classics. On Sunday I presented a preview of our work on translations of Issei writing in camp in Japanese, part of what the late Yuji Ichioka called “our buried past.” This video screen is cued to the start of that discussion:
Continue reading First preview of our forthcoming anthology of camp literature