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Three Japanese American individuals with different beliefs and backgrounds decided to resist imprisonment by the United States government during World War II in different ways. Jim Akutsu, considered by some to be the inspiration for John Okada's No-No Boy, resisted the draft and argued that he had no obligation to serve the US military because he was classified as an enemy alien. Hiroshi Kashiwagi renounced his United States citizenship and refused to fill out the "loyalty questionnaire" required by the US government. He and his family were segregated by the government and ostracized by the Japanese American community for being "disloyal." And Mitsuye Endo became a reluctant but willing pla...
This study explores the cultural trajectory of Japanese American internment, both during and after World War II. It also provides the most exhaustive biographical outline of John Okada to date and refutes the assumption that his novel No-No Boy was all but shunned when first published. A close reading positions the book within world literature.
What-a-mess, the afghan puppy, is always in trouble so that his mother disowns him. He sets out to find what he really is - a bee, a hat, a fish?
"No-No Boy has the honor of being among the first of what has become an entire literary canon of Asian American literature,” writes novelist Ruth Ozeki in her new foreword. First published in 1957, No-No Boy was virtually ignored by a public eager to put World War II and the Japanese internment behind them. It was not until the mid-1970s that a new generation of Japanese American writers and scholars recognized the novel’s importance and popularized it as one of literature’s most powerful testaments to the Asian American experience. No-No Boy tells the story of Ichiro Yamada, a fictional version of the real-life “no-no boys.” Yamada answered “no” twice in a compulsory governmen...
No-No Boy, John Okada’s only published novel, centers on a Japanese American who refuses to fight for the country that incarcerated him and his people in World War II and, upon release from federal prison after the war, is cast out by his divided community. In 1957, the novel faced a similar rejection until it was rediscovered and reissued in 1976 to become a celebrated classic of American literature. As a result of Okada’s untimely death at age forty-seven, the author’s life and other works have remained obscure. This compelling collection offers the first full-length examination of Okada’s development as an artist, placing recently discovered writing by Okada alongside essays that reassess his lasting legacy. Meticulously researched biographical details, insight from friends and relatives, and a trove of intimate photographs illuminate Okada’s early life in Seattle, military service, and careers as a public librarian and a technical writer in the aerospace industry. This volume is an essential companion to No-No Boy.
Recently widowed, confined to a wheelchair, and placed in an elderly-care facility, Abe Gilman wants no part in any of the activities of the other residents, preferring to live out his life in cynical near-isolation.But among those activities is a collective oral history project that two of the members, Samuel Hersh and Hannah Cohen, are attempting to turn into a book. The two of them fall in love while writing the intriguing story-within-a-story about the young man Elie Wasserman, whose father has disappeared during WWII. Is he alive or dead? Is he a hero or something very different? Hannah's sudden death drives Hersh to end Elie's story with the bitterness and depression he now feels. Gilman, a former teacher, has grown to respect the project, and rejoins life by offering an inspiring and effective ending, Abe Gilman's ending.Author Glenn Frank has structured this fine novel uniquely, telling it in alternating narratives and justifying two complementary endings. This is a major tour de force by a writer who deserves fiction readers' attention.
Relocating Authority examines the ways Japanese Americans have continually used writing to respond to the circumstances of their community’s mass imprisonment during World War II. Using both Nikkei cultural frameworks and community-specific history for methodological inspiration and guidance, Mira Shimabukuro shows how writing was used privately and publicly to individually survive and collectively resist the conditions of incarceration. Examining a wide range of diverse texts and literacy practices such as diary entries, note-taking, manifestos, and multiple drafts of single documents, Relocating Authority draws upon community archives, visual histories, and Asian American history and the...
After The Americans, The Lines of My Hand is arguably Robert Frank's most important book and without doubt the publication that established his autobiographical, sometimes confessional, approach to bookmaking. The book was originally published by Yugensha in Tokyo in 1972, and this new Steidl edition, made in close collaboration with Robert Frank, follows and updates the first US edition by Lustrum Press of 1972. The Lines of My Hand is structured chronologically and presents selections from every stage of Frank's work until 1972--from early photos in Switzerland in 1945-46, to images of his travels in Peru, Paris, Valencia, London and Wales, and to contact sheets from his 1955-56 journey th...
The Ronin, a disgraced samurai from the thirteenth century, is given a chance to regain his honor by avenging the death of his master in a corrupt New York City of the twenty-first century, where he faces Agat, the ancient demon who is his master's killer.
The giant Alexander is as high as one telegraph post on top of another. He walks to London and spring-cleans Nelson's Column, and then goes to tea with the Lord Mayor. After many more adventures he invites hundreds of children to a special "giant treat", a vast breakfast of roast sausages, fried onions, and fried potatoes.